Two People. The Told and the Untold
A degree can tell us that a person has completed a course of study. It can tell us what they have learnt, perhaps even what they are qualified to do. But can a degree tell us whether a person is educated?
Consider two people. One has multiple degrees, speaks confidently, holds a prestigious position and can discuss economics, technology or politics with ease. Yet, when faced with disagreement, they humiliate others. They cannot manage anger. They have little regard for another person’s dignity. They cut queues, misuse power, discriminate, or remain indifferent to someone else’s suffering. The other may have fewer formal qualifications. But they listen. They disagree without demeaning. They understand consequences. They care for their physical and mental well-being, respect differences, take responsibility for their actions and contribute to the community around them. Who, then, is more educated?
The question may sound philosophical, but it has become increasingly relevant to the way we think about education in India. India’s first educational challenge after Independence was one of access: getting children into school. Eight decades later, the challenge has changed. India has built a vastly larger school and higher-education system, expanded literacy, improved girls’ participation and brought schooling to millions who were once excluded.
The unfinished task is now twofold: to ensure that children remain in the system through the secondary and higher-secondary years, and that the years spent in school translate into meaningful, age-appropriate learning. But perhaps there is a third challenge waiting beyond access and learning—one that is harder to define and harder still to measure: what does all this education ultimately make us?
That question takes us into uncomfortable territory. Because if education is successful,
should its effects be visible only in examination results, degrees and employment? Or should
they also be visible in how a person thinks, responds, relates, exercises judgement and
conducts themselves?
A Degree Is Important. But Is It Enough?
A degree undoubtedly matters. It represents sustained learning, specialised knowledge, discipline and, increasingly, an important pathway to economic opportunity. In a knowledge economy, formal qualifications cannot simply be dismissed. Nor should academic achievement be pitted against character, as though one must choose between the two. The more useful question is different and which is – Can we continue to assume that character is automatically acquired along with education?
For much of our educational journey, perhaps that assumption has gone largely unexamined. We have become increasingly sophisticated at measuring what a student knows. We are getting better at measuring whether a child can read, calculate and demonstrate foundational
competencies. We measure marks, grades, attendance, progression and, eventually, degrees. However, the qualities that determine how that knowledge is used—integrity, resilience, self-regulation, ethical judgement, respect for others, responsibility and the ability to deal constructively with disagreement—have traditionally remained much less visible in our assessment systems. This is not an argument against degrees. It is an argument against mistaking degrees for the entirety of education.
From Schooling to Learning and Then to Becoming
India’s education policy is already pointing in this direction. The National Education Policy 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023 articulate a much broader
purpose for education. The NCF speaks explicitly of developing not just knowledge and capacities, but values and dispositions. It identifies ethical and moral values, democratic values, scientific temper, empathy, social responsibility, respect for diversity, compassion and resilience among the qualities education should cultivate. It describes the purpose of education as developing “good human beings” capable of rational thought and action, with compassion, empathy, courage, resilience and sound ethical moorings.
That is a significant conceptual shift. It says, in effect, that the educational journey is not complete when the learner knows something. It is also about what the learner is able and inclined to do with what they know. We have moved from schooling to learning. Perhaps
the next shift is from learning to becoming.
The Curriculum Is Expanding. Is the Person Changing?
The growing emphasis on physical education, sport, yoga, arts, vocational education, experiential learning and well-being reflects the same realisation. A child who learns to play sport learns more than physical fitness. They encounter discipline, teamwork, rules, failure, persistence and respect for an opponent. Yoga can create space for attention, self-awareness and mind-body regulation. Arts can develop expression and sensitivity. Community engagement can cultivate responsibility. Vocational learning can strengthen dignity of labour and problem-solving. These should not be treated as ornamental additions to “real education”. They are part of the real education. But policy ambition brings us to the harder question: are these experiences actually producing measurable changes in how young people think, feel and behave?
