I know nothing…but I’m learning
I had a wonderful meandering conversation recently with Co-op Cat, Scott Nine. We shred ideas and thoughts on a wide range of topics. But one has really stuck with me: “maybe we should be less focused on knowing and more focused on learning.” Our educational system and our culture as a whole has seriously privileged knowledge. To know things, to have knowledge of facts and to possess skills these are the goals, aren’t they? That is why we teach at, and lecture to, and test and test and test. Do the kids know the material yet? What do they know?The more I think about it, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently, knowing is less and less interesting to me. It seems that to claim “knowledge” of something is to end a process, the process of learning and growth. Some things we strive to learn are indeed arrived at via short straight paths. I want to know the state capitals, my multiplication facts, how to spell “conundrum,” how to tie my shoelace, e.g. So I memorize and I practice. It’s easy and relatively quick. I gain confidence and self esteem and a false sense of my own worth. I know stuff. But, in general, the things anyone can claim to know are either of little value (easily Googled facts) or else they are fleeting and illusory or simply not “true,” but rather represent a single perspective (“I know that