The value of education has become a cliche. But few people seem to realize that school-based education can often prove a liability. Consider the views of Ram Mohan, a young farmer from the Indian state of Rajasthan, who refused to go to school. "My father wanted me to go," he said, "but I didn't. My elder brother has studied up to high-school level. He hasn't had a job for the last three years. He sits all day long brooding or filling out forms. No one even offers him a cup of tea. His wife has left him and gone back to her parents. But I am working in the field. When I come back, my mother quickly makes tea for me. I am respected. Why should I go to school? I know enough to be able to read the expiry date on the pesticides. I know how to read the election manifesto of the political parties. I know how to vote. I do not want education."
There are millions like Mohan's brother around the world. Once "educated," they develop a disdain toward their hereditary professions or traditional callings. And the global economy fails to provide them with the jobs for which they have been trained.
Formal education acquires its value from technological change. A child can acquire most of the practical knowledge he will need throughout his life from his parents. This hereditary education stands him in good stead most of the time, but fails in periods of technological change. If his father had been a farmer who irrigated with a bullock wheel, Mohan would not have learned how to operate the electric well at home. School-based education could add to his productivity in this case. But if his father had been irrigating with an electric well himself, school education would have added little to his son's productivity.