Books
inform us. The information they
provide may or may not be accurate or maybe, partially accurate, but generally,
is more precise than that available from words of mouth. It is so because the
authors do make some efforts to converge on information that is often believed
to be true. But, what happens when most of the sources from where the information
is procured are ill-informed?
A
few among us do not take the books for granted. They try to apply the knowledge
gained from the books in real life situations to verify the information
available in the books. They usually find that books are fairly accurate about
the things of common knowledge, but, whenever one ventures into little known
territories, the books fail to solve all the problems that one may encounter. One
can say that education actually begins when one willingly learns to verify the
knowledge gained from conventional sources.
The
knowledge, physical or otherwise, is developed by us human beings after
processing all that we can sense, using the faculties of our mind and
intellect. And, there can be infinite permutations and combinations of what we
can see, feel and think about at different times, locations and circumstances.
Infinite permutations and combinations imply perfect randomness. Are we highly
sophisticated processing machines to develop knowledge giving random output? My
God! If that kind of source of knowledge we have, how can we educate us?
Maybe,
our education does not actually begin when we willing learn to verify the
knowledge gained from conventional sources as said earlier; it begins from the
moment we realize that we not only know nothing, but also are hardly equipped
to gain any knowledge. Maybe, we have to start from there to educate ourselves.
PROMOD KUMAR SHARMA
[The writer of this blog is also the author of “Mahatma A
Scientist of the Intuitively Obvious” and “In Search of Our Wonderful Words”.]
0 comments:
Post a Comment