Knowledge amplifies the one who uses it, but what it does not necessarily do is examine that ‘one.’ The same engineering skill that builds can be used to manipulate. External education prepares you to function in the world. Internal education reveals how the world you experience is shaped by the patterns you carry. Without that inward dimension, education remains partial. Individual clarity introduces uncertainty into structures that prefer reliable performance. Beyond classrooms and credentials, the deeper education begins with self-awareness.
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Originally published in The Sunday Guardian on 1 mar '26
Walk into a classroom almost anywhere in the world and the setting feels familiar before you have even taken a seat. The desks face forward, the syllabus has already been decided. There is a timetable, and there are examinations waiting somewhere at the end. Over the years, students learn to decode language, manipulate symbols, analyse systems, operate machines and interpret data. Eventually they can speak about galaxies and genes, markets and microchips, constitutions and climate change. The scope of what they know expands steadily.
And yet there is a question that rarely appears on the board: who is the one gathering all this knowledge? What has happened inwardly to that person while all this accumulation was taking place?
