Education VS Learning

Notice this phenomenon for a long time, since I have my own blog now, this gives me a chance to put it on the net so that people who are thousands of years in the future can study our behavior.

During my tertiary education years, I have been frequenting the university library often. And even till now I am working in a tertiary institution. My frequency to the library is like 1-2 times a week. And no, during exam time I still keep to my schedule. I do not like to study in the library, no idea why but just dislike it. If you take notice, during the start of the term, there would be a lot of people in the library. They would be there to borrow the Red Spot books to make some copies of it since their lecturers make reference to them. This is the “Information Gathering” Period, so there are a lot of people in the library.

Once the tutorial starts, tertiary students should more of less have their notes for the semester ready by then, so the number of students in the library would be lower compare to the “Information Gathering” Period. I would call this the “Information Crunching” Period, reason being, these notes that we make during the “Information Gathering” Period is now being crunched through the 10+ weeks.

Later, as we move nearer to the exam period, a lot of people would be in the library studying for the exams, this is the peak period of the library. It is very rare that you are able to find seats in such a period of time. I call this the “Information Cramming” Period because this is the period where people start to cram for their exams.

After exams, now that is the most lull period of the library. When you remove the staff from the library, it will definitely look like a ghost town….. with shelves of books. This is the period of “Information Unloading” Period. After exams, students are off enjoying themselves, ‘unloading’ the information that they cram during the semester because these knowledge has served its purpose, helping him to secure good grades or for some instances, a pass.

What I describe here is Education. Funny thing is we can see our education system through the number of students in the library. Education has evolved to a point where 100 % of the knowledge taught is mostly used in the exams to score or pass and later on, maybe 20% (optimistic scenario, anyone have objections to that?) would be used in our jobs. Knowledge taught in education serves its purpose mostly in our exams or process of obtaining a degree/diploma and the secondary purpose is to assist us in our jobs. I personally think this is sad. There is no learning or thirst/passion to pursue knowledge anymore.

If you think looking at number of people in the library is not proof enough that our education does not provide people with the thirst/passion for knowledge, there is another proof. Who dares to tell me, for those that went through the University that they took modules based on their interest and not whether it benefits or harm the GPA? I know of a few friends, they do, I mean it, and they are like me. They have a great passion for learning. But alas, our education system does not reward and worse, punish such people. (Since most of these modules that are of interest to us are difficult to score high grade most of the time.)

Successful people are passionate people. They are passionate in their pursue for success. They have a passion for learning more knowledge in the field where they achieve success. We can see that in big companies CEO for example Bill Gates who went back to programming once his Microsoft business is more of less stable.

I ‘thick-skin’ly confessed that I have a thirst for knowledge or I would not be frequenting the library during the term break. I want to learn more stuff. Because the more I learnt, the more I notice how little I know about the world (because you discover more and more things) And watching documentaries, reading magazines, newspapers and periodical, you realize that this world is simply amazing. It has a rich and interesting history to offer. Beautiful and scenic geography to offer. (Well, tempers do flare at times with earthquakes and volcano eruptions.) We have the scientific, natural laws to govern the whole world. And many, many more.

To me, it really feel sad that our education have come to a point where it has interfere with our learning. It completely destroys it. And thank goodness, I have my passion for learning even after going through the education system. Now which area should I look into next? Astronomy, mathematics, history ……

Haha, I hope people have fun while they are Learning.

Cheers!

Is money evil or having it is evil?

Recently, I had a debate with a few friends on being rich and being poor (defined as always having financial problems). It is interesting to note the arguments that were presented during the debate.

Strangely, the point of contention here is not that money is evil or not because my colleagues and I believed that money is a tool only, just like a knife. It is the user itself that will decide how such a tool is used.

The point of contention here is that having a lot of money has a corruption effect on the morals of the holder. One friend do not want to be rich because he is afraid that he would not be able to overcome the corruption effect of having a lot of money, another see the pursuit as a show of discontentment with life. (*scratch head*) And he is the one who comes to me for financial advice. Haha. I hope he is not reading my blog.

Anyway, I have no qualms about letting people know that I want to be rich. Or at least come to a stage where I can be financially free. I am not sure about other people but, I hate the feeling of always, going to a fancy restaurant, when I open up the menu, the first thing I am looking at is the price and not the food that I want to eat. TOTALLY HATE IT!!! I want to make personal decisions that are free from the influence of the amount of money I have in my bank account!

I agree that money has a corruption effect on people. Because human or basically males are power hungry animals and money always accord power to its holders. But being power hungry is built in our genes. It is something that we cannot control but we have the ability to control this power once we are accord to it. I will not deny that I would not be corrupted by money’s power but I strongly believe that I am able to use this power well.

I have a long wish list of what I am going to do when I am rich (Note: rich is the next stage after being financially free.) And 50% is to make me and my family members happy, the other 50% is to make the rest of the world happy. Why be afraid to be rich just because money has a corruption effect? Having a lot of money is a wonderful thing. Let anyone who read this be a witness. If I am ever going to get very rich, I would set up a trust fund and donate to it whenever I can. This trust fund is to help those people who want to commit to social work to draw a reasonable amount of allowance so that they can commit 100% towards social work since their bread and butter issue would be settled.

I would rather be rich, be able to donate a few millions dollars to get committed people to do social work then to commit my time to do social work and have to stop it when I have to solve my bread and butter issue (like being retrenched). There is a limit to the number of hours I can commit to social work but the amount of $$ I can commit is only limited by my money making skills.

Having seen that being rich or not will more or less determines ones future development. I will have another trust fund that would offer scholarship to the poor. The award of scholarship would not depend on the academic result but would depend on the aptitude and attitude of the students and the parents. For the students to do well, the parents, at the end of the day, is the one that will help the most by offering a conducive mental and physical environment to study. The school comes in close second.

There are many things I want to do when I am rich. And most of them are to help people, not harming people. And for those of you who are like me, who wants to be financially free and hopefully at the end, be very rich, please look carefully where you seek your advice from. Note the reliability or genuity of their advice. You do not take an advice on how to be rich from a poor person.

Cheers!