Relativity
I love learning. I love the feeling of expanding, exploring and experiencing. Education is a catalysis to the enrichment of our lives pushing the limits of our frail body, mind and soul. It grows new opportunities, freedom, success and all those other warm and fuzzy concepts we so endear.
I am currently sitting in my 4.5 hour Saturday morning lecture. The rays from the sun shine into this concrete bunker as I am being serenaded by a mono-tone melody of trivial theorems that provide less excitement than hanging out with a can of cream corn.
Maybe Sesame Street is to blame for teaching me that education can and should be enjoyable. In those younger years, learning was an hour long hit parade of dancing numbers sequenced into a plot with a huge yellow bird and a manic-depressive elephant. Who wouldn't want to learn under those conditions?
I could maybe even see myself listening to this lecture if it was being taught by a disgruntled green man in a trash can (at least for the first hour).
However, some where along the dream of life this reality was lost. I now have to come to terms with the fact that I spent 40 hours working this week so I could afford to spend my Saturday morning learning that a point must exist between two points of a continuous line. This new thought had no trouble competing with the exhaustive proof of Horner's Theorem. By break my thinking had gotten me no further than Mr Hoopers corner store (for some reason we where never allowed to go any further).
In my frustration, I later vented with a fellow classmate. He is an older man, bald with a crown of greasy grey hair to help keep his ears warm during the winter months, the kind you would expect to cast down words of authoritative wisdom, like Solomon. My beef was primarily with the poor course design and dry illogical presentation of such trivial material. Summarizing that although I had managed to ace all my assignments to this point, I had yet to learn anything useful.
I was expecting a word of support or at least a nod in agreement. However, to my dismay he adjusted his spectacles and retorted, "But you are here for the degree, I am here for the learning." He turned and lurched down the hall in search of his third cup of coffee, leaving me staring at my bag of cookies, the words still echoing between my ears.
Could my motivation be all wrong? Surely, if I only wanted a degree I would have just ordered one online from those internet universities. Forget the degree, I'd get my PHD! Maybe there was something I was missing, a hidden signal of information the teacher was transmitting. Perhaps the secret was in the hair, my lush brown hair was blocking the signal.
Not wanting to shave my head on a whim, I decided I better re-evaluate what had just happened. I mean, this may forever change the rest of my Saturday morning overhead viewing.
Then much like Archimedes must have felt, it dawned on me. I wouldn't have to shave my head after all. It is just like old Albert said, 'it is all relative'.
I smiled and returned to my seat happy to know, the old man really loved cream corn.
I am currently sitting in my 4.5 hour Saturday morning lecture. The rays from the sun shine into this concrete bunker as I am being serenaded by a mono-tone melody of trivial theorems that provide less excitement than hanging out with a can of cream corn.
Maybe Sesame Street is to blame for teaching me that education can and should be enjoyable. In those younger years, learning was an hour long hit parade of dancing numbers sequenced into a plot with a huge yellow bird and a manic-depressive elephant. Who wouldn't want to learn under those conditions?
I could maybe even see myself listening to this lecture if it was being taught by a disgruntled green man in a trash can (at least for the first hour).
However, some where along the dream of life this reality was lost. I now have to come to terms with the fact that I spent 40 hours working this week so I could afford to spend my Saturday morning learning that a point must exist between two points of a continuous line. This new thought had no trouble competing with the exhaustive proof of Horner's Theorem. By break my thinking had gotten me no further than Mr Hoopers corner store (for some reason we where never allowed to go any further).
In my frustration, I later vented with a fellow classmate. He is an older man, bald with a crown of greasy grey hair to help keep his ears warm during the winter months, the kind you would expect to cast down words of authoritative wisdom, like Solomon. My beef was primarily with the poor course design and dry illogical presentation of such trivial material. Summarizing that although I had managed to ace all my assignments to this point, I had yet to learn anything useful.
