Throughout my life, has education not been my shield, sword, and olive branch all rolled into one?

How can I  express how profoundly true those words are to me, how they resonate in me, how they are the foundation of my entire life, how dumbstruck I felt when that glorious woman, Queen Rania, cut to the essence of my soul in just 17 words?  I feel sure that Her Majesty would be quite honoured that I adopt her words as my personal motto.  She and I have much in common, but it is in this, the very deeply personal way that education has shaped, and continues to shape our destinies, that we share the greatest commonality.

Knowledge is power, another truism that I was raised with, was however presented to me with a challenge.   My parents, both university-educated, believed that no statements, especially universally-accepted, sweeping ones like this, should be automatically acknowledged as truth.  They knew it was the truth, but they realized that if I did not test it, discover and use the power for myself, then I might well become a sheep, a blind follower, and eventually lose the curiousity and passion and will that defined me. 

I was educated in traditional schools, but my education was by no means limited to those settings.  My parents never believed in home-schooling, never believed that a parent could provide the nessesary tools of socialization and specialization that a school could.  Of course there are good schools and bad, and they had the wherewithal to provide the very best academic environments which no doubt gave me an edge.  There are also good teachers and bad teachers but here, my parents took a different stance.  They were never upset on the rare occasions that  I got a bad teacher; instead they welcomed it, insisting that I could learn as much and in some cases, more, from them than I could from the good ones.  I would need to work with good and bad professionals throughout my life, learn how to filter what I needed from their work, discard the rest, learn and do what they couldn’t.  I learned that yes, those with less knowledge, usually had less power, especially over their own lives.  Above all,  I learned that because I was blessed with so many advantages, it not only didn’t mean I could act like a princess, it meant I had a greater duty to use those advantages to improve the world around me.    

Mostly, I learned that I love learning, that I love challenging my mind.  When I reached university, I discovered that most of the other students were not like me.  They were there purely as a means to an end, had limited interest in or ability to apply their knowledge, did not love learning for learning’s sake.  This was just what you did after high school.  They had no power, they wanted it, but had never been prepared to grasp it. 

Now, as I sit here poised to finish my third degree, and read dissatisfied facebooks and twitters and emails from those former classmates, now out in the working world, I want to tell them all to go back to school and discover learning for learning’s sake.  For the power that learning and knowledge give you.  For the shield, the protection it gives you to move through this world, this life.  For the understanding, courage, and compassion that allows you to extend olive branches, and to recognize them when they are extended your way.  For the sword to help you dare to stand up, dare to speak out, dare to be firm in your resolve to leave this world better than it was.

There are too many princesses in this world and not enough Queens.

She Who Dares, Wins.

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~ by ShesTheOne on August 26, 2009.