Good education is so important. We do need to look at the way

“Good education is so important. We do need to look at the way people are taught. It’s not just about qualifications to get a job. It’s about being educated.” — Zaha Hadid

These are not the words of a mere architect of stone and steel, but of a builder of minds. When Zaha Hadid, the visionary of fluid design and fearless imagination, spoke these words, she was not only describing the foundations of her art — she was describing the foundations of civilization itself. Her statement resounds with an ancient truth: that education is not the memorizing of facts nor the accumulation of certificates, but the awakening of the soul to thought, creativity, and vision. For to be educated is not simply to know, but to see — to see the world as it might be, not just as it is.

Hadid was born in Baghdad, a city once known as the “House of Wisdom,” where scholars of all faiths gathered to seek truth beyond the boundaries of tribe or tongue. From this heritage of light, she carried into her work the conviction that knowledge must liberate, not limit. Yet she also saw how, in the modern world, education had become narrow — bent toward utility, chained to the promise of employment rather than enlightenment. Thus she spoke these words as a challenge to all who teach and all who learn: do not mistake training for education, nor qualification for wisdom.

The ancients understood this well. In the academies of Plato, philosophy was not taught for the sake of earning a trade, but for the pursuit of truth. The students learned not only geometry and logic, but how to think, how to question, how to live rightly. The same spirit burned in the heart of Confucius, who taught that learning without reflection is labor lost, and that a scholar must strive not merely for knowledge, but for virtue. Hadid, in her time, rekindled this old flame — reminding the world that a good education is not about filling the mind, but about shaping the soul.

In her own life, this belief was no abstraction. When she entered the Architectural Association School in London, she stood alone — a woman, an Arab, and a visionary in a world still ruled by conformity. Yet she refused to be molded by others. She once said that the greatest gift her education gave her was the courage to think independently. She did not copy the masters; she conversed with them across time. She studied mathematics, art, and philosophy, fusing them into a new language of design. Her buildings — fluid, organic, impossible — were born from a mind that had been truly educated, not merely instructed.

And this is the heart of her message: a society that teaches only for employment will produce workers, but not thinkers; it will build industries, but not civilizations. For what use is it to have a job if one has no joy, no imagination, no sense of meaning? Good education should not end when the degree is earned; it should begin when curiosity awakens. It should teach the young not merely to make a living, but to make a life — one rich with thought, purpose, and the courage to create.

History bears witness to this truth. When Leonardo da Vinci studied anatomy, painting, and engineering, he was not earning a qualification — he was pursuing wonder. His education had no borders; his mind, no walls. And from that boundless curiosity came inventions and art that reshaped the world. So too did Zaha Hadid see education as an act of liberation — the freeing of the imagination from the tyranny of the expected. Through her words and works, she reminds us that true learning expands the spirit beyond the walls of the classroom, into the infinite cathedral of the world.

Therefore, let her teaching be our guide: seek education, not validation. Learn not merely to advance, but to awaken. Question what you are taught, and learn also from silence, from struggle, from beauty, and from failure. Read, observe, create — not because it earns you something, but because it makes you more fully human.

For in the end, as Hadid knew, to be educated is not to know all things, but to be alive to all things. It is to see the invisible lines between disciplines, between peoples, between the present and the possible. So let every learner, every teacher, and every dreamer remember: a job may sustain the body, but education nourishes the soul. And the soul that is truly educated — in wisdom, courage, and imagination — becomes, like Zaha Hadid’s architecture, a living masterpiece of light.