Knowledge is Power

By Laurie Ferrari

“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”
– Confucius –
 
Though I now work as an Instructional Designer, I spent nearly 30 years teaching high school mathematics. As cliché-ish as it might sound, it really was a rewarding career. But at some point every year, one of my students would ask, “When will I ever have to know this?” To be fair, quite often this question would arise during our unit on “imaginary numbers.” And if you’re not planning to be an electrical engineer, a quantum physicist, or a math teacher, I guess the real answer is, “Maybe never.” But each year when this question was posed, I would talk about learning with my students and how we should value the opportunity to learn – relatively easily, I might add – what our predecessors and ancient mathematicians discovered. Is “knowledge for the sake of knowledge” a bad thing?
 
These are the four possibilities:

• We learn what we need to know: If a skill is known to be necessary in order to be successful, learning obviously is a good thing.
• We don’t learn what we need to know: If a skill is known to be necessary in order to be successful, not learning obviously is a bad thing.
• We don’t learn what we don’t need to know: My father used to say, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” If you don’t know something, how can you be sure that it’s not needed?
• We learn what we don’t need to know: Refer back to #3 above – how can you be sure you will NEVER need to know something? Just having knowledge may open the door to new ideas you wouldn’t have otherwise known were possible.

 
And just because something is not enjoyable doesn’t mean it’s not good for you. I mean, you might not like going to the dentist, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go. So even if learning – or the training your employer provides – doesn’t seem gratifying at the time, at least appreciate the opportunity.
 
“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
– Aristotle –