Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
I REMEMBER Grade 10; sitting in class, highlighting nearly each line of my history textbook.
Every date, every name, repeated a dozen times, written a dozen more. Every book meticulously memorised. It was like having a Kindle downloaded into your head; every book virtually manifested, so precisely that one could practically turn the pages over in one's head and read passages from them.
Yes, that's how we learned.
It infuriates me how studying nowadays is rote-learning and how, now, we learn because we have to, not because we want to.
I remember our old maths lessons, how we used to sit and figure out the toughest of problems. It was fun. "But why are we learning this? What's the 'real world' element?" I had asked. My teacher looked at me blankly and then shrugged saying it was to "do well in the exams".
Is that why we learn? To pass a test? To accumulate marks? To put numbers on a paper?
Learning shouldn't be about acing a test or besting other people. You learn for yourself; to learn more about the world, to create your own world.
Learning the same things over and over again makes knowledge lose its charm. We should be aiming at moving forward, progressing and learning from our mistakes.
After tests, there's the inevitable swapping of answers, jubilant cries and teary faces. We have forgotten why we take tests, in the first place. It's a test of how well we know something, not how much we can cram into a sheet of paper.
So, stop chewing on your pencils and learn because it excites you, inflames your passion and helps harness your ideas.
Unearth something new about the world everyday. Learn about things that fascinate you, that make you get up every morning, that keep you going.
That's what learning is about, fueling your mind, feeding your curiosity, finding answers to your questions and then asking more. We're human, we're curious and it's one of the things that makes us special.
Stop and contemplate why the moon looks red on certain evenings, or why we have eyebrows.
Stop and wonder.
