Latest update September 11th, 2026 10:26 AM
Education is a liberating force from the shackles of poverty
DEAR EDITOR,
On 5th October every year, we celebrate “Teachers’ Day” all over the country. This is on the birth anniversary of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the second President of India, and a very great teacher.
On this occasion, we express our deep appreciation and gratitude to all our teachers, who make so many sacrifices in order to educate us. A good education is one of the greatest blessings we can receive in this life.
We know that there are millions in our own country and in many of the developing countries who have no access to education at all.
What future do all these people and their children have? What is the quality of life that they enjoy in a world that has made so much progress in science, technology and in every field of human endeavour? Can they partake of the fruits of all this progress?
The ‘knowledge explosion’ has made no difference at all to their primitive poverty-stricken lives! This only serves to illustrate the great importance and value of education.
If we wish to progress, as individuals and as a community, we must give prime importance to education. What will we be without education in the modern world? Who will respect us and our rights as human beings?
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the state of education among the Catholics of Bombay was very pathetic.
They were the servants of all the other communities, and were despised as “hackers of wood and drawers of water”.
In the 1850s, Bishop Anastasius Hartmann became the Administrator of the Diocese (till 1858).
He was quick to perceive that the most pressing need of his people was education, if they were to come up in life and take their rightful places alongside the other communities.
He invited the Jesuits to come to Bombay. The Jesuits soon started the St. Mary’s Institution, St. Xavier’s High School and College, and St. Stanislaus School and Boarding.
Within 50 years, a large number of Catholics were highly educated. During the next 100 years, over 150 Catholic schools, several Catholic colleges, technical institutes and the Diocesan Seminary sprang up, and the Catholic community had produced a whole galaxy of highly qualified professionals in every field: professors, teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, social workers, counsellors, public servants, priests, bishops and even cardinals, governors of states, and generals in the armed forces of the country!
It was education that made all the difference in a relatively short span of time. Around the same time, an even more spectacular transformation was brought about by the Belgian Jesuits, through education among almost two million tribals of the Chotanagpur Mission in Jharkhand.
Today, once again, we are faced with the problem of making an option for education, especially higher education, if we are to be respected in the country.
All too easily, our youth are lured by quick money to call-centres and BPOs and other ordinary jobs, where their education stops at the SSC or HSC level, which is very low by today’s standards.
If large numbers of our youth get carried away by this kind of superficial success, very soon our people will, once again, end up as servants of all the other communities.
They will have no positions of influence in public life, and will be at the mercy of forces which can easily exploit them.
It is high time that we, as a community, learn to invest in our long-term interests and be prepared to sacrifice short-term gains and the cheap celebration culture that is spreading.
The best long-term investment is higher education. We need to motivate our young people to study more and qualify themselves well, to be equal to the best in a highly competitive world.
Incentives should be made available to parents and their children to opt for specialised professional programmes, management courses, challenging business ventures, higher studies in science and the humanities, philosophy and theology, writing and research, in the form of loans, freeships, scholarships, and awards.
Habits of serious reading, study, discussions, project-work, original thinking and writing must be encouraged in all our schools and colleges.
Excessive dependence on TV and the visual media, which act like addictive drugs and inhibit independent thinking, must be discouraged.
Only if we consciously choose this path will we be able, as a Catholic community, to fulfill Christ’s mandate to be “the salt of the earth and the light of the world” and hold our heads high in society.
Fr. Joseph M. Dias, S. J.
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