On education

What it means to learn

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Tree of Knowledge by The Art of DionJa'Y

I’m a hypocrite.

I once carved my career as an academic and waxed lyrical to eager-eyed undergraduate students about the majestic delights of scholarly life, but time has a sobering way of revealing hidden truths. Through my years both as an academic and then as an external consultant, I’ve come to realise that the brick and mortar educational institution, once regarded as the hallowed ground for intellectual innovation and experimentation, is an antiquated idealism. The historical romance of institutional education may have started out as an earnest attempt at intellectual progressivism. But as with most historical narratives, the general goodness of man is often countered by the conniving opportunism of those in positions of power.

Public access to basic formal education, for all of its supposed virtuousness, remains to be unsustainably commodified, overtly politicised and unequally distributed. This has always been the case and despite numerous not-for-profit development initiatives to level the playing field, those with control over the purse strings of public spending often find a way to tip the balance ever so slightly to their side.

But this missive isn’t about educational inequality. That deserves a separate piece.

I’m here to assert that life, in its most expansive sense, is where true learning takes place. It is a space where lesson plans are created purely through happenstance rather than meticulous planning and where exclusionary admission quotas are non-existent, as it should be. So if the vicissitudes of life define our learning, how does one define education?

Unbeknownst to us, we spend each passing day apprenticing ourselves to managing loss (the passing of each moment), valuing the present and anticipating the future. As we traverse across these mental states, we embark on a lifelong existential assignment to prune the interleaved complexity of experience into a single blade of enlightening insight - the nature of our life purpose. Through this never-ending journey, we inevitably stumble, in some shape or form, on a series of fundamental questions.

What is our role in this transient world of change? Do we have a role/purpose that needs realising? How would one know if one has discovered his/her self? These lines of inquiry cut into the essence of education; the challenge of finding ones self and rationalising its very process, in what can be an unnerving exercise between self-acceptance and self-rejection.

Reality is all the learning material one ever needs in the school of life, albeit viewed from the solitary pinhole of this one life each of us leads. In time, one eventually realises that much of the education through life functions on a disarmingly simple premise: you are the custodian of your own mind, emotions and integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you.

The above may seem like common-sense but life (funnily enough) has thought me that the simple concepts are what we struggle with the most to put into practice. Holding on to the preconceived assumptions others have of us or the realities/lifestyles we inhibit ultimately robs us of the chance for self-discovery.

It was Friedrich Nietzsche who believed that the journey of self-discovery is one of the greatest existential difficulties and yet the most rewarding education ever attainable. Nietzsche addressed how we find ourselves in a thoroughly engaging essay titled Schopenhauer as Educator. He writes:

No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!

In courageously forging our own path and resisting the temptation to ‘settle’ on narratives and labels afforded to us by society, it is also imperative to remember that overnight success is a myth. The flower doesn’t go from bud to blossom in one spritely burst and yet, as a culture, we’re disinterested in the tedium of the blossoming but obsessed only with the full bloom. But it is in the blossoming where the dazzling magic unfolds in the making of one’s character and destiny.

So as I sit here proffering the merits of learning through life, a view gleaned through my disillusionment with the formal education system, it is only fair that I offer the most important lesson I’ve learnt thus far in my 37 years of existence:

If we are thoughtful and tender enough with ourselves, the terror of failure, loss and pain cusps into transcendence and the grief into gratitude. We start to see, bit by bit, a nonspecific warmth enveloping everything that ever was and ever will be. We arrive at the conclusion that we are nothing more than particles/atoms passing between; particulate miracles bewildered and bewildering in their passage. Through this rather elemental view of life - as a series of vibrational atoms dancing to the frequency of a universal hum - we eventually grasp the fact that no matter the outer atmosphere of circumstance, one has the agency to remain resilient and seek the fruits of its lessons rather than wither under it.

The school of life is ready for you. The question is, are you ready for it?