My advice to students: Stay curious!
Over the past month, I was asked to speak to two groups — one an assembly of teachers, and the other of students — to share my ideas about college education, and specifically the kind of liberal, interdisciplinary education being offered at the University of the Philippines and other progressive universities.
Rather than talk about curricula and theories of education — never my strong suit — I opted to look back on my 36 years of teaching and on my own experience as a student to figure out what I truly learned from that crucial period in every young person’s life, beyond the books we read.
Some of these realizations came long after college — which was all right, since one of the things that college should teach us is that education is a lifelong process that goes beyond degrees earned and seminars attended.
I came up with a 12-point wish list of what I, as a teacher, want my students to learn — whether in my classes or outside of them, at school and in life.
So I came up with a 12-point wish list of what I, as a teacher, want my students to learn — whether in my classes or outside of them, at school and in life.
I phrased these 12 statements as simply as possible, without too many elaborations, because I didn’t want to sound like a research paper. Rather, I wanted my listeners to think of these statements as provocations, things to keep at the back of their minds, and for the students to remember four or five years hence when they graduate from college. Here goes:
You don’t have to understand everything right away. In any case, you can’t. Some things in life will forever remain mysteries — some of them wonderful, some of them perplexing. Staying curious is what matters to the lifelong learner. Boredom is often just the absence of curiosity.
Engagement helps. And by engagement, I mean investing yourself, putting in your time, effort, and maybe even money behind some belief or idea or activity that means something to you. Sometimes engagement is the best way of knowing, learning, and finally understanding.
Not everything has to have practical value. At least not yet, or maybe ever. Value can mean more than utility or money. Delight and discovery are their own rewards.
You are not the center of the universe. Not everything has to do with you. However, every connection you can make to the world around you leaves a mark that you were here — and shows that, in your own way, you mattered.
Learn to see time in years and centuries, not seconds or hours. If you want to foretell the future, look back to the past. We may seem to be headed for the future, but in fact we will all inevitably be part of the past. How will you want to be remembered?
Intelligence, cleverness, knowledge, and wisdom are very different things. Knowledge without values is worthless and even dangerous. The middling student who has a sense of good and bad and right and wrong is worthier than the summa cum laude who doesn’t.
The first thought that comes to your mind may not be the best one. Pause and think before you speak or write, especially in these days of Facebook and Twitter. Speech — but also silence — can require courage and good judgment.
Learn to love something larger than yourself, your family, and your prized possessions. “Nation,” “freedom,” “justice” and “equality” are very attractive ideas, but you have to learn to bring these big words down to earth, in concrete forms, actions and decisions. Can you accept that you are your housekeeper’s equal as a human being?
Be prepared to take risks and to make mistakes — and even to fail. You can learn more from failure than from over-performance. Everybody — even the very best of us — will fail sometime, and it will be good to believe that we are all entitled to at least one big mistake in our lives.
Be prepared to change your mind. As you grow and learn, some things will become more simple, and others more complex. You are not a fixed entity; you are changing all the time, and you can change faster than the world around you.
Technology can be deceptive. It can lead us to believe that the world is changing very fast and for the better. That may be true for some of us and for the way we live. But for many others left behind, the world is no better than it was a hundred years ago.
Competition is good, but cooperation or even compromise is often better — and necessary. Poems are written by solitary genius, but bridges, cathedrals and nations are built by many minds and hands. The best way to deal with loneliness is to find meaning in the many — to learn from and to contribute to the experience of others.
With that, I wished the students the best on their next adventures in college, and — just as Steve Jobs told us to “Stay hungry, stay foolish!” — I urged them to stay curious, so they will always enjoy learning, inside or outside of school.
