On Studying

1.) What are some ways school encourages or discourages a person's desire to learn? What makes some objects in school exciting and stimulating and others boring.

2.) Why do human beings seek knowledge?

For some school is a way to express your knowledge and learn more. There are always new subjects to learn about, but sometimes it is hard to encourage people to actually learn the new information. Teachers try to encourage students to get interested with these topics by playing games, or using alternate teaching methods such as field trips. School can be a great place to learn, but sometimes teachers don’t realize that some of these topics can be very boring, especially if they let them. There is a difference when a teacher stands up in front of the class and lectures without any enthusiasm and no pictures to look at, from a teacher who is actively involved with their class. I have classes that there are topics that are hard to learn and the teacher is not actively engaged with their class to make the topics sound more interesting. On the other hand there are teachers who really think about how the class is really going to react with the topic, and they try to get their class actively involved so that they one retain the information and two they find the class more exciting making the process of learning more fun. One thing that occurs in many of my classes is that the teachers don’t sound as if they themselves were interested making the overall atmosphere a less of a learning environment.

Humans are naturally curious and seek knowledge. It is the reason we wake up at six in the morning and go to school everyday. As Gasset states in his short story, On Studying, that there is really no point to go to school because it is just forced upon us. Gasset later states that, “the desire does not exist unless the thing desired existed earlier, in reality or at least in imagination.”  One has to have the desire to learn in order to gain knowledge. We are constantly at competition with one another and knowledge is one way were we can “outdo” one another. It is assumed that the smartest in our world have already achieved the greatest knowledge, but in reality, we are always learning new things. We are constantly learning more and more and retaining it all, but all that knowledge goes away when we die. We have seen many people in our society that are very smart, but the only way their success in gained is how they apply the gained knowledge. It is seen in our everyday lives, the more knowledge that is applied the better the life. Everyone strives to gain knowledge, because it may lead to a successful and good life.

School is something that broadens your mind and helps you gain knowledge about your past, which in turn helps you with the present and future. This is why we go to school, to gain the knowledge we need for our life skills, and hopefully we will be encouraged from our peers to look deeper into subjects that may not always be appealing to us.