Education is a never-ending course

LIFE’S LESSONS

By Henrylito D. Tacio

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela

***

I started collecting quotations, statements, anecdotes, and short stories when I was still in high school. Thanks to our English teacher who told us that we might be able to use some of them in the near future. 

One of the collected quotations I still have in the yellowed pages of my notebook was one written by Alexander Pope: “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” 

This reminds me of the story of a woman who read a newspaper’s headline stating that acid is good for your eyes. Since she had a problem with one of her eyes, she poured an acid to it – even without further reading the report. 

It was already too late when she learned that acid is good for your eyes – if you want to get blind. “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance,” Andy McIntyre once pointed out.

Indeed, education is very important. And it is a never ending course. You have to continue learning. Otherwise, you will be left behind. As one Chinese proverb puts it: “Learning is like rowing upstream: not to advance is to drop back.”

The tale of the three horsemen

One night, three horsemen were riding across a desert. As they crossed the dry bed of a river, out of the darkness a voice called, “Halt!” Although feeling surprised, they obeyed. The voice then told them to dismount, pick up a handful of pebbles, put them in their pockets and remount.

The voice told them, “You have done what I have commanded you. Tomorrow, when the sun shines, you will be both glad and sorry.” Mystified, the three horsemen continued their travel.

When the sun rose, they reached into their pockets and found that a miracle had happened. The pebbles had been transformed into diamonds, rubies, and other precious stones. They remembered the warning. They were both glad and sorry – glad that they had taken some, and sorry that they had not taken more. That’s the same thing for education.

Education does not mean matriculation 

In the Philippines or in other parts of the world, education means going to school or university. “The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done,” said Jean Piaget.

Education doesn’t really mean going to school. There are people who don’t have a college diploma and yet they have become very successful. In fact, I have known some famous people who were high school dropouts but still managed to excel in their chosen careers. Hollywood stars Al Pacino, Cary Grant, Ellen Burstyn, and Tracey Ullman come to mind.

In the Philippines, I can think of the late filmmaker Lino Brocka. Although he quit college, it did not stop him from pursuing his ambition: to direct some of the country’s high-caliber movies like Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang, Insiang, and Orapronobis. In 1985, he was chosen as one of the five recipients of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award.

Then there were others, as well, who were expelled from school. Comedian Richard Pryor was expelled from a Catholic grammar school in Peoria, Illinois, when the nuns discovered that his grandmother ran a string of brothels. Musician Roger Daltrey was expelled from Acton County Grammar School in England.  “I was an evil little so-and-so,” he recalled. “I didn’t fit in.”

“The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education,” reminds Ralph Waldo Emerson. “A college degree is not a sign that one is a finished product but an indication a person is prepared for life,” Reverend Edward A. Malloy remarks.  

Clifton L. Hall has also said, “It is easy – even natural to think of education as something that ends when one finishes school, or graduates from college, or is decorated with a doctorate. But it might be nearer to the truth to say that real education begins when formal education ends.”

Education is a lifetime of learning 

I have stopped going to school already but it doesn’t mean I quit learning. When I was still in college, I kept on going to the library to learn more. This was during the time when google and the internet were still unheard of.

I believe in what Lesley Conger once said, “The best of my education has come from the public library… My tuition fee is a bus fare and once in a while, five cents a day for an overdue book.  You don’t need to know very much to start with, if you know the way to the public library.”

In recent years, we have the internet where you can search whatever subject you want to know. However, you don’t have to, and you shouldn’t, believe everything you read on the internet. You have to separate facts from myths. And be sure to know also who wrote the information and from which organization or website it comes from.

Clive James foresees, “The number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.”

So, you think you’re old and ready to quit learning? Well, it’s never too old to learn. 

The son who didn’t want to go to school

A mother was having a hard time getting her son to go to school one morning. “Nobody likes me at school,” the son said. “The teachers don’t and the kids don’t. The principal wants to transfer me, the bus drivers hate me, the school board wants me to drop out, and the custodians have it in for me. I don’t want to go to school anymore.”

“You’ve got to go,” the mother insisted. “You’re healthy. You have a lot to learn. You’ve got something to offer others. You are a leader. Besides, you are 42 years old. And you’re the head teacher.”

That’s funny but to learn when you are older isn’t fun anymore. But you have to learn or else you will be left behind. When computers became very popular, I didn’t want to buy one since I had my typewriter.

I thought I could rely on my old typewriter. But I was wrong. There were so many things I could do with a personal computer. And besides, the typewriter was too heavy to carry whenever I went to some places like attending conferences.

“Learning is the beginning of wealth,” said Jim Rohn. “Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.”

To end this piece, allow me to quote the words of Henry Peter, Lord Brougham: “Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.” – ###