Learning is boring until you go to the moon
My phone uses the GPS system to help me find my way around. Like all of us now, I never get lost or arrive late anymore. So I am very grateful for this new improvement.
The technology seems so evident that I don't even bother understanding how it works. The thought of learning such a complicated subject rebuffs me.
It made me wonder why it is easy to assimilate some things at times and difficult at other occasions? I thought about this while I was driving, stuck in a traffic jam.
To learn how the GPS works it would be hard for me because I don't have the desire, not the necessity to learn. I could study it, I suppose. But it would take me a long time to understand its underlying process. And the thought of it bores me.
Why learn when one can use the system without the necessity to explain it?
On the other hand, let's imagine one morning one wakes up and jumps out of bed excited because one decides to undertake a trip to the moon.
You choose to build a lunar shuttle to take you there. Why not? No one has returned to the planet since the seventies. Rocket launchers are readily available now and become cheaper by the day. We already went there, so we know the way.
The number one issue is to land softly and safely on the surface. There is no GPS system around the moon, so it is hard to ensure an accurate landing.
Thus, several questions arise? And one of them is how to develop a reliable GPS system one can use on the moon.
In this case, sciences become inadvertently rich in solutions, and one becomes an expert in all GPS systems because there is a sudden need to solve a problem.
Could this be the tipping point for active learning? Does one only study with focus when there is an immediate necessity to address an obstacle, and which may impair the realization of a dream?
Thus, before learning anything and ensure proper training shouldn't one ask these three questions: "What do I want to achieve today? Why do I want to do this? And what knowledge must I acquire?".
It seems, as in the latter case, that education is exciting and enriching whenever a higher goal motivates us. As that of going to the moon.
As I read or heard somewhere: "The intention precedes intelligence."