A Burning Yearning to Learn

(I wrote this ages ago and I can't really remember what my point was. It needs a conclusion. I guess it's not total shite though so I thought why not publish it...)

People talk about how, through travelling, they have learnt some things about different cultures and gleaned insight about the perspective of people from different parts of the world. I think that this is quite rare and the "travelling" is just a poncey word that means a type of holiday where you move around a bit more and stay in cheaper accomodation (which isn't to say that it isn't fun). Bum-blowing epiphanies seldom happen but, I think, I have, in my time, on occasion, experienced some impression of a different approach to life. One example of this was in Guatemala whilst I was at a language school. For a month I spent four hours of each day in one-to-one Spanish tuition. There was a day early on when I was quite tired and evidently not demonstrating a great deal of application because my teacher asked if I wanted to finish the lesson early. I realised, on reflection, that I had brought with me the same attitude to learning that I had had at school; I treated it as a chore. My teacher could not see this and her logic was compelling: I had started the language course voluntarily, why would I do this if I didn't want to be there? Being asked if I wanted the lesson to finish early hit me amidships; the language school was an institution and, as such, I was using the institutionalised thinking that I had learnt at school. Four hours a day was, in my mind, a rule that could not be disobeyed. But here was a bizarre situation: I was in an environment very similar to school but there of my own volition and free to leave if I felt like it. By turning up for fours a day I felt I was fulfilling some kind of minimum requirement but I was simply going through the motions and where was the point in that? The idea was to learn Spanish, not to achieve a good attendence record.

I think that we use this kind of thinking quite a lot in this Britain. We spend much of time doing things out of some vague sense of obligation. This is a strange way to lead a life. Surely it makes sense to do things because they are necessary or because we want to. To be conducting our lives on the basis of a neuroses picked up at school is unwise and I think the Guatemalans - if this is a national trait - are on to something.

Going to university is a similar situation. There is a popular Facebook group called "Stop putting your hand up in lectures shitbag. Fuck you and your enquiring mind" or something. I'm a university student and I have never asked a question during a lecture. This is partly because the material in lectures is generally introductory and I am too thick to have understood it to the level where I could ask anything useful by the end of the lecture. It's also because I don't want to invoke the wrath of members or sympathisers of the group I mentioned above. However, if a person has a sufficient grasp of the material and is suitably self-assured then I think asking questions is fine. That it annoys so many people that people ask questions during lectures is, I think, symptomatic of the kind of thinking that I was employing whilst I was at the language school. Few people are at university because they have a passion for their chosen subject. For them, the purpose of the degree is to gain some kind of currency to be used with employers. If not that, it is to satisfy their parents. Or it is a response to some notion of maintaining a kind of bouergois respectability. The content of any one lecture is insignificant. Attendence at the lecture is a result of a sense of obligation and that the lecture is stimulating is an irrelevance. Those that ask questions have the right idea, I think. It seems a much better thing to be at university in order to learn. To be there because you want to be; because you enjoy it; because it is what fulfils you at that time in your life.

The trouble is there are plenty of people, I'm sure, who are making themselves heard in lectures for all the wrong reasons. They are doing it to show off or simply to be pretentious arseholes. This, I do not condone. And, I do not think that the position of the person who is irked by question-asking in lectures is utterly indefensible. Being at university for less noble reasons than the question-asker is understandable. Students may realise that they don't know what they want out of life; the universe offers them desolation and it is natural to be stumped for a response. University offers a good oppurtunity to fill in time and not do very much whilst striking at purpose in life through hedonistic means. Stimulating lectures are unnecessary for this. It may have less dignity as a reason for going to university but it is absolutely understandable. In a similar way, I think there is some justification for my attitude at the language school. I was living in a village full of friends that I had met during my travels, we were all gloriously free of responsibilty and working on learning Spanish was the last thing on my mind.