"Education is not the learning of facts; it is rather the training of the mind to think"
...Albert Einstein
We've come to the final part of the series on gaining mastery of academic content.
Incidentally, this final part is the most important of the series because it holds the key to the others. I deliberately saved the best for the last.
If you came late to the party, well, you don't have to worry. Simply check the other parts here:
In this post, we are concerned primarily with what makes discovery possible and how we can take advantage of the insights arising therefrom.
Recall that in the last post, we established that knowledge is a discovery. In this post, we are examining the instrument or organ for that discovery. Indeed, there wouldn't have been anything called "knowledge" without this instrument.
Every part of the human anatomy has a distinct role in the body, while exercising interrelated functions with other parts.
The eye is the organ of sight and this function is unique to it. No other part in the body can function in this unique capacity.
In like manner, the organ for "knowing" or "figuring out" things is an exclusive reserve of the human intellect. It has no substitute. Without it, man is permanently incapacitated.
History is replete with physically challenged persons, who, inspite of their impairment, impacted their world positively: Fanny crosby, steve wonders, Colbalms Asuquo, Yinka Ayefele etc. But, a man or woman who has lost his/her mind has literarily lost everything.
Virtually all things in creation are products of intelligence. Human civilizations, technological advancement, political and socio-economic systems of the world, are all brain-child of the human capacity to think.
To put this in proper perspective, all domains of knowledge, which constitute the academic disciplines in our schools and institutions of higher learning today, the world over, wouldn't have been possible without great thinkers.
Mention any academic field, in any domain of knowledge whatsoever, and prominent names of pioneers and contributors, who had extended the frontiers of those academic fields, immediately pops up.
These great thinkers discovered natural laws and principles, promulgated theories, formulated theorems and formulae, as well as masterminded significant and witty inventions which set the stage for the Industrial revolution and the Digital Age.
Who are these people? Where did they come from? What was their secret? How were they able to make such mindboggling discoveries?
Isaac Newton, Karl Max, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Pythagoras, Gallileo, Adam Smith, Darwin, Archimedes and host of others, belong to this cerebral hall of fame.
What has all this got to do with mastering academic content?
Ok, here's the point:
Simply put, as a student, you can not truly master your subjects or courses in school without the active use of your mind to enter into, think through and figure out the logic of those subjects.
How do I mean?
You see, every single subject we offer or study in school is a product of great minds, who were curious about specific aspects of our natural world and set out to figure out things, by way of disciplined inquiry.
In order to master what they have figured out for us, we need to engage our reasoning in following their train of thoughts.
Assume for a moment, that you offer biology as a course. To master biology, you need to learn how to reason through the logic of biology.
What is the central goal of biology? What exactly do biologists try to figure out about the natural world? How do they go about it? What kind of questions does biology asks or problems it solves? In what manner do biologists collect data or information? What point of view or way of seeing the natural world does biology make possible? What key concepts does biology generate? What are the underlying assumptions upon which biology rests? What kind of inferences or conclusions does biology come to? What are the implications embedded in the study of biology?
Wait for it, ok, here it is: these are the kind of questions a student of biology must ask and figure out answers to, in order to master Biology as a domain of knowledge. And this applies to all academic subjects without exception.
However, to figure out answers to the above questions from your lectures and textbooks, for they are there, you need to have your mind trained so as to develop certain basic cognitive and creative skills.
This is the essence of an education that is rightly conceived: training the mind to think( through the logic of contents), not the training of the mind to memorize and recall data.
To this end, I'm taking up the challenge to practically train as many students as are interested, how to cultivate their intellect, so as to to gain mastery of their academic content.
Please, be on the lookout for the details soon.