Surface Knowledge & Going Deeper

 Reading a Reddit post about the Rosetta Stone today reminded me to never stop learning. The Stone is one of those things that we hear about all the time without a lot of us really knowing what it is or why it's important. Surface knowledge.

We live in the age of the internet, being "connected" and having access to so much information that we don't absorb details. Surface knowledge.

How many of us are fortunate enough to have a good education? How many of us who have access take full advantage of a good (or even decent) education? 

I honestly believe that many of us didn't realize the importance (and good fortune) of having that access. I don't think that I did. For me, getting just through school was the thing. I was a nervous and shy student. My family, being military, moved around a lot. I never spent more than a year or two at any one school. I'd start at a school and have to get through the anxiety of being the "new kid". By the time I stopped feeling so lost and out of place, it was on to a new school. I believe my older sister felt the same. My brothers, who are more confident and outgoing, all did really well. They are all very "book smart". They really enjoyed their school years and have fond memories about every set of teachers and students they interacted with.

Now that I am much older, I still have the social anxiety and awkwardness of my youth. But now I have the internet. I have access to information of all sorts literally at the fingertips on my keyboard. Not learning about stuff in this society means I am mostly dumb on purpose. Ain't that a shame?

Before I got sick, I was too busy working and enjoying being healthy to take full advantage of all this free knowledge. Now, I have more time but my brain works at half-power. Still, I just cannot get enough of learning. I'm not great at retaining what I learn, but I still get to explore.

When I saw the post about the Rosetta Stone, I did some Googling and - wow.

For all of you out there with a healthy body, mind, and brain, I urge you to take advantage. If you even have 1 hour - even just half an hour - of time that you can set aside for it, go deeper. Please. 

Today, I spent about 40 minutes looking up information about the Rosetta Stone. While I was at it, I wandered down a few rabbit holes and picked up some information about language and culture in general. I will talk more about cultural literacy in just a moment and you will see why I think it's so important.

You can start by picking a book that you've always heard about but never got around to reading. You don't even have to read the book if you don't have time. You can look up notes about it or find a cheat sheet for it. I can't tell you how many lists there are of "Books Everyone Should Read...". Good Reads has a "General Knowledge Books" list.

Years and years ago, I read Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (by  E.D. Hirsch Jr.). That was the first time I started thinking about how I had shorted my own education post-school. Even though I'd had challenges during my school years, there was nothing really stopping me from going further and deeper afterward. I was just too busy working and being young and cute.

Coming up on that Reddit post and then writing this blog post has encouraged me to get another copy of Hirsch's book. I highly recommend it to anyone who agrees with me about life-long learning. Just because we are no longer in school - or see ourselves as "brainy", there is no reason at all not to continue learning. Maybe we wouldn't be in such an awful mess as a nation right now if we... Never mind. That's a whole other blog post!

I guess the main thing I want to get across is that we let things keep us from learning and growing. Shame is a big obstacle. I was always horrible with math but once I had to use math skills in a job that I loved, I got so much better. (Sadly, those skills were the first to go when I got sarcoidosis). What I have learned since my brain decided to be funky is that there should be no shame in going back to the basics to learn anything. My sister bought me a math book for children when I was first laid up in bed. I had nothing else to do so...  These days, when I am curious about something, I will start with the basics - looking for books written "for beginners" or for children. No shame, people. 

These days, with so much information available to so many, there is no excuse not to at least attempt to learn and grow. Barring health and developmental problems, we are only as dumb as we choose to be.

By the way, here is the Amazon author page for Hirsch. I plan to take a look and see what else he's written.

Peace

--Free