Why is Learning Cool?

Why does learning matter? How does education define humanity’s future? Why is it under-appreciated? How is knowledge compiled through education? How do neurons in the brain evolve through learning?

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Education is under-appreciated or often gets thrown aside throughout society by too many people in their haste for other things. I have heard too many times people outright say that they don’t see the benefits of education in things they will never use in life or that they find learning complex concepts to be boring.

I feel too many people think education is for nerds or unnecessary to them, and they frown upon learning new things. Education ends up being looked down on as not the cool thing to do or “stupid” or whatever else you may have heard people say. I have heard it all throughout the years, and it’s not just stuff you hear in school from immature kids or some buffoon on TV or uneducated people over radio. In many places, I fear it has become a mindset as I will discuss later. My goal here is to show why those people are wrong. Learning DOES matter. I hope you appreciate learning as being cool when I am done.

Intro

Many people equate education with learning, but learning encompasses much more than just formal education. For the purpose of this blog, I will group learning as including school education, knowledge, behavior, skills, talents, and other things. I will use the terms ‘education’ and ‘learning’ as synonyms even though there is a slight difference (education: somebody else teaches you, learning: broad term that includes everything including education). It is not necessary to differentiate between these here because both go hand-in-hand. Both are not just in the classroom but also outside. Learning is educational, education is learning.

Photo by opensource / CC BY

Photo by opensource / CC BY

Education is not just reading chemistry textbooks or physics textbooks. People recall how dull their chemistry textbook was in school and instantly assume that reading some book would be as boring as their school textbooks. Pick up a book of a topic of your choosing or sign up for a free online course or even read a decent novel, which can stimulate your neurons as research has shown. There are novels, such as one of my favorite novels Contact by Carl Sagan or novels by Michael Crichton, that combine actual scientific concepts into sci-fi plots. Reading articles with ideas also has value (exceptions are news articles on things such as crime events – i.e. A robbed B, C killed D, etc – or political articles that often mix in propaganda with real news).

Education gets a negative view from not just some students but by people nationally & globally. The mindset in too many people has become that students should go to school for degree or to the extreme that education is not important to their life. There is much more to education than just getting the degree and “being done” or “moving on” as I have heard some students say. Education and life are not two separate entities that you move on from but are one and the same: Education is life and life is education.

Why has it become an issue? On small scale, students may start slacking off by taking education for granted or on big scale, funding might get slashed by politicians because they feel the funds are better off somewhere else. Number of teachers might get cut by those in power or teachers might move to other careers. Students might drop out or not pursue college. It could be many things, but it is recipe with disastrous consequences.

Scariest observation is the change of mindset in many people. Just observe Facebook posts and tweets that people send. I notice there is a huge focus on things other than education such as entertainment (including reality shows, sports, gaming, etc). I am big on entertainment myself and sports/gaming/etc, but education & learning new things is ultimately much more important. Yeah, you might ask “Well, what is there to gain from learning why the sun looks yellow on Earth but is actually white if we look at it from space or how the Large Hadron Collider is coming back online more powerful than ever before?”

The simple answer is curiosity; you want to learn new things that you did not know before. How is that not better than learning what will happen in the next Walking Dead episode or whether the Lakers will win tonight? I watch both regularly, but what difference will that make tomorrow? You are not developing brain neurons like you would with, say, learning an awesome fact of the world that you will remember. One week from now, you will forget all the small details from Walking Dead or whatever else you watch. The purpose of these drama shows is simply entertainment to pass time. Nothing else.

I truly believe learning cannot be frowned upon because there is simply too much to gain. Most of the entertainment shows out there are not designed to make people think, and I don’t expect them to be. I have no issues with entertainment as it is necessary for stress maintenance. It would be irresponsible of me to say that entertainment itself is an issue, but when your life revolves around only entertainment then that is a problem.

Anyways, enough of that. Now the topic at hand: why is education cool? I will look at the three biggest reasons as I see them.

Path to Civilization

Isaac Newton once said “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Everything Newton learned and theorized was not something that came to him like the story of the apple goes.. One day, an apple fell on Newton’s head as he was sitting there, and he instantly recognized the existence of gravitational force. No, that is nonsense because it took not overnight but YEARS for him to revolutionize physics. Newton was a thinker and an academic. He was inspired by people like Rene Descartes, Francis Bacon, Galileo, Johannes Kepler, others before him, and he spent lots of time studying their work to advance his own work. Without these people before him, Newton would not have come up with the mathematics (namely integral calculus that he created) and physics to push the boundaries of our understanding of the universe.

