What is Education?: And Who Says Learning Ever Stops?

“An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t.” -Anatole France

Anatole France’s quotation applies to education in perhaps more ways than one. Over the course of my life, I have seen knowledge for knowledge’s sake and permanent retention of knowledge being replaced by mass absorption of material in order to prepare for a test, after which the material is promptly forgotten. In addition, knowledge, the true knowledge that many of us crave at this University, cannot be sated by just looking at one side of the issue.

The first error in learning is that absorbing large amounts of knowledge over long periods of time will make you smarter. People have to realize that there is a difference between knowledge and education. Education is the ability to absorb and regurgitate copious amounts of stuff from a book or a magazine or an internet site. Knowledge is the ability to take what you’ve read in books/magazines/etc and synthesize it together in order to create a new, exciting and vibrant idea. If you are intelligent and successfully pass a test by regurgitating information, you haven’t learned anything except regurgitation pays off in the short run. Unfortunately, like in microeconomics, there is both a short run and a long run to worry about, with the long run being represented by the future of this country. Without new ideas, humanity (or the US) will remain static and we will not be able to advance as a population.

The second error in learning occurs when one synthesizes information from only one point of view. In the video game Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II, the character Kreia states, “if you are to truly understand, then you will need the contrast, not adherence to a single ideal.”¹ Blind adherence to one theory limits the scope of the student’s knowledge, as they cannot see the merits of the other side or the faults of the “correct” one. One cannot understand which economic system, form of government, and so on is better unless the student understands all perspectives of the subject in question and synthesizes each of their merits into a new, “greater” theory. Very rarely will you find one system that is completely perfect, each of the various angles have some merit. Instead, we should follow the same methods as protein synthesis. Rarely will you ever find a protein with all Aspartic Acid molecules that works properly. Instead, proteins are made of many different amino acids arranged in many different positions. It is the same with thinking, not all parts of one idea work, but perhaps, when combined with another idea, or two or three, they can become fully functional.

Finally, the final fault that people possess is what Anatole France argues in his quote, which is admitting that learning never stops. Even Socrates, the great Greek philosopher admitted that, “I am the wisest man in Greece, because only I know that I know nothing.” I see too many people caring more about completing the General Education and Degree Requirements in order to achieve the diploma at the end and achieve the American Dream of an expensive house, a costly car, and a high paying career. However, this process skips over the most valuable skill of learning who one’s self truly is and the process of truly understanding who you really are takes time, hard work, and college tuition money, all of which, many of us do not have or cannot afford to give up. However, like Aristotle said, “the roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet,” representing the arduousness of work that you need to attain an education. However, just because you have a BA, MA, BS, or even a PhD, doesn’t mean that the learning stops. There are always new paths to explore, worlds to discover, mysteries to unravel and by stopping on the quest of knowledge, we cheat ourselves out of growing stronger and out of living a much richer and fuller life full of knowledge.

Only through synthesis of the many faces of an idea, the development of a dogged and unrelenting craving for knowledge, and an understanding of the difference between knowledge and intelligence can humanity move forward into a new dawn. Although education may seem like just a mere stepping stone on the path of life or a necessary requirement that must be fulfilled before something greater can be achieved, education is more than that. It is a life-long quest involving a person who always keeps asking questions and always looks for new horizons to explore in order to attain the wisdom needed to live a truly great life.