STRANDOMS: the stray and random thoughts
July 16, 2017
Prof. S. Ramkumar
Education
The Anatomy of Experience
Number of years of simple existence doesn’t imply experience (not at least in the sense I connote) Many say they have long years of experience in a job, or profession – but the number of years of existence need not make you “wise” – rather it may make you “unwise” by thinking that the mathematics of countable years is always equal to “wisdom”. My feeling on Experience is transcribed here.
Definitely by sitting in an ascribed space (of a father, mother, son, daughter, friend etc) or achieved chair (profession, job, tas etc) for many years we are assumed to have gained experience. But need not necessarily be so. The key in Experience I believe is the wisdom imbibed in those years. The crux is “accruing and applying learning over years “ is experience. Or “ Wisdom, if gained, over years is experience”- it is not theory , it is Practice!
e.g. Daughter or son( or any one for that matter) wants to do what they wish which they are passionate about. We have our perceptions influenced by family, our own wishes and friends which may turn us around their wish. But if we have the ability to reflect on what is changing around us and elsewhere, relate their wish to reality and practicality, I feel wisdom is prevailing. Some may term it is maturity of thinking (?).
The layers or process of experience: Essentially experience is a congregate of “live”, “ learn” and “ link” which are interdependent and ever changing.
Live: would mean not mere existence, but the efforts of exploring the happiness and understanding of existence, sacrificing for family and society.. and could mean many things. An interesting definition of Life is “ a cumulative effect of a handful of significant shocks” in The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas). He says to look into your personal life , choice of profession, meeting your spouse, your movement from once place to another, impoverishments and sudden enrichments .
Life can be moved only forward, can never be rewound (As Jiddu Krishnamurthy says “ Never be prisoners of the past”)
Learn: few essentials of learning and what it means are:
- Facing success and failure.
- Understanding that there is no “absolute success” or “failure in life”.
- All are relative (endorsed by Albert Einstein).
- There is what is called as book learning, then there is this thing called wisdom
The first is about life’s broken parts, the second its glorious sum.
(Thirukkural :373)
- To enjoy beauty in everything. As humans, we share the patterns of inanimate and animate life that we find to be beautiful. But they differ. (The Promise of beauty and why it matters , Shakti Meira).
- The knowledge that we know is much, much insignificant than the knowledge that exits out there ( As reminded by Thomas Kempis in The Imitation of Christ: Guard against the temptation to boast of your worldly learning and accomplishment).
- Accommodating the views of others and positioning yourself in a society (and why not in a family!)
Link: The third element which completes the concept of experience is how you apply – Live-life and learning to move ahead. Its continuous: linking with children, parents, friends, colleagues, your passions and it’s a day-to-day, moment-to-moment affair, Its this linking that makes you eligible for “wise”.
All religions handhold us to wisdom, the mind-blowing path to ultimate reality. (Bagavadh Geetha’s Jnana Yoga: the mind is used to inquire into its own nature and to transcend the mind’s identification with its thoughts and ego is a process of linking). Knowledge in that sense is lower in order and not a great contributor to experience, but in a general sense : Knowledge is an essential prerequisite for the humans to enter into wisdom. But quite often the paradox is that you get entangled and engaged in “Knowledge” and lose the exciting path to wisdom( a larger debatable topic is whether knowledge is essential for wisdom.. like in case of great saints and gurus who attain wisdom.. well, I am talking about common man).
Knowledge is what we are formally tested for (examinations!) and we are conditioned to from our childhood to attain a graduate or post graduate degree. Graduation doesn’t guarantee wisdom , it vouches for the knowledge (as certified by a School or University). In one way if the educational process is not ideal we are weaned away from wisdom!
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” (T S Eliot)
Next time when we say experience please reflect on your Live-life, learning and how much you have linked it all…
Tethered Education
As we move through the timeline, brushing aside the events, to be symbols for the future, called as history, one thing that remains constant among few is the examination system.
The essence of education as a process to help learners – to control life, enjoy life and ultimately to understand life (Will Durrant, Fallen Leaves)– is largely replaced by the changing priority as a means to appear and score in examination and this is denaturing the form of the beautiful concept of education. Education is now somewhat like tied up to the stub of examination. It rotates around that.
Education, especially higher education, is an opportunity that a learner purposefully searches and indulges in. A person chooses higher education for the purpose of learning and exploring. (that is why we have PhD in all subjects Doctor of Philosophy… irrespective of what subject a person is pursuing- (s)he does History, Physics, biotechnology, English or history). However in our University system or other educational systems , education, that is getting a degree or diploma is linked with Jobs. We start to do a degree or diploma that gives us a job. Nothing wrong in the thinking in one perspective. But the objective learning is often hindered with thoughts of job and examination.
We have forgotten what curiosity and originality are. Richard Gerver ( a school headmaster) in his book Change mentions about how curious a child is from the time (s)he starts speaking, asking equations on why… how what when… to parents and relatives. Once the child is admitted in the School, you can observe that after few years the number of questions raised by the child are less or nil. He has learned to be “uniform” with the class sacrificing different “diverse” talents , which examination do not promote. Rousseau says that “education comes to us from nature from men or other things, he is regarding nature as equivalent to endowment – the inherited dispositions and capacities of theh individual. All great educationists from Socrates (The Bhagavat Gita is the typical example of confronting with a problem and the management solutions offered by Lord Krishna, Arjuna though doesn’t get a certificate for that!) Loyola, Freebel to Dewey or great saints like Jesus have only taught to understand ourselves.
Read the above observations with that of Thomas Fried man (Thank you for being late, 2016): “We entered a world (around 2007) where connectivity was fast , free, easy for you and ubiquitous and handling complexity became fast , free and easy for you , and invisible”. This points to the need of synthesizing the Zeitgeisten summaries of education though different ages to the phantasmagorical technology-era we live now. It is important to have a method of evaluation other than examination in this fast changing technological world to liberate the mind of learners to focus on the joy of learning rather the pains and anxiety of examination. The children are so conditioned from LKG or 1st standard to this unpleasant experience of examination which takes away the joy and fun of real education.
(What could be a new pattern of evaluation for a happy learning… to be continued as time permits!)
