In plain words
We must pursue studies that bring joy to the heart. We must pursue studies that make others happy. In society there are crores of people who suffer. Are you trying to make even one of them happy? If you neither rejoice yourselves nor make others rejoice, what is the use of the studies you have pursued? To look at, the degrees are grand. Each one is taking degrees: M.Sc., MBA, Ph.D. But are they putting these degrees to even the slightest use for the welfare of society? No. They learn by heart what the books contain, go into the examination hall, empty their heads and come out. Only this; but what is education, really? What good is this education doing for themselves and for society? What qualities should an educated man have? No one enquires into this. The students are good; only because there is no one to teach them in the right way do they go astray. Either the parents at home must teach them, or the teachers at school must teach them. The parents may not be educated. But even the educated teachers scramble only for status; they do not toil in the least to develop purity in the children.
Humility is the very ornament of education
Long ago in Bengal there lived a great scholar called Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. He was an ocean of learning itself, as befitted his name. Though born into a poor family, he studied hard and rose in life. At home there was not even a lamp to study by. At night he would sit and study in the light of the street lamps. Seeing the hardship her son was going through, the mother would grieve greatly. Then Vidyasagar: “Mother! ‘Na sukhāt labhyate sukham’: happiness is not gained from happiness. Only when one toils is happiness gained,” he would tell her, and so comfort her.