Acharya Prashant addresses the fundamental question of why education is necessary for a newborn child. He illustrates his point with the real-life example of a father and son found in the jungles of Vietnam, 40 years after the war. The son, having grown up without contact with society, was found to be lacking a certain element of humanness. This demonstrates that a newborn must first be brought up to the level of society through a process of socialization. This initial education provides language, a past, and the collective knowledge of humanity. The speaker emphasizes that society is not the entirely negative entity it is often perceived to be; without it, a human is not much different from an animal. The first function of education is to make an individual a social being, bringing them on par with society. This process, however, is a double-edged sword. While it removes ignorance by supplying knowledge, it also introduces an artificiality, creating a false center and taking the individual away from their true self. The man from the jungle, for instance, was ignorant but not artificial. In contrast, a socialized person's ignorance of worldly knowledge is addressed, but an artificiality inevitably creeps in. The process of knowledge transfer is inseparable from an image transfer, which forms this false center. Despite this, the first stage of education is extremely important and should be appreciated. We must be grateful for the collective knowledge of humanity, including science, technology, and medicine, which has enabled longer, healthier lives and protected us from superstition and disease. This education moves us from the realm of imagination to the realm of fact, which is a necessary step before one can move towards Truth. The speaker notes that the Upanishads also acknowledge the importance of this worldly knowledge (Avidya) in overcoming death. After about a decade of this education, a child is physically healthy and mentally full of information, well-equipped to deal with the material world. However, their mind is constantly under attack, and they lack defenses. This leads to a state of restlessness, where they feel unfree without knowing what freedom truly is. The first, inevitable step of education is to create this false center. The subsequent and more profound purpose of education is to help the individual go beyond it.