What is worth knowing?
Currently, I am a student at SUNY New Paltz trying to obtain a degree in Second Language Education with a focus in Bilingual education. Although I have not had the opportunity to administer my own class, I want to teach my future students that I am planting a seed into their brains. It is up to the students to not just take everything they hear or read as true but view everything with a critical lens.
This question was presented to us in our Issues of Literacy for Diverse Learners as an exercise. This question was difficult to answer but I took the approach to imagine my brain as a blank slate, what is worth knowing if I had to start over?
At times we forget how important the “little” things in life are until one day you wake up and there gone. So when I begin to think about all that I know, all that I have yet to discover, it makes it hard to think of what knowledge is worth my knowing.
To begin, before considering anything, it is important for one to know that we are important and although we are one person, we have made a difference in this world.
History is important to know. Like the Egyptian sankofa symbol it represents looking at your past to understand your future. We have to learn from our mistakes and not repeat them but instead, building toward a greater future.
The following are other ideas and thoughts about what is worth knowing...
- Our roots
- Race- which plays a major role in our society today
- As stated, Mark Twain “Etiquette requires us to admire the human race.”
- What is there to admire about the human race when others like our leaders don’t even respect or follow what they preach.
- How to interact with our environment
- Culture
- To how communicate with each other
- Spirituality
- Research- on going
- Diseases and there cures
- Tradition
- Psychology and how the human mind works
- Family health history
- Exercise and eating healthy
- Global warming and human impact on the environment
- Current news and issues in this country and around the world
- And last, but not the least…knowing about ones profession and ongoing research in that area
- The process of educating oneself is never a finished product that is why it is important to always either attend classes or workshops even if we think we know it all.
But before I am done, I will end with this question, “What in this world could we do without knowing?”
