The price of having it all.

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
- Malcolm Forbes.

Education is a funny thing. There are millions out there in the backwaters of the Earth that lack any at all, people that would give anything for the chance to read and write. You can't eat books - not easily, anyway - but being able to read them is still the most important thing there is. Often it's not for themselves; you watch endless charity donation shows on TV and hear again and again how these subsistence-level people speak of giving their children the chance for a better life, the chance to become lawyers or doctors or engineers.

If I were cynical (far too young and innocent, naturally) I'd say that they're thinking of the money an educated person can earn and the food it can put in front of them, but what's wrong with that? Hey, maybe you can eat books after a fashion. For a life where the greatest concern is filling your belly it's difficult to see beyond such unrefined boundaries, but the joy is that they don't have to. Leave that up to the two-year-old gnawing on the cover of that biology textbook; given the chance they'll seize it, and it only gets easier from there. Each generation takes another step up the ladder, building on their parents' understanding and growing to appreciate education for education's sake, not just as a means to an end.

Of course the truly great thing is that it's a one-way process; once they take that first step along the road there's no going back. Why turn away from something that can see your family fed and housed and clothed? The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions but the path to a brighter future is hardback and leather-bound.

First-world children don't have that drive. They've never been hungry. Oh, they may have experienced the odd stomach-rumble or two, but they've never reached the point where roadkill looks appetising. They know what the future holds, they've seen it already in their past. A comfortable house; a boring job; loving spouse; kids; possibly a dog if the hair doesn't set off their allergies. Jump through the hoops the education systems holds up and the world to come won't be much different; the house might be worth a few thousand more, the ring on wifey's finger might have two diamonds rather than one. There's no risk, nothing to lose. For all but the most ambitious or forward-thinking it's just not worth the effort.

We've had everything handed to us on a platter and we assume that life will go on much as it does now. It's strange how us civilised folk seem to feel the world owes us something, whereas those who have nothing are prepared to struggle for even the smallest bite. We could learn something from them, we who have never had to fight for anything. We need to shrug off the malaise and remember what it was to feel angry, to be denied. You never know, it might do us some good. It might make us appreciate what we've got.


I doubt it, though.