Which Is The Most Effective Form of Education? Part 2

The guiding principle to empiricism is that nothing is to be achieved in the intellect unless it is first understood in sense. While this might appear as a philosophical connotation, it actually alludes to the fact that the precursor to attaining knowledge is to have love or interest in a topic, and even if one should prefer to stick to the philosophical aspect of empiricism then the word philosophy itself is a combination of philos and sofia, which means love for knowledge. What then does it mean to love a subject.

If a man claims to love a subject, then he needs to know about it more than the average man, so that to speak of it must leave the average man impressed. If he cannot impress the average man then he cannot claim to love it, for to love amounts to yearn to know more about it, which leads to its study, by which means his endeavour is self-justifiable. We can therefore say that to love something leads to having a deeper than average understanding of it, and if one knows not then he loves not. And this is not the kind of knowledge that is achieved on academic grounds, for academicians are expected to know, and knowledge based on professionalism cannot, unless in very minor cases, be assumed to amount to love for a subject. In this regard, it is the individual who learns personally, (which is the best form of education) who can be attested to have love for something, which doesn't mean, however, that he cannot go to class and acquire initial or more knowledge in the area. But even if he does so, the real difference will still lie in what he learns personally, for anything else is academics, which anyone can be taught.

Some of the greatest achievers in history such as Ernest Hemingway, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Henry Ford, Charles Darwin and Steve Jobs among many others were either partly or not educated in their respective fields, but because they had the love for their subjects they have ended up becoming household names. Allow me in this case to mention two names specially: Frank Lloyd Wright, architect of Fallingwater, a house considered among the best buildings in American architecture and Gustave Eiffel, engineer behind The Eiffel Tower and who also contributed in designing The Statue of Liberty. These two people, despite their distinguished contribution to the world of design and engineering are actually self-taught. But even then, to perform in an area needs knowledge, and knowledge cannot be gained without study. All of the people that I have mentioned, despite lacking formal training, it is their pursuit of knowledge that really sets them apart. Mr. Jobs for instance, seeing his son's love for electronics gave him part of his bench to fix broken electronics and as he grew up and got more interested in computers, Steve ultimately dreamt of working at Hewlett-Packard, and when he finally got a job there he gave it his all, even though the actual job was fixing screws onto computers.

I conclude as I study another piece by a Japanese autodidact called Tadao Ando, who designed a House in Sri Lanka for Pierre Pringiers, the Belgian who supplies more than 40% of industrial tires worldwide, and as I look at Tadao's definition of 'airy architecture' the typical question keeps coming back: would Tadao be able to design like this if he went to school to study architecture?

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Which Is The Most Effective Form of Education? Part 1

"Drop out of school before your mind rots from our mediocre education system. Go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts" - Frank Zappa. When you come across such words, several questions arise in your mind: is this man crazy? Why would he say such a thing? Does he know what he's talking about? But if you analyzed that statement in its true meaning, you will see that he is not anti-education. As a matter of fact he is fully in support of it, only in a way quite different from what most people are used to.

Autodidactism is the process of attaining knowledge through self-learning, training or study, and someone who has attained knowledge in this way is called an autodidact. It does not, however, entirely mean that the person involved will not have received any formal education but also includes one who has received partial training but did not complete either after dropping out or due to loss of interest among other factors, for instance, Wilbur Wright, who is considered an autodidact yet he attended college entirely only that he did not graduate. Albert Einstein claimed that the only thing that was interfering with his learning was school, and when Sir Winston Churchill was asked how he managed to become the British Prime Minister despite having failed terribly in school, he replied that it wasn't that he was foolish but he had failed because they had asked him the wrong questions. But then again, 'education is key', right? Well then, how about something like 'knowledge is key?'

The first documented argument in favour of autodidactism to the study of nature was in Ibn Tufail's book Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (Alive Son of the Vigilant) written in the twelfth century about a boy, who, through experimentation and investigation discovers the laws of nature and ultimately reaches a point where he enjoys a mystical experience. Perhaps this is what Beethoven alluded to when he said that instead of just practising one's art, one should force his way into its secrets, for with it and knowledge he could rise to the divine. Once again, we find that the keyword here is knowledge, and this is the kind that cannot be gotten from any institution of further or furthest learning. What schools need to address, like Einstein's explanation, is that education is not the memorization of facts but the ability to think. In the song Hood mentality, rapper Ice Cube laments how he is no longer interested in school because instead of trying to educate him it's only interested in what he has memorized. And memorizing is all what some 'A' students do, but fail terribly when it comes to solving practical problems. This fact has been addressed in the Indian movie three idiots, in which one student liked to memorize without understanding the details while the protagonist preferred an overall understanding of information and how he would use it in real life.

While most students will replicate what has been taught in class in the exam, such an education is of no value really, as the end objective is merely to pass the test. But in the case of autodidactism, the individual is not obligated to study by any forceful means neither does he do it with a view to attaining an academic qualification but for knowledge and passion, and in this way he studies everything that pertains to the topic and not just a set of topics enumerated in a course outline. He studies broadly and relentlessly, without the limitations of class-work setup, for class room work has a beginning and an end, and a student will feel accomplished having studied within these confines. How then, is such a person going to match up against one who has studied as much as he can, the only limitation being the resources he can obtain, which is hardly a problem in the 21st century, the age of information?

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