Attitude, Rather than Knowledge, Marks a Successful Educator
In the last weekend of his stay in Taiwan, the author was taken to a college campus by a friend of his. As the friend was taking the author around her alma mater, explaining every corner of the school that made and unmade a thousand memories of her formative four years, the author noted a group of young high school students on what seems to be a summer camp being held at the school's main auditorium. Boisterously, the kids were going about discussing among themselves, bouncing ideas off one another as they hatch ideas to bring forth in what seemed to be their end-of-the-camp presentation/talent show.
The friend and the author unknowingly smiled at the sight of the dozen kids jumping around the normally solemn open space, echoing a place of academia with a level of energy rarely seen in its off-duty summer months. It was a smile of nostalgia, of realization that it really has been years and years since those days passed. Yes, it could not have been hidden that time is truly passing and ages have grown, but with relatively seniority (at least in the physiological aspect) can a bit of anxiety, a sense of worry whether those years of aging since leaving college for one last time has been spent in worthwhile ways.
Indeed, being a few years older should not be the only thing that differentiate these kids looking forward to the supposed four best years of their lives and the couple of old-timers reminiscing the past while watching the kids, envious of their youthful innocence. At least for the author, as he looked at these kids, he wanted to be confident that he had something he can teach them, not in the form of few years of extra book knowledge that they will inevitably gain as they go through college, but in the form of life wisdom, of how to deal with people and situations that are bound to be not palatable to one's morals and personalities.
It is weird that the author was one again reminded of this, a full month later while he was watching a movie in KL. Titled "Lucy," the movie presented the titular female protagonist as a superhuman who suddenly gained unequaled intellectual capacity and proceeded to resolve the crime that made her so in the first place. While the twisted plot of the movie served to confuse viewers more than anything else, the film did present a rather offbeat but still intriguing merit in questioning the underlying philosophy of gaining knowledge. That is, what exactly is the motivation for humans to gain and use knowledge at an individual basis.
The answer may be simple for the normal man in that knowledge gives the tools for one to improve his social status through more high-level employment, bringing in financial and material returns that improve his own standard of living as well as those around him. More broadly, he can use superior knowledge in collaboration with others to advance societal capacity, to make human lives more comfortable, convenient, all around better and happier. Yet, what if one's knowledge has surpassed others' understanding and willing to accept, drawing fear and rejection rather than awe and respect?
Everyone has had a teacher they feared, at some point of their long schooling career. Perhaps the teacher was indeed knowledgeable, or maybe not. But for the fearful student, that did not really matter. Instead, the student was too focused on how to overcome his/her fear of the said teacher that it would have been impossible to learn anything from the teacher anyways. As such, it is the attitude with which the knowledge is transmitted (the "how") rather than the very contents of the transmitted knowledge themselves (the "what") that ultimately determine the value of the knowledge held by the teacher.
This principle should resonate with every single person. Not everyone has a formal job as a teacher, but every single person will be an unofficial educator at some point of their lives. Every person, with respect to another, has some truly valuable knowledge that is worth transmitting. But depending on how ones chooses to pass the knowledge to others, the effort could be gratefully accepted or flatly repulsed. Every repulsion of such is fundamentally regrettable, as collective knowledge of the same thing makes the chance of its application more practical, thorough, and permanent.
Thinking back to those kids on the school campus in Taipei, the old-timer here is realizing that the wisdom with age may actually be this ability to transmit knowledge in a more universally accepting method. It is a professor repeatedly noted in the movie "Lucy," the meaning of life is to pass down knowledge to the future generations. If that effort is given up on the first signs of resistance and opposition, however complete and mortal, then it may be best to conclude that the person in question has failed at life, no matter how complete a set of knowledge the person has acquired as an individual.
The friend and the author unknowingly smiled at the sight of the dozen kids jumping around the normally solemn open space, echoing a place of academia with a level of energy rarely seen in its off-duty summer months. It was a smile of nostalgia, of realization that it really has been years and years since those days passed. Yes, it could not have been hidden that time is truly passing and ages have grown, but with relatively seniority (at least in the physiological aspect) can a bit of anxiety, a sense of worry whether those years of aging since leaving college for one last time has been spent in worthwhile ways.
Indeed, being a few years older should not be the only thing that differentiate these kids looking forward to the supposed four best years of their lives and the couple of old-timers reminiscing the past while watching the kids, envious of their youthful innocence. At least for the author, as he looked at these kids, he wanted to be confident that he had something he can teach them, not in the form of few years of extra book knowledge that they will inevitably gain as they go through college, but in the form of life wisdom, of how to deal with people and situations that are bound to be not palatable to one's morals and personalities.
It is weird that the author was one again reminded of this, a full month later while he was watching a movie in KL. Titled "Lucy," the movie presented the titular female protagonist as a superhuman who suddenly gained unequaled intellectual capacity and proceeded to resolve the crime that made her so in the first place. While the twisted plot of the movie served to confuse viewers more than anything else, the film did present a rather offbeat but still intriguing merit in questioning the underlying philosophy of gaining knowledge. That is, what exactly is the motivation for humans to gain and use knowledge at an individual basis.
The answer may be simple for the normal man in that knowledge gives the tools for one to improve his social status through more high-level employment, bringing in financial and material returns that improve his own standard of living as well as those around him. More broadly, he can use superior knowledge in collaboration with others to advance societal capacity, to make human lives more comfortable, convenient, all around better and happier. Yet, what if one's knowledge has surpassed others' understanding and willing to accept, drawing fear and rejection rather than awe and respect?
Everyone has had a teacher they feared, at some point of their long schooling career. Perhaps the teacher was indeed knowledgeable, or maybe not. But for the fearful student, that did not really matter. Instead, the student was too focused on how to overcome his/her fear of the said teacher that it would have been impossible to learn anything from the teacher anyways. As such, it is the attitude with which the knowledge is transmitted (the "how") rather than the very contents of the transmitted knowledge themselves (the "what") that ultimately determine the value of the knowledge held by the teacher.
This principle should resonate with every single person. Not everyone has a formal job as a teacher, but every single person will be an unofficial educator at some point of their lives. Every person, with respect to another, has some truly valuable knowledge that is worth transmitting. But depending on how ones chooses to pass the knowledge to others, the effort could be gratefully accepted or flatly repulsed. Every repulsion of such is fundamentally regrettable, as collective knowledge of the same thing makes the chance of its application more practical, thorough, and permanent.
Thinking back to those kids on the school campus in Taipei, the old-timer here is realizing that the wisdom with age may actually be this ability to transmit knowledge in a more universally accepting method. It is a professor repeatedly noted in the movie "Lucy," the meaning of life is to pass down knowledge to the future generations. If that effort is given up on the first signs of resistance and opposition, however complete and mortal, then it may be best to conclude that the person in question has failed at life, no matter how complete a set of knowledge the person has acquired as an individual.
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