“Information. Information at our finger tips. Information without end…If you memorize the World Almanac, you wouldn’t be educated. You’d be weird.” (David McCullough) I read two literary essays recently titled The Love of Learning by David McCullough and Learning to Love Learning, by David A. Bednar. They are phenomenal essays teaching you the difference between information and true wisdom and the application of that knowledge is to develop a God-like character.
David McCullough’s essay was an address to the Boston College graduates, in which he talked of the importance of knowing the difference of information and knowledge, “But information, let us be clear, isn’t learning. Information isn’t poetry. Or art. Or Gershwin or the Shaw Memorial. Or faith. It isn’t wisdom”. He isn’t necessarily disregarding information as invaluable but stresses that facts alone are never enough. He says it is found through the love of learning. We need to develop a deep desire to educate for ourselves and others.
To correlate, Bednar’s address he stresses that education is never enough unless we develop a drive to learn all through out our lives. “Academic assignments, test scores, and cumulative GPA do not produce a final and polished product. Rather, students have only started to put in place a foundation of learning upon which they can build forever.” This quote came as a great comfort to me because I was never what you call an “A” student; quite frankly, I couldn’t wait to get out of high school! But as I have come to here to college I have indeed that incredible desire to learn. An creepy phenomenon has occurred, but I actually stay in the Library for quite some time just reading or studying a topic that I don’t even have a class for.
David A. Bednar goes on to say, "no book of answers is readily available with guidelines and solutions to the great challenges of life. All we have is our capacity to learn and our love of and for learning”. I believe we never stop learning, not even once in our lives. And if it is our desire to become closer to God, we need to learn all we can, but not by education alone but through our experiences in this life too.
“You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.” ~Clay P. Bedford
“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.” ~Mark Twain
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