About Jobs and other stuff
Today I heard a discussion that students should be inspired to have curiousity about subjects and teachers should cultivate interest in them. I also heard that students should be exposed to the possible job placements at an early to let them decide on "who they want to be".
Here is my opinion:
Firstly, I think the purpose of education is to broaden and deepen perspectives. What I mean is that interests and curiousity are more innate than we think, and therefore it seems like a weird idea to me that schools are meant to cultivate interests. I think, schools are meant to show us the broad spectrum of possibilities we have for learning, and a "holistic education" is one where students have opportunity to deepen their exploration in subjects they like, but ensuring that they do not neglect subjects commonly viewed as "necessary". This means that any student, should know a bit of science, math, languages and the humanities. I think many students are unaware that engaging in many disciplines of academics is perhaps the only way they will broaden their modes of thinking.
I am also concerned about how there is this perception that we should correlate jobs to the fields we want to study. "Study" should be for learning, and learning is an exploration of curiousity. The areas of knowledge we have are to be expanded, and learning is the process of acquiring information we know and creating new ventures. Jobs are important, but if practical value was always placed as the top priority for learning, then really, how are we going to make great progress.
I want to become a technopreneur because I am passionate in science, and I love the idea of being able to invent innovative gadgets that will benefit the lives of others. My passion in science is something innate, my curiousity is something innate.
Somehow, I just feel that the only way to live a fulfilling life is if we live for meaning that is for ourselves, and independent of any external perception.
(I'm sorry if I sound very incoherent, or if my points sound stupid.) The thing is, I just try to follow a stream of consciousness, I just try to follow what my mind thinks of and just write, without trying to over think about the way it should be expressed.
Ideas and language. Is the Sapir-Wolf Hypothesis true?
Interesting. Perhaps you should think of 'education' as a 'drawing forth' of innate potential, like developing a seed into a tall tree. That's why we think of it as 'cultivation'; a tree can grow into an infinite range of fractal-like shapes, all of which are only somewhat constrained by genetic potential and many of which are affected by environment and 'training' — you can make a normally large tree into a bonsai, for example.
ReplyDeleteDo keep looking around http://findhorn.blogspot.com/ and you might find out why the City is called Atlantis, and other such things. You've got interesting thoughts, and with time they will get more coherent, don't worry... :)
As for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, it's partly consistent with some findings but not so with others. And so... it remains hypothetical. :D