Editorial . . . . . . . . . . 

Anything we want to know is just a click away these days. Education and knowledge have taken on new meanings in their own right. Things are thought for us, and what appears to be genuine and straight knowledge is often a purposeful act of deception and cheating. Perhaps the finest example is politics, where we can find anything to support our narrative, no matter how silly it is. It becomes difficult to distinguish between what is factually correct and what is not when people from various walks of life are there, expressing their political ideas from the pulpit, through print media, electronic media, social networking, and other platforms.

This is when political education becomes a requirement. You may not have an opinion on neuroscience or be uninterested in nanotechnology, but in politics, not having an opinion is an opinion in and of itself. It’s been stated that if you don’t make a decision, you’re enabling someone else to make it for you. When we claim to be apolitical, we are essentially endorsing the status quo, even if we aren’t aware of it. Our responsibility to have political beliefs and to express them follows, with the quality of our competent political education allowing us to distinguish between reality and fiction. Living in a world where conspiracy theories sell like hotcakes, it’s even more crucial to spread political awareness. When the political and social culture is based absolutely on authority rather than reason, when power structures shape opinions and “knowledge,” and when these power structures, from patriarchy to the highest levels of authority, consider “manufacturing consent” to be their primary duty, it becomes an art to discern reality. We prefer to see things in black-and-white terms either you are on the path to perfect truth or you are the devil himself. Take the contemporary example of the Russian Ukraine war, one will see diametrically opposite opinions among people regarding who is right and who is wrong. For example, the Ukrainian government and its supporters are the resistance axis, defending their country against Russian aggression launched and funded by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and, of course, many others. Others believe that the vicious Putin dictatorship, which is backed by her supporters, is killing Ukrainians with barrel bombs, bombs, and chemical weapons. This absolute divide exists not only among average people but also among the media. Switching on multiple news stations reveals that what they report on the same problem is so dissimilar that it appears they are reporting from separate planets; the reason for this is simple: find out who owns these channels. The argument is that in order to be in a position to stand out for justice, we must first educate ourselves and others about justice. From a section of the world where politics is linked with people’s lives and where a single political viewpoint might be fatal, sources of political information have been embroiled in the debate. In this situation, competent political education is more vital than teaching algorithms or evolution. When we look at the books that children are taught in our schools as part of their political education today, we discover that they are rather good. Even in 2022, the French revolution is still the French revolution. The issue is not with the syllabus, but rather with how it is taught. Politics (in the broad sense) is remembered rather than addressed in even the best of our educational institutions.

It shouldn’t matter if you recall the exact date that World War II ended; what matters is that you understand the causes, why it happened, and how we may prevent future catastrophes. What matters is that we learn from history rather than that we study history. Our political philosophers, individuals who understand politics – local, national, and global – have a major obligation to teach others.

Let us not leave a vacuum to be filled by people with a deeply skewed view of the world, people for whom violence is a way of life. Our schools, colleges, and, most importantly, our minds must step forward to shoulder this obligation so that we can leave a world that is more peaceful than the one we received.