Education forte Democracy

The democracy is a form of governance that involves people right from the grass roots levels .It makes the society egalitarian by providing the
right of adult franchise to every citizen .It empowers the citizens and is rule by the people. It is synonymous with freedom and rights for the citizens.
Although democracy has roots in several countries, especially the Eastern European countries, which were under the communist rule, but this is no
reason for complacency because in several parts of the world democracy is to established. Democratically elected leaders are often ousted by military
coups in some countries. Ethnic strafes, religious fanaticism ,poverty, illiteracy, etc. are some of the threats looming over democracy.
Education raises the benefit from social participation because it facilitates seamless information exchange. Educated people are better able to express what they
know, to inform, and to persuade. They are also better able to acquire new information, to understand, and to learn. Schooling also teaches rules of behavior that
make a discussion between educated people both more informative and less likely to degenerate into a quarrel.

We model education as raising the benefits of political action when individuals choose to support a more or less democratic regime. In this model,
democratic regimes offer weak incentives to a wide base of potential supporters, while dictatorships offer strong incentives to a narrower base.
Education increases the society-wide support for democracy because democracy relies on people with high participation benefits for its support. We
show that better educated nations are more likely both to preserve democracy and to protect it from coups.

Across countries, education and democracy are highly correlated. We motivate empirically and then model a causal mechanism explaining this correlation. In our
model, schooling teaches people to interact with others and raises the benefits of civic participation, including voting and organizing. In the battle between democracy
and dictatorship, democracy has a wide potential base of support but offers weak incentives to its defenders. Dictatorship provides stronger incentives to a narrower
base. As education raises the benefits of civic engagement, it raises participation in support of a broad-based regime (democracy) relative to that in support of a
narrow-based regime (dictatorship). This increases the likelihood of successful democratic revolutions against dictatorships, and reduces that of successful anti-
democratic coups.

Hence Bertrand Russell considered that education is required to save and nurture democracy. Education that develops tolerance for divergent views,
respect for the worth of individuals an liberated mind can only safeguard democracy. At the same time democracy in its modem form cannot be
successful in a country where many cannot read. Dewey had said that democracy is inconceivable without education since education instills the qualities
that are the prerequisites of democracy. Dr. Radhakrishnan too was of the opinion that the democracy depends for its very existence on high
standards of general, vocational and professional education. This makes the role of education clear for nurturing democracy. The abilities to think
critically, objectively and in an unbiased manner are to be developed through education. The education imparted today determines the political set up of
tomorrow.

At last,

Education is not memorizing that Hitler Killed 6 Million Jews. Education is

understanding how millions of ordinary Germans were convinced that it is
required. Education is learning how to stop the signs of history repeating
itself.