Lernen, lernen, immer lernen!!!!

Hello guys. Phaneromaniac positively hopes that you all are having a good time.Amen!
For, I am going through some really “test”ing times. I have set myself on getting into a B-school this year and thus have subjected myself to the onslaught of these extremely eerie entrance exams. Knowledge is the currency, they say. But does being educated only means being knowledgeable? By the way, how do we define knowledge? Oxford version says, “Knowledge means the information or awareness gained through experience or education.” Does that mean that experience and education are interchangeable? For most of us would agree that whatever skills we learned through the first hand experience at the jobs, we would never have learnt in the technical schools or colleges. Then what do they teach us there?? I think Martin H Fischer has an answer. He says, “Education is the process of driving a set of prejudices down your throat”. And Fischer is not an Indian!!
Though prejudices sounds a bit harsh I agree with Fischer in the sense that rarely we are encouraged to counter the argument or ask questions to the teacher. In fact there is hardly anyone who asks questions, for most of the students are sitting there as a ritual and not to be enlightened. Very few of them know what use they are going to make of all the facts they are storing in their “eager, young” minds. Gilbert K. Chesterton crisply sums up their predicament. “Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.” This reminds me of my engineering days!!! By the way, Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an influential English writer of the early 20th century. Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology. His style is unmistakable, always marked by humility, consistency, paradox, wit, and wonder. In fact, Chesterton has been called the “Prince of paradox.” The Everlasting Man, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, The Man Who Was Thursday, Orthodoxy are some of his most famous works.
Another charge that is usually leveled at the process of education is that it kills creativity. However, “Creative minds always have been known to survive any kind of bad training.” I quote Anna Freud. Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud, is considered as the founder of child psychoanalysis field. Anna Freud's work emphasized the importance of the “ego”, and its ability to be trained socially. Anna Freud developed different techniques of assessment and treatment of childhood disorders, thereby contributing to our understanding of anxiety and depression as significant problems among children.
Here is one more interesting perspective. “Bodily exercise when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.” – Plato. How true! How true!! No matter how many times I mugged up those principles and equations of Power Systems, I never retained them for a stretch of more than 24 hours!
But honestly, this thing education, studies they are not all that bad. People around us, like teachers, parents, never tell us that we are nor expected to become scientists, mathematicians, historians and literary giants, all at the same time. From everything that is being taught to us we need to identify the field which interests us the most, the area with which we are comfortable and forge a career in that direction. As Malcolm S. Forbes says, “Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one”. An open mind, one that carefully listens to all the arguments, weighs the pros and cons and then takes the decision. A mind free of prejudices and trained in using reason while dealing with facts to come to the conclusions.
I end with this Aristotle quote, which is even more instructive.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
Please do share your views. Adios.