Everything we do is simply push boundaries on what somebody did before us. In the same manner, none of the entertainment-related technologies I discussed above or the computer you are reading this on would be possible without science, technology, and engineering before us. Personal Computer would not be possible without a way to enter input/output (i.e. keyboard). Entering user input would not be possible without long-term memory storage (i.e. harddrive). Harddrives would not be possible without integrated circuit board. Circuit board would not be possible without initial programming languages to make programs more complex than simple math calculations. Programming languages would not be possible without being able to store data into the system (RAM). RAM would not be possible without processor to process the data. Processor would not be possible without vacuum tubes (vacuum tubes were later replaced by circuit boards using transistors). Vacuum tubes would not be possible without electricity. You get the picture, but these are all completely separate technologies from vastly different people.

This is the essence of how civilization was built over the history of humanity through education. Humans were able to build cities during the start of agricultural revolution ~12,000 years ago. They could not do that until they could settle into one place by the invention of fire-building methods by early human species about 400,000 years ago. Fire allowed warmth during winter months, light at night, and ability to cook meat. Those fire-building techniques required the ability to shape out rocks and to figure out that sparks could be used to create fire. Shaping out a rock to be a certain way is no easy task if you have never seen it done before – cavemen had no books or teachers specializing in that!

As you can see below, the art of shaping rocks became more advanced as the centuries progressed. First tools at the bottom were for everything but as time progressed, specialized tools at top were made for specific needs. The details on the rocks also improved as different generations built on the methods over time.

Photo by edenpictures / CC BY

Photo by edenpictures / CC BY

Ultimately, some rocks were better for building fires than others, and over time, different human species progressed & learned how to build fires. Simple observations & hand motion teaching was what led to the dissemination of fire-building techniques. I am sure they had oral language since they had everything necessary to talk. We would not be where we are today without rocks tools and fire.

We would laugh now but creating a fire to THEM from scratch is like creating a highly efficient nuclear fusion reactor to us TODAY from scratch. Once you know how, it can be put into writing and taught to new generation of nuclear physicists, but until then it is not a laughing matter! A century from now, our future generations might be laughing their tails off looking back at us today. For all we know, they might be teaching how to build a nuclear fusion reactor in high school physics in a 100 years from now! College might be more advanced stuff that we are just dreaming of today, such as quantum computers.

Sir Isaac Newton was absolutely correct. We ARE standing on the shoulders of giants from the past bound through education. Newton did not even use everything he learned from others before him, but he kept himself thinking. It is not necessary for you to use EVERYTHING you learn in school in life, but it is simply to get your mind rolling. The more you think, the more you will automatically want to know. From that quest, you never know where it will take you in life or what you will discover. The world would be a much better place if people simply spent more time thinking, asking questions, and searching for answers to the mysteries of life instead of accepting everything they are told.

Why does it matter? All the cool technologies we have today is due to education. All of this matters because we have to keep ourselves educated & thinking. Education IS the essence of humanity as everything we know, have known, and will know stems from that.

Generational Impact of Learning

From the day we are born to the day we die, learning is what we do best. Babies are passively listening to adults and others speak around them. They may not be able to talk or see properly yet, but they hear everything. They may not understand what they are hearing, but their brain picks it up. As their brain develops further, they learn how to say simple words through listening and imitation. The popular phrase goes “monkey see, monkey do.” It is how we all learn – through each other by imitation. Imitation is not as necessary after a certain age (i.e. Kindergarten student certainly can learn through more complex language than just imitation).

It is the job of a generation to teach everything they know to the next generation. I see it as humanity’s duty to learn and use what you learned to teach the next generation. By teaching, I am not even referring to formal teachers but simply discussing a concept & showing each other what you know and learned IS teaching. For instance, if you tell your sibling or relative or some friend what is proper behavior and what is not – that is teaching.

If we want to advance as a civilization, it is in our best interest to be inspired by education. It is not just today that we ought to be concerned with and only ourselves but also tomorrow and other future generations. We have the ability to have a direct hand in the future of human civilization. Sure, it might be small hand for most of us, but it still counts! We must inspire and push the next generation to build further on our knowledge.

