Introduction
In the last few decades, the literacy rate is gradually increasing in India from 43.57% in 1981 to 74.04% in 2011. This shows that the minds of people have drastically changed towards education and their understanding of its impact in one’s life. Hence, literacy has been seen as a panacea to all problems a person faces in life.
As it is common fact that in all the fields of development, there would be a few jargons that are supposed to be misinterpreted, in education also there are many terminologies which may tend to confuse a layman. In fact, it may mislead the person towards the achievement of education and bring disaster in life.
The objective of this writing is to make the basic terms like knowing and learning clear to everyone.
Studying and Learning
The term ‘studying’ means knowing some new information through formal education. It deals with identifying things in terms of shape, name, color, smell, taste, etc., and recalling them to apply when they are required.
Whereas, learning means assimilating what we come to know. The one that you learn becomes part of you not as memory but patter of your very thinking, speaking and behavior.
The course of study is limited or time bound whereas learning happens at every moment of wakeful life and lasts till our last breath.
For example, what you are now is not your qualification. The subject content that you studied in schools and colleges have been erased by the time. The way you think, speak and act is the accumulation of your filtered learning that you have gathered through life exposure. It is all about discriminating things and actions into the right and wrong and finally carry certain conclusions as your belief systems. So, learning means not remembering but understanding.
What is knowing?
Knowing always precedes understanding. So, it is a must to understand what knowing means and how it happens. The science of knowing is called ‘epistemology’. The primary knowing starts with image and sound. Any language in the world evolved only in this manner. The very alphabet is the combination of both the image and sound. We call this combination as ‘signifier’ and the meaning associated with any word is called ‘signified’ in the study of linguistics.
The same can be applied with any ‘thing’ in the world that can be smelled, tasted, seen, touched and heard. The characteristics of any object are called signifier and the mental image/concept associated with it is signified.
This is how we know the things of the world for the first time. In later stage, after accumulating lots of information in memory, we start grouping with different categories. For example, a child tastes bitter gourd, candy and tamarind. The taste gets registered in its brain. Later, when it tastes sugar cane, it compares with candy’s taste and groups them as sweet. So, comparison enriches the knowing with different grouping systems. In terms of concepts, the same grouping becomes beliefs.
Limitations in Knowing
The beauty of knowing concrete objects becomes complex when it relies only on the sensual abilities. Mirage is an example for the complexity. But, knowing concepts and ideas are dependent on the limitations of a language when it is expressed. Because, the words either in print form or sound form never carry the meaning. The meaning lies in the minds of the reader or listener. The role of a language is very much vital in one’s understanding and misunderstanding of the world.
Beyond the Limitations
But human intelligence is beyond knowing and understanding. The latter two depends the five senses with the presence of mind to collect worldly information and share with others. The other dimension of the mind, the unexplored is not realized by almost the entire humanity except a few. When the mind becomes absolutely still or motionless, we can go beyond the functional mind and become the universal mind which is called ‘oneness’.
Rajan Thirumalai
Image Credit : Pixabay.com