We Measure Learning. Do We Measure Becoming?
India’s learning story itself reminds us why measurement matters. The ASER 2024 survey reached more than 650,000 children across over 600 districts in 26 states and two Union Territories, continuing to track schooling and basic reading and arithmetic while expanding its assessment of digital access and skills among 14–16-year-olds. There has been substantial recovery in learning after the pandemic, but gaps remain. ASER’s continuing work shows that being enrolled in the appropriate grade does not necessarily mean that a child has acquired the learning expected for that age or grade. The report’s very methodology is built around identifying where children are actually stuck so that teaching can begin from their current level rather than simply following the grade-level textbook.
The same logic should now be applied to the whole child. We should ask not only whether a student has acquired the expected academic competency, but whether they are developing the emotional, social and ethical capacities expected of someone at that stage of life. That is where the measurement gap becomes visible. We do not yet have an equivalent dashboard telling us, with the same regularity, whether adolescents are becoming more resilient, empathetic, self-aware, physically literate, capable of resolving conflict or willing to take responsibility for their actions. And perhaps this is not surprising. These are much harder things to measure than marks. But difficulty of measurement cannot be a reason for ignoring an outcome.
Happiness May Be the Door. Character Is the Deeper Work.
India has already begun experimenting with one part of this larger puzzle: well-being. Delhi’s Happiness Curriculum, introduced in 2018, was a particularly visible attempt to bring mindfulness, reflection, stories, activities and social-emotional learning into the everyday school experience. It was designed around the idea that education should contribute not only to academic achievement but also to the emotional and social development of children. The idea has travelled. Other states and UTs have explored happiness, wellbeing and social-emotional learning in different forms.
Importantly, there is now some evidence from Delhi rather than merely an assumption that such programmes must work. A 2023 evaluation of the Happiness Curriculum conducted by SCERT Delhi and Dream a Dream followed students across 45 schools. Among the students for whom both baseline and endline data were available, the reported Social and Emotional Well-being score rose substantially over the intervention period. Qualitative findings also pointed to greater self-awareness, reflection, emotional regulation and changes in peer relationships and classroom behaviour. But the findings also offer a valuable caution. The quality of implementation mattered. Teacher facilitation mattered. Reflection mattered. In some settings, activities could become mechanical; in others, teachers struggled to facilitate deeper conversations.
The lesson is important: Putting a well-being period on the timetable does not automatically create well-being. And the same principle applies to character. Character education should not mean bringing back a conventional “moral science” period in which children memorise virtues and repeat approved answers.
Character is not a chapter in a textbook.
A child may know that honesty is good and still cheat. They may write beautifully about equality and still discriminate. They may know that anger should be controlled and still respond with aggression. They may understand empathy as a concept without ever learning to practise it. The gap is therefore not necessarily between knowing right and wrong. It is between knowing and doing. That is why character education, if it is to become the next frontier of educational reform, must be understood as the intentional development of dispositions through repeated practice, reflection and lived experience. The school environment itself becomes part of the curriculum. How does a teacher respond when a child makes a mistake? How does a school deal with bullying? Are children allowed to disagree respectfully? Are students taught how to handle losing? Does the institution reward only the highest scorer or also recognise collaboration and perseverance? Does a child learn that asking for help is a sign of weakness or maturity? Can students see adults apologising when they are wrong? These everyday experiences may teach character more powerfully than any lesson on values.
Look Beyond the Classroom
There is no simple causal line from education to crime, happiness or mental health. Crime is
influenced by economic, social, institutional and demographic factors; well-being is shaped by
relationships, income, health, safety and many other conditions. Yet these indicators can still serve as societal mirrors. India recorded more than 62 lakh cognisable crimes in 2023, according to NCRB data. This cannot be read as evidence that education causes or fails to prevent crime. But it does remind us that a society with expanding educational attainment still has to grapple with questions of social behaviour, violence, trust and responsibility.
