You've shared a powerful and insightful story! It highlights a crucial disconnect between education, awareness, and practical application, especially concerning health and societal norms.
Here's an engaging blog post based on your narrative, designed to resonate with readers and encourage interaction:
The Shocking Truth About ORS: Are We Truly Educated, Or Just Literate?
A few days ago, my niece fell seriously ill. She was severely dehydrated, yet, to my absolute shock, she had no idea what ORS (Oral Rehydration Solution) was. Not just her, but no one in her family knew. This was bewildering to me. How could something so basic, so widely promoted for public health, be unknown to someone who expertly manages an entire household, including farm work?
My niece's husband drives in another city. She has two school-going children, one of whom is still in primary school. She navigates the complexities of her daily life with immense resilience. Yet, when faced with a simple health crisis, this fundamental knowledge was missing.
This incident was a stark realization: while urban areas might see widespread awareness campaigns, the same doesn't necessarily hold true for villages. And discussions around women's health? They often seem to remain at a superficial level.
My own marriage brought me into a family where men are encouraged to study, if they wish, but women are largely confined to household chores, farm work, childbearing, and pleasing their husbands. Beyond these four duties, they are often not allowed to participate in any other activity, especially education or expressing their opinions. Socially, there are strict unspoken rules, often enforced by older women in the family, stemming from the patriarchal desires of the men. Women can go to the market, but extensive education or voicing strong opinions is often off-limits.
Even if a girl is educated, often due to societal pressure (as is common now), her mindset is so deeply programmed that education merely becomes a means to climb the next rung of the social ladder, devoid of any deeper meaning or practical application. In this way, everyone effectively remains "uneducated." Their interests are often limited to superstitions, rituals, and a life steeped in pretense. Rules like "don't cut nails on Thursday," "don't apply oil on Saturday," or "don't wash clothes on Sunday" become paramount, creating immense mental pressure through religious practices and even crossing boundaries of common sense. Yet, even amidst such restrictions, women often find subtle ways to rebel, however small.
It's ironic. The men in the family might have studied both science and arts, yet they too lead lives full of pretense and superstition. For them, too, strict rules exist for Saturdays and Sundays, like not shaving on Saturdays.
After my marriage, when I tried to educate the women in my new household about health – what's good or bad to eat, how to maintain their and their family's health – I faced severe opposition. Bitterness towards me grew in every family member's heart. Despite three untimely deaths in my in-laws' family due to health neglect, this was never considered a problem. It was simply accepted as a "natural occurrence."
It's not just my in-laws. Even in my maternal home, despite everyone being educated, truly applying that education to life has been very difficult. It surprises me how, in families, severe neglect towards health continues to grow. We read religious books extensively, but not health-related books or articles. And even if we do read them, we fail to adopt the simple advice. It becomes incredibly difficult to explain basic things like not cooking in burnt oil, or oil that's been used five times.
This makes me realize that we are "uneducated" even with our degrees. If, after being educated, we cannot instill curiosity, desire, or enthusiasm for learning in those around us – whether they are uneducated or less educated – then our own education holds no real value. And if we don't continuously learn and refresh our knowledge, we eventually fall into the same category as the uneducated.
I believe we shouldn't solely depend on the government for awareness campaigns. We need to create a system where the benefits of our education extend to every family member. If I learn something, its benefits should reach everyone in my family. When I reflect on situations like the one I just described, I feel as though my education has no significance. It seems that when someone is highly educated, the uneducated person in front of them often perceives their advice as an attack on their self-respect.
Then why send children to school if we cannot support the scientific facts they learn, or if we deem those facts baseless? Why don't we take concrete steps to remove such "baseless" information from textbooks? There seems to be a system that doesn't want everyone to be truly educated or for education to be effectively applied in life. This system is so deeply ingrained in people's subconscious minds that despite receiving education, individuals are not truly becoming "educated." This is my current understanding and experience.
If a member of your family doesn't even know basic health rules or information, then your education holds no value. When we spend hours scrolling through our phones, imagine the impact if we shared just a little bit of health-related information. It might be a small step, but it could help someone in times of trouble. We should motivate those around us to include short discussions about health, good food, healthy eating, exercise, and early symptoms of diseases in their conversations. Starting small will lead somewhere. Our families can become educated bit by bit.
Because if out of eight family members, four are educated and four are not, then there's no point in calling ourselves educated. Those four uneducated individuals will eventually pull the four educated ones down into an uneducated situation if the educated ones don't make an effort to educate them.
Remember, holistic development is real development. Progress shouldn't just be upwards; it should spread equally downwards, left, and right. When progress radiates from a central point in all directions, only then is it true development. The desire to rise by leaving your own behind ultimately leads to restlessness and achieves nothing. And if you think that helping someone financially or providing support is progress, that's not true progress either. True progress is when you empower someone to become self-sufficient, to be able to support others, rather than just being a recipient of support.
Like water, spread in all directions from a single point; that's true expansion. If water flows in only one direction, it's not expansion; a river flows in one direction and eventually meets the ocean. The ocean, however, expands in all directions. This is the characteristic of a family's or an individual's true progress: if every person in that family, to some extent, adopts a progressive mindset and a desire to change, and if their frustrations diminish and they gain the ability for self-analysis, then that family is truly progressing. Otherwise, we are all ultimately uneducated.
I'd love to hear your thoughts! Have you experienced similar situations? Do you agree that true education goes beyond degrees? Share your experiences and questions in the comments below. Let's discuss how we can bridge this gap and foster genuine awareness and well-being in our communities.
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