ICI Midterm question

Choose one of Rushdie's short stories and explain the way/s in which it can be considered an educational tale / a tale on education. By Eliana Bentivegna.

"Good Advice Is Rarer than Rubies" is the first short story in the collection East, West by Salman Rushdie. The narration is set in Lahore, Pakistan, where Miss Rehana, a young beautiful woman, applies for a resident visa at the British Consulate. At the gates, she meets Muhammad Ali, an "advice expert," who, smitten by her beauty, offers her a fake passport for free. Contrary to all Pakistani women, who would tell lies at the Consulate and pay for the necessary papers to migrate, Miss Rehana declines his offer, as she has better plans for her life.

            Rushdie’s story can be considered an educational tale because it illustrates how a formally uneducated woman resorts to a different type of practical wisdom, i.e. common sense, to make a crucial decision in her life. Miss Rehana is a poor girl who works as an "ayah to three good boys." When she was very young, her parents arranged an engagement with a Pakistani man twenty years her senior. As the man migrated to the UK, she has always been expected to be eager to join him to consummate her marriage and lead a better life in the West. However, Miss Rehana breaks with such assumptions. As she is happy with her life in Pakistan, her common sense dictates that she should not be happier living with a stranger in a far away country. Therefore, she intentionally makes mistakes when answering questions at the British Consulate in order to have her application rejected and remain in Pakistan working as an ayah.

            In brief, the story teaches about a type of non-formal education which is generally underestimated. Surely, Miss Rehana comes from a disadvantaged background and has not been taught at school to think critically and reflect upon her condition. However, her common sense compensates for what a good formal education should have given her. The educational tale embodied in Rushdie's story allows for a reflection upon the importance and value of common sense in opposition to the benefits of formal education.