Education and Learning

Education is not confined to classrooms

With schools and colleges closed many are talking of missing learning and education!!!

We tend to not only visualize, verbalize but also conceptualize and resort to a presumptive stereotyping a whole lot of terms which are in a wordle with one big aspect of life called ‘education’ like: - classroom, academic qualification, institutions, teachers, communication skills, knowledge, understanding, learning etc.

Though every one of these terms may be part of learning and education, if we zoom any specific part as representing the whole, then we may be doing injustice to learning and enfeebling the enormity of education.

We must know and understand that learning is neither confined to classrooms nor is it limited to being of some service to others at home or office nor is it confined to mere academic excellence and so on, rather beyond and besides these learning must

Evolve to experience, to experiment, to explore, to evaluate and to get enlightened,

Develop discretionary skills to decide, to decipher the different dimensions and dynamics of life.

Understand the underlying causes and unravel the characteristics of as many things as possible.

Create confidence and clarity to connect with contextual relevance and communicate effectively.

Accommodate all possible and relevant frames of references to analyze all things beyond mere academics.

Think beyond and besides time tested templates and to tread beyond trends, taboos and traditions.

Internalize intrinsically important values and interpret in tune with inherent attributes and contextual relevance.

Open the horizon of opportunities with open mindedness and synergy to seamlessly

Nurture the natural interrelatedness, interconnectivity and interdependence of everything and everyone.

With closure of educational institutions many have been discussing about how to make children learn as if classroom is the only place of learning.

In my honest opinion learning happens mainly: -

Out of curiosity generated observation and listening;

Out of impulse to imitate what or whom we consider as interesting and appealing;

Out of fear and/or love through the manifestation of these emotions, with varying degrees of intensities like obligations, rewards, punishments, likings and so on.

So, that way almost 90% plus real learning happens only outside the classroom and besides the syllabus.

However, basic literacy to enable one to learn in a systematic manner or methods or processes may be imparted inside the classroom.

Classrooms can at best instill, motivate and direct to get informed, acquire knowledge, indicate the methods of understanding and allow individuals to explore the possibilities of interpretations without restricting the number of or range of frames of references.

Some unique features of human species over the rest like conscious awareness and ability to internalize are very useful tools to learn better, more and use whatever one has learnt.

Learning is a lifelong process.

So, as Dani Johnson says, “Never stop being teachable.

If you think you know everything, you will never learn anything.

Then what may be termed as Learning?

The problem with human beings unlike other species is that we are consciously aware, and we can also collect, store and retrieve data and reuse them. This faculty along with our intellectual thinking and reasoning powers hamper us from having humility to accept the mere fact that there are many unknown as well as unknowable elements to life as a whole and even in our individual lives.

We either act or react according to what we want, what we can and what we are destined to.

At different times either one of these three predominates i.e. what we want, we can we are destined to do.

Knowledge, Information, Thoughts, Ideas and Teachings are ingredients,

Understanding is making them into a tasty cooked food,

Grasping and Interpretations are the utensils used for cooking, is the process of cooking a tasty, easily digestible, nutritious food.

Learning starts out of curiosity; saunters through imitation and limitation; steps into conscious observation and stops to savor into expressing whatever is learnt through some medium and in some way.