#EducationAndEquality

[recsspecs]

Education enrols a person into the network of human culture, into the accumulated history of ideas – such as democracy, freedom, power, responsibility, accountability, corruption and so on. Abstract ideas like these are enormously empowering, as are the associated practical skills for negotiating everyday life like arithmetic, reading and writing. If there is any doubt the power that ideas can have, witness how Karl Marx’s dense, obscure text Das Kapital, written over many years in the British Library in London, changed the world for a century and dramatically shaped the lives of billions of people, killing tens of millions along the way. If that is not power, what is?

The Winner Effect: The Neuroscience of Success and Failure