Monday, June 13, 2011

On reading and education

i love reading. i thank my parents for providing us good education. i say good not best because saying best means to everyone being sent to the most expensive and known school/university. so what does education and this love for reading is all about?

when i was young i was really not into reading. as a kid i grew up as a normal crazy naughty hyper kid. well my parents tolerated that to some extent. then one day, my dad brought home some English novel books. the covers were really interesting then. the only books i knew in those times were my elementary textbooks. i was curios i guess. i already forgot but as i poured pages into pages of those books i started reading them. i can really and actually read words then but understanding the story is not yet getting into me. remember i was young. and then pages over pages i turned them. just blabbering every words. i haven't thought of myself reading silently then. so i finished a chapter after an hour or so. i was happy then. i have forgotten how it goes at that time since only fragments of my memories are just coming back but the first 50 english novel books i read, the unabridged thick webster english dictionary is by my side when i encountered some words not familiar at that time. my grammar was improving and so was my vocabulary. i have completed reading the 10 volumes of The Bible Stories and went on to read it to my youngest sibling to her delight.

i realized that when it comes to something like reading, they only teach you the basic in school. its up to you if you will crave to learn more and expand your horizon. reading opens up a pandora box for me. the knowledge. and yearning to learn and know more. it opens up your mind. you get to know the ideas and views of others. the philosophical and theoretical and scientific explanations are there to some of your questions if you only know how to read (and do some research). and at that time internet was just a baby.

i do not know my motivation(s) why i really loved reading. it just transported me to a different level. it makes me happy. and one thing for sure my communication skills were improved.

education. i valued my education a lot. i was sent to a catholic/exclusive/expensive school where i met some talented persons (instructors, classmates, school workers etc). the application of knowledge is best applied through human interactions and experiences. otherwise i could have just stayed in a cave. and really, good education provides better future in life. the reality is that most companies nowadays checks first how good one's education is before giving them a chance to work with them. its crazy but its true. true enough that not all good schools produce bright people. there are unknown school where education system is fantastic. but it all boils down to one. the person. the person who learns and want good education. one who has motivation and good ambition in life. because for that person if a good school is not possible and financial problem is at hand he will find a way. he knows that there are other ways. he knows because he might have read it somewhere, learn it from someone or it just dawned on him.

this is really a complicated matter to discuss but i am just saying my opinion. this may need a lot of pages to write really but i always like simplicity in everything. and this topic just came out of my mind from nowhere. by the way the book cover i posted is the first book i read. which made me like courtroom drama eventually making me fall in love with mr. grisham's work.