Education is a key element for growth in a society. Quality education is one of the seventeen sustainable development goals stated by the department of economic and social affairs,United Nations. Education and development for a society go hand in hand. It promotes interaction between individuals in a society, thus acting as a bridge to connect an individualto various elements and cultures of a society. Education is a primary need for an individual.We observe several things around us daily. Interpreting various activities around us improves our thinking skills. This can be made possible with education. Education improves the reasoning power of an individual as more information is processed by the brain through various stages. Education not only implies academic or bookish knowledge, but also includes learning from life. Hence, education plays a key role in changing the mindset of an individual. It is really disheartening to know that despite being in the 21st century, where the rate of development is at par; children are denied education. Education plays a crucial role in developing countries as lack of education is a step to slow economic development of the country thereby leading to poverty. The role of education in reducing poverty is really huge, as education is a primary factor in boosting economic growth. Access to education has the potential to improve the economic outcomes of citizens. It is important for the people to understand that education is an investment with high returns. Thus, education becomes a powerful agent of change.

Education aims to all round development of an individual, thus proving to be a catalyst for the development of the personality of an individual. It induces qualities like developing self confidence, sense of responsibility, devotion towards work and many more. Apart from these, education promotes social and ethical values and paves a path towards unity and integrity of the nation. Therefore, education helps in developing and inculcating qualities required for development of an individual and in turn developing the society. Fostering democratic values like co-operation, mutual understanding, team work, justice, freedom, leadership qualities, etc. is essential for progress and development of the nation. Education makes you capable to think of various issues prevailing in the society and how you can be a contributor to a change. It is education only which acts as a powerful instrument to bring about national development in its true sense by alleviating social issues and problems.
Progress cannot easily occur without educated minds ready to take on challenges, and proposing solutions to the challenges faced by the society. The contribution of an enlightened person is worth mentioning whenever it comes to diminish problems faced across the globe.

This way an educated person proves to be an asset for society. Certainly we face several challenges in the journey of a completely educated society. These include lack of facilities, funds, crab mentality of some elements of society, discrimination and many more. Most underprivileged children either miss their school education or attend schools where the teachers are undertrained. This is a huge barrier in our education system which needs to be looked upon. Secondly, comes discrimination which we need to counter. In my opinion if we are educated, the concept of discrimination would vanish. The government policies and laws may promise many rights to the underprivileged children and make attempts to eliminate or reduce disparity, but it is a fact that many children are devoid of the right to education, which is a big problem. All that we need is a step to overcome these problems. If the educated class devotedly comes out to work for this social cause, we can easily reach our aim of freeing the nation from shackles of illiteracy.

Better education can teach us to be more responsible towards our society, and respectful towards our environment. We can become more critical and challenging of situations that in their current form might not be productive for society. This can be vital for constructive growth. Education is much more than formal schooling with a potential to create an impact. Restricting ourselves to books is not education, analysing issues and applying it to society is education.

Written By : Sambhav Goyal