Be Your Own Teacher
Education is a series of processes that facilitates learning and growth. Moreover, an education is an enlightening experience attained through the acquisition of knowledge, beliefs, values, skills as well as habits and fortified by challenging all that you know, believe and do constantly.
Beyond the lengthy definition above, education is an essential part of life that exists far beyond the confines of school and university grounds.
Learning happens constantly; whether actively, through association or observationally, we learn. In the age of the Internet, there are countless ways to obtain an education.
Sadly, many people undervalue the education they have or simply get sidetracked by the plethora of distractions available to us now.
Pull yourself together
But in this era of politicians and leaders, talking over and over about this and that, and the media at the forefront bombarding you with images of the war in Syria, and then filling your newsfeeds with tips on how to become a different Kardashian every day.
It is important that we, as citizens of the world, learn to focus ourselves. Focus our minds and thirst to learn about the things that truly impact our life and our future.
I’m not saying there’s a right or wrong way to be educated. I’m saying, we need to tune out the noise and start enriching our life and impacting our side of the world with meaningful ideas and thoughts.
We cannot change anything, even ourselves, if we do not know what we are trying to change and if we do not have a solid, structured vision for the future of that change.
A beautiful mind
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. —Nelson Mandela
It has been my experience that education is both liberating and burdensome. It makes it hard to ignore errors and incorrect notions about life and all it encompasses. Maybe ignorance is blissful for a moment, but knowledge is still power when put into action.
Formal education correlates to lower crime rates, decreased incidences of diseases and economic growth, and that’s why it is still a very necessary and important part of national and global development. It is still a priority that everyone has access to quality schooling and academic support.
Still, the awareness and learning that comes from informal education has led to some pretty amazing milestones in history; Richard Branson and the Virgin Group that was built through trial and error, Jane Goodall and her astounding contributions to gorilla conservation, or Henry Ford and his contributions to industrialisation as well as the development of the assembly line technique of mass production.
The mind is profound, filled with ideas and inventions unique to each and every one of us. Seeking an education, seeking to learn, empowers you to think, to question and to see the world differently. So never stop learning.
With guns you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism. —Malala Yousafzai
Louisa loves Wikipedia, books and being a know-it-all. Share your thoughts with her at louisa.allycyn@leaderonomics.com.
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