An educated person never stops learning. Once he thinks he knows everything, it signals his decline to obsolescence and illiteracy.
In today’s modern and highly technological world, new things and millions of new information are coming out regularly that it has become a pre – condition for coping with change to keep on learning.
Even the so – called experts learn many new things everyday. The emergence of new technologies changes the chemistry of the way things work – be they machines or organisations.
Learning comes not only from understanding complex matters but also from appreciating simple things. From simple things, we learn how to observe, discern and reason. In our time, we learned with our hands and eyes relating to the nature around us. Unlike some kids today, we knew what a chicken looked like, which frogs can be eaten, what plants in the mountain are edible, and where to look for fish in the river. In such simplicity, we unconsciously built up our terms of reference for understanding things around us and for survival. We would process information according to such reference that we confronted with something new, we could reason, understand the situation, define the problem and work out the solution. Today’s kids, nurtured in the world of TVs and computers, are bombarded with thousands of information and new things which they cannot put in a frame of reference. They can express feeling over many things but they cannot put the information into a more cogent whole. In other words, they have lost the skill to reason and to think through with problems and solutions.
The capacity to simplify complex matters into simpler things becomes the mark of excellence to look concrete. Several steps in the way machine works are reduced. Even many materials and parts of machines are eliminated.
In the Philippines, we face the need for continuing education for three groups of people: those of school age who are out of school from college down to elementary school level, those who wish to start new ventures, and those who are working in organisations.
Continuing education, as the word suggests, is a never ending endeavour. It is not just a means to fill the time or satisfy our curiosity but is a pre – requisite for us to energise, sustain creativity, attain a minimum level of technological competence, and search for and exploit new opportunities so that we can survive and compete in the 21st century.
By: Desiree C. Cawigan | Master Teacher I | Lamao Elementary School | Limay, Bataan
