Your teacher cannot bridge the gap between what you know and
what you want to know. For his words to ‘educate’ you, you must welcome them,
think about them, find somewhere for your mind to organize them, and remember
them. Your learning is your job, not your teacher’s job. And all you need to
start with is desire. You don’t need a schoolteacher to get knowledge – you can
get it from looking at the world, from watching films, from conversations, from
reading, from asking questions, from experience.
People who have never gone to school have never developed
negative attitudes toward exploring their world. Unfortunately, you probably
have. It’s not your fault if you don’t immediately want to run out and watch
ladybugs with a magnifying glass. It might take time before your desire to
learn surfaces from beneath the layers of guilt – the voices insisting, I
should learn this, I have to learn that. Give yourself time. Don’t push. You’ll
recover.
In the end, the secret to learning is so simple: forget
about it. Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream it. One
day, you will glance up at your collection of Japanese literature, or trip over
the solar oven you built, and it will hit you: learning was there all the time,
happening by itself.
Grace LLewellyn
No comments:
Post a Comment