Musings
From The Heart
An
Essay A Day For A Year
By
Roe
Day
111 April 20, 2012
World
Travel: A True Education
Part
1
There is a difference
between a “tourist” and a “traveler”. A
tourist is a person who “tours” a country during their vacation time off from
work. A tourist passes by the fish bowl
of a country and “observes” the fish inside from the outside. A tourist does not have the time or dedication
to immerse themselves in the culture or people of a place, and a tourist
returns home with pictures of a place and pictures of people, and has the
experience of a picture of their vacation.
A traveler is a person who lives in the world where they are
traveling. A traveler is on a long term
vacation from home, or home is the road.
A traveler swims in the fish tank with the fish wherever they may be,
and a traveler is immersed in the local aquarium of culture, and the lives of
the people with whom they share.
Traveling the world is the
most significant education that a person could ever have or acquire, for it is
an experiential education as opposed to an abstract academic education. Traveling the world is an education in the
aquarium of Life. What is called a real, classic education in academia is in
fact studying as a tourist of the world and its issues, for the real issues are
in the world and its culture and society and inside the fish bowl. In academia
the student remains seated outside, looking through the glass, trying to
embrace the abstract world in ideas. A
real, classic academic education is an exercise of being exposed to “data”, and
then regurgitating that data to a “leader” educated 10 to 40 years before you,
being judged by that person, and then being passed on to the next level of data
regurgitation and judgment. A real,
classic education is a lesson in fascism, and an education in malevolent or
benevolent dictatorship. The teachers and professors hope that this education
moves us and changes us, like they will profess that they were moved and
changed during their “education”, but the best we will ever do is become
profess-ors just like they are, and profess-ing is not being or learning or
changing. The only way to “be” an
education is to get into the fish bowl and travel the world.
Here is a list of the great
disciplines of academia and in a “classic “ education.
In the Humanities:
History, Linguistics, Literature, Performing Arts,
Philosophy, Religion, Visual arts.
In the Social Sciences:
Anthropology, Archaeology, Area Studies, Cultural and
Ethnic Studies, Economics, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Geography, Political
Science, Psychology, and Sociology.
In the Natural Sciences:
Space Science, Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Chemistry,
and Physics.
In The Formal Sciences:
Computer Sciences, Logic, Mathematics, Statistics,
Systems and Science.
In The Professions and Applied Sciences:
Agriculture, Architecture and Design, Business, Divinity,
Education, Engineering, Environmental Studies and Forestry, Family and Consumer
Science, Health Science, Human Physical Performance and Recreation, Journalism
Media Studies and Communication, Law, Library and Museum Studies, Military
Sciences, Public Administration, Social Work, and Transportation.
The students in the world believe
and are being told that they are being “educated”, and when they graduate these
people arrogantly hold a status of “educated” over the supposedly
“uneducated”. In truth, these students
are not exposed to the vast majority of the 44 academic disciplines, and only
barely study within perhaps a half dozen if they are lucky. After two years of only barely touching the
prerequisites, students then specialize in one of the 40 something disciplines,
and they have a mere two years in undergraduate studies to embrace their chosen
discipline. In graduate education a
student spends on average another two years in specialization. In truth, not much can be learned outside the
fish bowl of real Life in 6 years of being “educated” in classic university academia.
There is far too much data and information and “learning” out there in the
world for any one person to learn and ever become truly educated.
In truth, virtually all
students want to be “educated” as a means to an end, to “become somebody”, to “acquire
status as educated”, and to be able to “make money” with the career that
education supposedly enables.
Unfortunately, a person who is studying with the goal of “getting in and
getting out, so I can be somebody and make money and have the lifestyle that I
dream of” is not being educated, but instead purchasing a gurgitation diploma
which is the means to their end. If
tomorrow the university education process was miraculously put into a huge,
bitter pill to swallow and digest for a week, virtually all students would race
for a glass of water to swallow it with and graduate. This is not education at all, and neither are
4 to 6 years of taking notes and regurgitating bitter pills in classic academia.
Getting an education is
clearly more than mental gurgitation and re-gurgitation. An education is
supposed to be the process of learning to learn, and in effect learning to have
an open mind and learning to challenge one’s own perspective and personal and societal
paradigm, and learning to “shift” and to “grow”, and learning to “change”.
Getting an education is the process of learning self-starting, practicing
self-discipline, and developing advanced critical thinking skills that are
individual and designed to challenge and assess the current paradigms. Getting
an education is learning to challenge authority, and learning to challenge
one’s own authority, one’s own arrogance. Getting an education is ironically
the process of learning how to educate oneself, and it has nothing to do with
learning or knowing information or data. One can learn far more data than any
university student just sitting in front of the television 24/7, and this is in
fact the primary method and method and mode of education for the world, but
this is not an education at all. Knowing things or being able to do things is
not an education.
To be continued tomorrow in
part 2.
See you tomorrow.
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