|
A recent
article by Marcus Herzberg, from Ohio Wesleyan University, addressed
the standard question that most students ask their teachers at one time
or another: “Why must I learn this?”
He acknowledged that most often when students ask that question they
are actually saying “It’s difficult for me to learn this.”
It’s hard, it’s boring, or it seems beyond the point.
He pointed out that the easy answers are not very satisfying. These
would include:
• Because you’ll need it later on in life.
• Because you’ll be tested on it.
• Because it will be useful in getting or doing a job.
• Because there are a lot of things that we all have to learn but
don’t want to and may not enjoy.
But there are better answers, he maintained. Answers that are applicable
to young and old alike — in fact to all those who learn things
that might not immediately appear to be valuable or worth the effort.
He claims that the starting premise should be that the issue is not
so much about having to learn something as it is that an individual
should take the time and make the effort to learn it. And here is one
good reason why: Because knowing things makes all of us more educated.
The converse is also true: knowing things makes you less ignorant.
Learning things may keep individuals from being taken advantage of by
those who are more informed.
Also, we can’t really decide whether we want to know something,
or whether knowing it will be valuable, until after we’ve learned
it.
As a practical matter, the number of television, radio, and internet
quiz programs is growing exponentially and one day knowing something
might help any one of us win a grand prize.
But much more importantly, learning things may help us see our world
or our community in a way we were not able to do without learning it.
It will give us something to think about.
What we’re learning might just represent some of the best work
by some of the greatest minds in human history. It may give us clues
or the background to discover something about ourselves.
And here’s my favorite: We should learn things because we have
the freedom and the opportunity to learn them while many people in the
past, and many people today, have not. That may just be the best answer
of all.
|
