Dear Editor,
There was a time when being called an educated person meant more than possessing certificates, degrees and letters behind one’s name. Education was understood as a process that enlarged the mind, refined character and created a responsibility to society. Today, Guyana appears to have more formally qualified people than ever before, yet one cannot help but wonder whether we have lost something fundamental along the way.
Our society is producing graduates, professionals and credentialed individuals in impressive numbers. But certification and education are not necessarily the same thing.
Education should cultivate intellectual curiosity—the willingness to ask questions, challenge assumptions, listen to opposing views and continue learning long after leaving the classroom. Yet too often, intellectual curiosity has been replaced by certainty, arrogance and an unwillingness to engage ideas that do not conform to one’s own beliefs.
Perhaps even more troubling is the erosion of simple grace and good manners.
A society’s character is revealed in how people treat one another, particularly those from whom they have nothing to gain. Respect, courtesy, humility, compassion and consideration should not be casualties of modern life. Yet increasingly, status appears to matter more than substance, position more than principle, and personal advancement more than the welfare of the community.
What happened to the idea that education carries a responsibility?
The educated person was traditionally expected to contribute—to teach, mentor, uplift, question injustice, help solve problems and leave the country better than he or she found it. Education was supposed to create citizens who understood that knowledge brings obligations, not merely opportunities for personal advancement.
Today, too many people seem to measure success by what they have acquired rather than what they have contributed.
This is not an indictment of Guyana’s educated population as a whole. There are countless teachers, doctors, engineers, civil servants, entrepreneurs, professionals and ordinary citizens who quietly serve their communities and continue to believe in something larger than themselves. Their example should not be overlooked.
But a nation cannot build itself on credentials alone.
Guyana is experiencing unprecedented economic change and possesses resources that previous generations could scarcely imagine. What we desperately need now is not merely a better-qualified population, but a better-educated one—people capable of thinking critically, disagreeing without hatred, leading without arrogance and succeeding without forgetting their obligations to others.
Nationhood requires more than buildings, roads, degrees and money. It requires character.
Perhaps it is time we stopped asking only how many certificates Guyanese possess and started asking what those certificates have taught us about responsibility, humanity and service.
If education does not make us more curious, more gracious, more thoughtful and more willing to help build something greater than ourselves, then we must ask a difficult question:
What, exactly, have we been educated for?
Yours truly,
A Concerned Citizen
(name withheld)
