Mind Matters

There is a Bengali saying which, translated loosely, suggests that the true measure of a person’s background or lineage is revealed not by words or possessions but by their behaviour. At its heart lies an observation both simple and profound: conduct is not an accident, but the outward expression of inner values and cultivated dispositions. In this sense, behaviour becomes the truest mirror of education—not the type recorded on paper, but the education that resides in character.

This distinction matters because modern societies have become adept at confusing certification with wisdom. It is now commonplace to equate the possession of degrees, titles, or qualifications with intelligence. Yet to assume that certificates are synonymous with understanding is to mistake form for substance. A certificate can testify that someone has completed a course of study, but it cannot attest to how deeply they have internalised knowledge, nor whether they are capable of applying it to life in any meaningful way.

Psychologists often distinguish between declarative knowledge—the memorisation of facts—and procedural knowledge—the ability to apply understanding in practice. A person may excel in the former while remaining impoverished in the latter. Consider mathematics: a student may become proficient at reproducing formulae on an exam sheet, yet remain helpless when faced with real-world problems that demand creative reasoning. Such a student has acquired the surface structure of knowledge but not its deeper, transferable core. They resemble a calculator: accurate, mechanical, and utterly devoid of insight.

Language offers another example. Mastery of grammar rules and vocabulary lists may be sufficient to pass examinations, but true fluency resides in something subtler—the sensitivity to nuance, the capacity to recognise how words can wound or heal, and the awareness that language does not merely describe reality but shapes thought and culture itself. Without this, one may possess linguistic competence but lack communicative wisdom.

This confusion between appearance and reality in education is not new. Plato, in The Republic, warned against mistaking opinion (doxa) for knowledge (epistēmē), just as modern psychology warns us against “the illusion of explanatory depth”—the tendency to believe we understand something until we are asked to apply or explain it. Certificates can foster this illusion on a grand scale: they give both holders and observers the impression of mastery, even when depth is absent.

The point, then, is not to dismiss formal education but to remind ourselves that genuine education transcends accreditation. It reveals itself in the capacity to apply knowledge thoughtfully, in the cultivation of judgement, and in the ethical responsibility with which one engages others. In short, it is not the parchment but the person that testifies to education.

A truly educated individual does not need to declare their credentials; their wisdom is inscribed in their conduct. Behaviour, after all, is the living certificate that cannot be forged.