I was expecting a word of support or at least a nod in agreement. However, to my dismay he adjusted his spectacles and retorted, "But you are here for the degree, I am here for the learning." He turned and lurched down the hall in search of his third cup of coffee, leaving me staring at my bag of cookies, the words still echoing between my ears.
Could my motivation be all wrong? Surely, if I only wanted a degree I would have just ordered one online from those internet universities. Forget the degree, I'd get my PHD! Maybe there was something I was missing, a hidden signal of information the teacher was transmitting. Perhaps the secret was in the hair, my lush brown hair was blocking the signal.
Not wanting to shave my head on a whim, I decided I better re-evaluate what had just happened. I mean, this may forever change the rest of my Saturday morning overhead viewing.
Then much like Archimedes must have felt, it dawned on me. I wouldn't have to shave my head after all. It is just like old Albert said, 'it is all relative'.
I smiled and returned to my seat happy to know, the old man really loved cream corn.
posted by neseirf ekim at 1:35 PM
4 Comments:
Mike,
I was just taking a break from studying for my Developmental Biology class and, well, what you wrote was exactly what I needed. It made me laugh, a lot, especially the bit about the cream corn.
I remember looking forward to taking this Devel. Bio class, and, now, I'm forced to face the sad reality that it's just another class with midterms, a final, and a lot of really long scientific words to memorize. I wish learning was like it was on Sesame Street too! That's how I learned all my spanish. Anyway, stellar blog. Looking forward to the next one.
-Anna
Mike ---
Your post recalled something to me by John Stuart Mill and I was forced to look it up.
"We would have classics and logic taught far more really and deeply than at present, and we would add to them other studies more alien than any which yet exist to the 'business of the world', but more germane to the great business of every rational being---the strengthening and enlarging of its own intellect and character. The empirical knowledge which the world demands, which is the stock in trade of money-getting-life, we would leave the world to provide for itself; content with infusing into the youth of our country a spirit, and training them to habits, which would ensure their acquiring such knowledge easily, and using it well." -- Mill, "Civilization"
I happen to like the "more classics and logic" statement taken at face value, though really it's just Mill's culturally contextual way of saying, "let's teach people to think critically". You have to remember he was writing this mid-19th century. The bombload, though, is the sheer relevance of his statement on the enlargement of intellect and character versus the acquisition of empirical knowledge. It's 150 years later, and the world of post-secondary education is pushing the "gotta-get-certified", "gotta-getta-degree", "gotta-getta-job" thing harder than ever. It takes a shock sometimes to wake up from that, and experience learning. Epiphany?
Peaeater
Mikey,
It's so nice to know what you're up to. It's been too long and I had a nice muffled giggle as I read your blog b/c it so describes some of the painful courses I took up at PenitentiaryU (SFU) yeah. Anyway, just wanted to tell you that your blog was smashingly good and it made for some great entertainment as I take a break from reflecting myself to death for my PDP midterm. Cheers, HZ
Years ago a man named Erasmus wrote a book called in 'In Praise of Folly.' In it he skillfully laid out an argument veiled in satire about the lack of reason in 'man' of the time (1500s)... This was the beginning of the enlightenment. However, we have forgotten that we need Folly in our lives as it gives us something logic can't and certainly doesn't lead to atomic weapons, but it would allow their use. Reason, I believe, is the cause of the mess our world is in as we've become unbalanced. Our school system preaches it day and night, but religious observance to the method implies a loss of meaning as the result is never greater then the whole that created it in the first place...
Motivation is in the eye of the beholder, creation requires reason and folly as they are symbiotic. That's what the old dude is talking about, experience leads to the need to be educated based on the folly one creates for themselves.
However, one could easily write a modern version of Erasmus' epic and call it 'In Praise of Reason.' What has Reason really got us? Well, we now know that there's a point between the ends of a line... How will we use this tidbit and give it meaning... Only Folly knows...
-- Scott
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