“Discere et docere”: to learn and to teach. America learned her mistake from Dr. Martin Luther King's wisdom. Now, our job is to teach the next generation not to repeat a failure to recognize that "All men are created equal", as stated elegantly in the Declaration of Independence.

    Martin Luther King, Jr’s philosophy on nonviolence truly promises equal rights for all. His legacies can’t be forgotten and that is why we observed Martin Luther King, Jr day on the third Monday of January. 
    Besides his philosophy on nonviolence, he also possessed a deep perspective on education. In his essay titled “The Purpose of Education” King highlights the essential purpose of education as the process for developing a leader directed toward a community about the real issues and consequences in an unjust situation.  He incorporates education as one of the steps in nonviolent social change.

     “I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education.”

     Education is not going to school, graduating, going to college, obtaining a degree, working and having a salary of thousands of dollars. Education is the process of awareness on the real issues within the community that we live in and the consequence of unjust situations. 
     During the segregation period, King and his fellow friends were aware that the real issue in the community was inequality.  The consequence of this unjust situation is a divided nation and a failure to guarantee equal opportunities for all Americans. After that, King and the others led a nonviolence campaign. The peak of his campaign was his historical speech “I Have a Dream.”

     A person with morality should recognize an unjust situation and have a mindset that in the future when he is successful, he will turn the unjust to just. Some might believe that it is not wrong if we are successful, we don’t have to give back to community because everyone should be responsible for their own success. In this case, education has failed in achieving its function to raise awareness about the real issues in the community.

     What distinguishes Martin Luther King, Jr.’s standpoint on education from others is morality. He was aware that it is immoral when African-Americans are denied their basic human rights and treated as second class citizens.        
      Now, it is the time to open our blind eyes to see the true purpose of education-- intelligence and morality.