Is education helping or hurting human evolution?

Evolution was its own nemesis when Earth's first mass extinction wiped out the Ediacarans, the world's first multi-cellular organisms. It happened 540 million years ago, not a matter of concern for the modern-day humans except for one reason: It was sunlight that started the crisis, which eventually led to mass extinction of life on this planet. Neither a mighty meteorite impact nor a virulent volcanic eruption had wreaked that initial havoc. The rise of early animals compounded evolution and spelled its own doom. 

How that happened is an interesting story. The single-celled organisms evolved to capture the energy of sunlight, and they evolved further in that photosynthetic process. They developed oxygen as a toxic by-product, the world's first pollutant. The saga went on when microorganisms were constrained to develop methods for protecting themselves against its harmful effect. In that effort, these organisms garnered the added energy they needed to adopt multi-cellular forms. 

Sixty million years later, evolution gave birth to modern animal families - vertebrates, molluscs, arthropods, annelids, sponges and jellyfish. These new species engineered the ecosystem to suit their own survival needs, which made it increasingly difficult for the Ediacarans. The same evolution that created the first complex life also eradicated it when evolved again. 

Two learning points: Light makes life complicated, and this complication gets further complicated, leading to self-annihilation. A similar transformation began in about 3500 BC, when writing was invented. The systematic provision of learning techniques developed over the last 150 or 200 years. Thus the light of education emerged with high hopes, first to dispel darkness in human minds and then to illuminate the world around them.

The question is whether education has made human beings simpler or ever more complicated. Ambition is perhaps the pollutant here, and its toxic influence has forced humans to evolve at an inexorable rate. The vehicle of enlightenment has swerved off road, ceding place to the juggernaut of entitlement. Knowledge of possessions is more relevant than possession of knowledge.

One of the biggest disappointments of the education system worldwide is its inordinate focus on livelihood, not life. And the history of mankind has been nothing but a long and arduous journey from hunter-gatherers to hunter-gatherers. It has become more sophisticated no doubt, stone tools replaced by electronic gadgets - spears by pen and axe by laptop. But the predatory instincts of human beings haven't changed much, if not sharpened.

From time to time, champions of education have come up with numerous reasons to tell us why education is important. Some of them gave 25 compelling reasons and others gave 15 top reasons that include convincing arguments. They say education helps bettering the food quality, educated people can never be cheated, or education results in better decisions. All or some of these reasons must be true because the original purpose of education was to groom informed and efficient human beings.  

If end justifies the means, education has it the other way around. The graduates care more for their careers than anything else. And who can blame them when career is made synonymous with survival, ambition driven into their blood and breath like gravity in the solar system? This is where the pollutant pollutes and humans mutate. Hand on heart, how many of us believe that education is cranking out better specimens?

Instead, education has turned into merchandise controlled by the market. The market dictates how many graduates in which subject should enter the workforce. It determines how learning should be linked to earning, worthiness of humans measured in their market worth. Jobs are choosing workers more than workers are choosing jobs.

Thus, education has alienated humans from themselves. Corruption, pollution and pretension are its three by-products that are undermining the quality of the finished product itself. Graduates are honed for material performance instead of spiritual excellence. The quest for skills has made the lust for learning redundant.  

Evolution takes its own course; species and organisms changing along the way to satisfy life's longing for itself. Education may have outlived its original exuberance in the same manner early humans learned to make fire with stones. Education is educating us with as much futility as an expired medicine guarantees cure.

In a nutshell, we're influencing education more than education is influencing us. Compared to an aircraft, fake diplomas, superficial learning, material pursuit and contempt for conscience have switched it from headwind to tailwind. Once committed to harness human instincts, education is now harnessed by them.

We're regularly warned that mankind is pushing itself to the edge of extinction. Climate change, depletion of resources and biochemical interventions are evidence that application of knowledge is detrimental to our existence. And we aren't learning from our mistakes. Education is the hallmark of that ultimate ignorance which has destroyed our innocence, before ruthlessly pitting us against its ruinous effects.

The writer is the Editor of weekly First News, and an opinion writer for The Daily Star.
Email: badrul151@yahoo.com