Many parents are good at scaring children with the phrase “It will be miserable if you don’t study,” but they cannot clearly explain the beauty of learning itself. Today, the narrative around education is almost entirely reversed: not studying leads to failure, elimination, and no future. Learning is portrayed as a means to avoid falling, rather than a desirable way of life. This narrative seems realistic but is actually dangerous. Fear can only bring short-term compliance and cannot support long-term growth.

People who learn out of fear develop anxiety about failure, not curiosity about the world; they learn to cope with evaluations rather than to understand and think. When we only describe how terrible not learning is but cannot depict how well-educated people live, it shows that we ourselves have not truly experienced the value of education. True education is not about making people safer but about making them more aware; not about guaranteeing success but about shaping the way they see the world.

A truly educated person can distinguish complex problems, reflect on themselves, understand others; maintain judgment amid uncertainty, keep a sense of direction amid change; know how to learn, revise their views, and coexist with different people. These abilities rarely appear in discussions of grades and returns but determine whether a person is easily manipulated, swept into extremism, or collapses amid change.

When a generation has not experienced the joy of understanding and the power of thinking, they can only use fear to educate the next generation, reducing education to “tough it out, it will be fine in the future.” But patience without recognized value only breeds boredom. What education truly should teach is not “what happens if you don’t learn,” but “how a person who truly learns lives.” They will be freer, more stable, and more dignified. The meaning of learning is not to avoid falling but to expand the heights that life can reach.