An open letter to Mass Education - 2

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Your wrong assumptions and the right ones you need to make

1) Learning is a natural skill (I've been learning from the day I was born and from when I opened my eyes)

You will notice that we're born natural learners. I don't need to learn how to learn. I am already able to learn – that's exactly why you are able to teach me! And I've already learnt more than is obvious. If I wasn't able to, I would be a child who's a lot more helpless with my own existence in so many ways. If all people like me weren't naturally able to learn the moment they're born, the first ever human beings would have died helpless the moment they were born!

Considering that you have learnt much indeed, you should just be helping me along the way. Prod, but don't push it. Facilitate and don't impose. Then, if you really want to see some magic at work, do your bit, stand back and watch the magic (and don't let your overenthusiasm in happiness over my achievements kill it).

2) No one's born an idiot

Think twice about the what you'd have me learn as well. I'd rather script my own journey. I, like you, also respond to the world as I live in it. We do live in the same world, don't we? The mantra for the human race has always been adapt or die (by the way, that wasn't supposed to sound as tragic as it does today). It was supposed to be the happiest, healthiest way of existence – no holds barred, one-on-one link with the world that keeps anything you engaged with (including learning) as real as it can be. No one's ever an idiot, at least not when they're actually making their first steps into the world as it opens up for them. And if you allow me to script my own little world of choices, you won't have to apply ridiculous standards of what ought to be learnt and what ought not. Your default standards show that my assumption about them is perfectly right.

3) Learning comes in more sizes and shapes that any set system will ever recognise

Remember that some people learn in different ways from the others, but learn we do, nonetheless. Each one learning at their own pace beats your randomly historically selected system by leaps and bounds. You can't skip any of that to make the best of indivudual learning abilities. Those are what make the world interesting. Those make you want to get up and contribute to it in a way that you feel proud of yourself for it. They make a day worthwhile. They make life happy. They help us all live together.

If you would like to prepare me for anything at all, please teach me to learn. Teach me how to process, analyze, relate, observe and adapt. Just like you show a man how to fish, and not just give a man already caught fish.

Make sure you don't obsess about what I'm learning about as much as much as the process I'm learning with . If we stick with the process, I'll learn to get all the knowledge as I need for the rest of my life when I need it. Understand that it's not about what I'm learning about but the very fact that I'm learning. It's about how my mind is trained, the more I engage myself with the world around me in learning - preferably something I like and see as useful, or at least interesting.

Learning is a continuum. It doesn't end at any point. Please don't make it like it does.

Remember: It's not about you, it's about me. So focus!