"The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it; and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living"
-Henri Poincare
This is the quote from the preface of my physics book. This quote not only reflects the passion of a great scientist, but it also points out the meaning of education.
Education, as I believe, is the integration of exploration, experiment and experience.
The first purpose of education is to open our mind, and to see the world more openly and widely. To put it shortly, the first purpose of education is to explore. Every branch of knowledge known to the humanity is not complete yet. There are more to explore, more to see and more to discover. That is why it is very important to encourage to explore more without limiting the potential. Since we were born, we in fact have a huge curiosity to learn and explore. We felt delight to see new things; we felt happy to see the vast sky; we felt enjoyable to see the butterflies flying. In fact, when we truly ask ourselves about the world around us, how many levels of 'why' we can actually ask. For example, if we ask ourselves why the Earth is rotating around the Sun, the answer is the pull of Gravity. But if we continue to ask why the gravity pulls, then we have reached the dead-end because we still don't know why the gravity pulls. Therefore, every exploration starts with a question. The more we ask, the more we can explore.
The second purpose of education is to experiment, and to try. In fact, trying is always associated with both failures and successes. However, the education is to encourage experiments even though there are risks of failures. In fact, the second purpose of education is to teach that failures are as important as successes in experiments. According to the Quantum Mechanics, we have a one millionth chance to be able push through a brick wall, which means if we keep trying until one million and one times, we can successfully pass through the wall. By the way, it is a joke though :)
And the final purpose of education is to experience, and to learn from both exploration and experiment. There is a world of difference between knowing the England and actually having been to the England. Therefore, the more experience we have, the more we are closer to the meaning of education. In fact, the experienced society is the educated society. After all, the leading societies are the societies which have enough experience to build rockets and robots, to explore outer space, to venture into deep water and so on. But these experiences did not come without a price; all experiences come from exploration and experimentation.
I think the educated society cannot be measured by the number of university graduates it produces, but by the number of explorers, inventors, entrepreneurs, scientists, artists, writers, politicians and so forth.
And the last, but not the least. Education is a life-long learning; it is almost impossible to teach everything in school. However, it is possible to teach the spirit of life-long learning: to explore, to experiment and to experience.
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