Progression & Improvement

We all want to improve ourselves and society for the better. Well, it all starts with education. Education is not only learning & building on the past as I mentioned in the sections above but also researching new things. What do we know so far? What do we still need to know? How can we build on it further?

Why does it matter? Again, we return to curiosity. Often we don’t even think “Oh, I am going to advance civilization”, but instead we might think “I just want to know about why this happens”. In the process, you might come across some cool new finding or inspire somebody else to. You go in looking for one thing but end up finding something else entirely. Many findings have been made this way, including x-ray & medications for different diseases. Usually, answers and findings like these lead to even more questions.

There is always more to learn and research. It is not only on individual level but also societal scale. Unfortunately, not many nations realize this. Only 13 countries in 2012 spent more than 2% of their yearly GDP on research & development (Worldbank). That is less or equal to the years before. From this data, the global average on research & development has stayed around 2% over the last decade. Often, governments and private companies go for the band-aids by treating the symptoms as they are cheaper in the short-term instead of spending money on treating the source with long-term goals. Progress gets held back.

There are too many people on this planet who have the power and wealth to change things for the better, but they are blinded by only short-term vision & goals. Sometimes it makes me angry and lose some hope that human civilization will last, but that cannot be changed. Gandhi did say “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” I believe change starts with you. One person at a time, one family, one community, one city, one state, one nation, one continent, one planet. Learn and educate yourself.

Conclusion

One thing many people (to my frustration) don’t understand is school and college are not meant to prepare you for one specific type of career. Education is meant for a life-time as it allows you to become well-rounded. Jobs change. People change. Ideas change. Technology changes. Knowledge changes. What does not change is your ability to learn. School is meant to instill that sense of learnability – learning how to learn & critically analyze. That cannot be measured with numbers or statistics.

Photo by waldec / CC BY

Photo by waldec / CC BY

I referred to education as a never-ending quest above. It is true as it will continue for life. There is no such thing as a guru or piece of literature that has every single answer of the universe in it and never will be. Sidenote: I have seen too many times somebody exploit people by using saying ‘so and so’ has special powers. But first you have to pay them (usually non-refundable.. LOL!). This definitely includes astrology, which I believe is fraudulent. They may say it is science or scientifically proven — that is not only fraud but also a blatant lie that people fall for (usually are people that don’t know the difference between ‘astronomy‘ and  ‘astrology‘). This also includes most religious rituals that you have to “pay” for first. It has become a fraudulent business to trick people into believing that somebody knows something special (or everything) and has magical powers. Ask them one question: “Can I pay you half now and half after I get what you said? You said I will be rich by this time or this marriage will work out so I will pay you other half then. How about that guarantee?” Good luck getting them to agree hahaha. Truth is these people don’t know anything more than what you may know yourself – google up ‘snake oil scams’.

Back to topic. As you learn new things, neurons in the brain become lodged and grow. The brain is the most complex thing in the universe that is natural (assuming all complex living things in the universe have some sort of brain(s) — notice I don’t say animals because it is possible the living thing is a thinking plant or something else entirely). The more you learn, the stronger (or smarter) your brain becomes as the synapses link together and rewire your brain one neuron at a time through something called neuroplasticity, where the brain neurons essentially change links. Learning allows them to become more efficient & effective.

“For a long time, it was believed that as we aged, the con­nec­tions in the brain became fixed. Research has shown that in fact the brain never stops chang­ing through learn­ing. Plas­tic­ity IS the capac­ity of the brain to change with learn­ing. Changes asso­ci­ated with learn­ing occur mostly at the level of the con­nec­tions between neu­rons. New con­nec­tions can form and the inter­nal struc­ture of the exist­ing synapses can change” (Michelon, 2008).

Image of brain neurons and synapses below (green is just the imaging – in real-life it would look gray and white):

Photo by Mike Seyfang / CC BY

Photo by Mike Seyfang / CC BY

Education is not a means to an end or even the ends in itself.  There is no such thing as “end” when it comes to learning. You never stop learning as learning is for a lifetime.

So we return back to Isaac Newton’s quote to conclude this entry. By learning from the giants of our past, we can become giants ourselves today & continue the legacy of humanity forward. It is what we are here for.. to continue the race of humanity through the race of time amidst the chaos of the universe. It is not only today we live for but the past and future too. It is what makes us human. Enjoy life, live, learn, and be.

learning cool

Photo by CriCristina / CC BY

Harsh Shukla
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