The mental-health picture is equally instructive. UNICEF India cites the 2022 NCERT survey in
which 11% of students reported anxiety, 14% reported experiencing extreme emotions and 43% reported mood swings. UNICEF’s 2025 mapping of child and adolescent mental health services also describes significant gaps in the availability and accessibility of support.
These figures should not be interpreted as a verdict on education. Nor should every social problem be placed at the door of schools. But they do raise an important question: If education is supposed to prepare young people for fulfilling lives, are we adequately preparing them to understand and manage themselves too?
What Should an Educated Person Be Able to Do?
Perhaps this is where our definition of learning needs to become more ambitious. By the time a
young person completes school, we should want them not only to have acquired age-appropriate academic knowledge, but also to have developed the capacity to regulate emotions, cope with failure, communicate respectfully, work with others, recognise prejudice, make ethical choices, care for their physical and mental health, resolve disagreements and take responsibility for their actions. These are not “soft skills” in the dismissive sense of the term. They are life capabilities. And there is a strong case for making them visible in education systems. Not necessarily through another high-stakes examination. Character becomes distorted when it becomes something students perform for marks. Instead, schools could progressively develop better indicators of social-emotional development, physical literacy, participation, resilience, ethical reasoning, collaboration, empathy and responsible behaviour.
The objective would not be to rank children on “good character”. It would be to ensure that
character development is intentional rather than assumed.
Perhaps the Report Card Needs One More Column
For decades, India’s education story was necessarily about getting children through the school gate. Then it became about keeping them there. Then about ensuring that they actually learn. The next stage may be about asking whether learning translates into life.
- A student who can read but cannot listen.
- A graduate who can analyse but cannot empathise.
- A professional who can lead but cannot accept dissent.
- A highly qualified person who can solve complex problems but cannot manage anger.
- An accomplished individual who has everything on paper but cannot build healthy relationships.
Would we call such a person educated? Perhaps yes, in the formal sense. But perhaps not yet in the fuller sense that the word carries. If education genuinely expands a person’s capabilities and privileges, perhaps it should also expand their sense of responsibility towards others. The higher the qualification, one might argue, the greater should be the expectation that knowledge will be accompanied by judgement, humility and responsibility.
Capability. Well-being. Character.
This is why the emerging policy emphasis on holistic education, happiness, yoga, physical literacy, social-emotional learning and values is important. But the opportunity now is to connect these strands rather than treat them as separate initiatives.
Learning builds capability. Well-being enables the learner to thrive. Character determines how capability is exercised.
Together, these are much closer to the meaning of education.
So, What Comes to Mind When We Hear “Education”?
Perhaps that is the simplest test of how far our thinking has travelled. When we hear the word education, what appears first in our minds? A classroom. A textbook. An examination. A degree. A prestigious institution. A job. All are legitimate parts of education. But imagine a different first association: a person who can think critically without becoming distrustful; disagree without disrespect; succeed without arrogance; exercise power without humiliation; face failure without losing dignity; and recognise another person’s humanity even when they disagree with them.
The day the word “education” begins to evoke character as instinctively as it evokes degrees, we may know that the deeper purpose of education has begun to take root.
And that does not make degrees less important. It makes their purpose clearer. A degree can certify what a person has learnt. Education, in its fullest sense, should reveal what that learning has enabled the person to become. The real test, therefore, may begin where the examination ends.
Not only: What does the student know? But: What does the student do with what they know? And ultimately: Who do they become because they were educated?
About The Author:
Sonali Maheshwari is a development sector practitioner and thought contributor with 17 years
of experience in designing and advancing programmes at the intersection of policy, systems, and partnerships. Her work centers on bridging policy intent with on-ground impact through evidence-driven programme design and cross-sector collaboration.
Clear Cut Education Desk
New Delhi, UPDATED: October 02, 2026 18:00 IST
Written By: Tanmay J. Urs
