Iqbal thought hard about education, and he was not impressed by what he saw. A schooling that fills the mind with information and credentials while leaving the self weak, imitative, and timid had, for him, failed at the only thing that mattered.
Real education, in his view, forms Khudi. It should make a young person more original, not more obedient; more daring, not merely more employable; more themselves, not more standardised. He worried about systems that produced clever copyists — minds well stocked and selves unbuilt.
His image for the young was the falcon-child who needs only its wings restored to fly. Education's task, then, is not to load the young with cargo but to give them back their wings. Iqbal's test for any school, his or ours: does the student leave it as more of a self, or less?
See it in the verse
Liya jaega tujhse kaam duniya ki imamat ka
Phir in shaheen bachchon ko bal-o-par de
Nazar aati hai un ko apni manzil aasmanon mein