Does Education Really Promote Equality ?

One of the most popular quotes by Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to transform the world,” highlights the power of education in fostering critical thinking, empowerment and challenging widespread injustice prevalent in societies across the world. Indeed, the power of education remains unparalleled, with it providing a critical space for personal as well as societal transformation. It is through education that humans have unleashed their potential and reached the pinnacle of progress, which perhaps has surpassed humans’ own expectations. It has made ‘impossible’ simply a myth and ‘possible’ a reality. It has nurtured critical thinking and analytical reasoning of learners, which enables individuals to envision a better world by challenging the deeply embedded injustices persisting in society.

However, the term ‘education’ is not static; it has transformed over the period. From the early forms of education, which focused on passing on moral values, to the contemporary practice of fostering critical thinking and analytical reasoning in learners, indeed, education has come a long way in responding to the ever-changing demands of an evolving society. Yet, while education promotes critical thinking, it is also imperative to critically examine if education has, in the truest sense, equitably transformed societies. Has education truly promoted equality and equity in increasingly divided societies? The transformative potential of education is hardly debatable; however, its role as a space for promoting equality demands deeper critical interrogation.

Education as an instrument 

Renowned philosophers such as Karl Marx and Pierre Bourdieu have argued that in capitalist societies, education has been used as an instrument to create inequalities rather than to dismantle them. Their claim may appear contentious at first glance; however, upon deeper introspection, it cannot be invalidated. Education, despite its promise to promote equality, in many ways has also deeply divided societies. The knowledge that is transmitted by education is not neutral; rather, it is shaped by power. It is those in power who decide which knowledge is significant and which is marginalised.  As a result, the curriculum tends to reflect dominant Western knowledge, completely sidelining local knowledge and rich indigenous histories. 

Students are made to cram Western histories and theories, which have little to no relevance to their lived experiences. Consequently, learning becomes rote rather than meaningful, leading to mere surface-level understanding and disengagement amongst students. Apart from this, students are often discriminated against on the grounds of low social and economic capital. An illustration of this inequality can be found in a recent experience of attending an annual day function of a reputed school in Kathmandu. At a surface level, the function seemed to promote social cohesion and harmony; however, at a deeper level, it visibly reinforced inequalities by labeling certain seats with parents’ names while marginalising other parents by asking them to rise from the seat and move elsewhere.

This incident highlights the widespread prevalence of symbolic violence within educational spaces. Likewise, everyday interactions within the classroom and schools also tend to reinforce inequalities. Learners possessing social and economic capital are given preference by teachers through engagement and involvement in discussion; however, others are reduced to mute spectators, making them feel insignificant or not good enough. The urban and rural divide in terms of quality of education is also hard to miss which further reinforces inequalities. Studies also reveal an increasing dropout rate among rural and marginalised girls and boys, indicating that equality indeed seems to have vanished into thin years.

The government’s endeavour “education for all’’ is noteworthy; however, it hardly translates into equality of outcomes or experiences for all, suggesting that mere policies without a proper execution plan hardly yield any fruitful results. Amid these challenges, Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy emerges as a powerful tool to promote equality in education and society. As opposed to the banking model of education, where learners are considered as empty vessels into which knowledge is deposited, Freire proposes dialogic education, where learners are actively involved in constructing knowledge.

Critical thinking 

This way, education becomes a site where injustice and inequalities are challenged and learners’ lived experiences of injustice and oppression become a vital source of knowledge. The goal of education, therefore, is to foster critical thinking so that learners, rather than simply accepting information, are actively evaluating and judging before accepting it. When learners are empowered with critical thinking skills, they actively evaluate who is in power and how that shapes the knowledge they receive. This enables them to challenge injustice and inequalities persisting not only in education, but also in society at large. 

The ultimate aim of education is not to produce degree holders, but to produce citizens who are capable of identifying oppression, challenging inequalities and working towards equitable and fair societies for all. Education, indeed, has the power to transform the world; however, for it to be transformative for all regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds, the education system must transition from rote learning to critical thinking, and the government must ensure meaningful execution of policies rather than the continuation of symbolic commitments.

(The author is the director & chief instructor at the Suva Consultancy & Training Institute.)