If there is one cornerstone that has been supporting the foundations of human civilization for the last five thousand years, I would say it is education. Generally speaking, it can be described as the process of passing on knowledge, experience, and skills from older generations to younger ones, although it comprises much more. Starting perhaps with palaeolithic art on cave walls and ending up with today's highly technological online services, education has always been something more significant than a transfer of knowledge. I believe one could say that education unites and incorporates people around the globe into one community, sharing the same values, history, knowledge, and aspirations.

This is probably why we tend to see people who refuse to share global values as outcasts and marginals. Indeed, despite all the proclaimed tolerance, we rarely take the representatives of mindsets alternative to the majority seriously. With all due respect to the right of an individual to believe in whatever he or she wants, in schools and colleges students learn that Earth is a globe, and that the Universe is approximately 14 billion years old.

They learn that all species living on the planet today evolved from their more primitive relatives, and that this process continues at present. They learn that the sky is neither solid, nor is it inhabited by divine spirits. They learn all this not because one group of people oppresses the right of another one to confess their beliefs, but because some theories are supported by facts and scientific evidence while others are not.

So, one of the reasons why education is important is its ability to include an individual into a system of values and beliefs shared by the community of educated people worldwide. If there is a meeting between two people who belong to completely different cultures, but have the same level of education, they will be able to understand each other-not in terms of language, but in terms of outlook. They will share the same concepts about how the world is organized, and this is one of the fundamentals of communication. In a way, education is a door to the modern world with all of its opportunities.