“Just be yourself” [Archives:2005/855/Community]
By Muad Ali Dabwan
[email protected]
No matter how much you spend so long as you are sure of the satisfying result. This is what all real knowledge-seekers and noble men search. If they did not get what they have in mind by a particular means they search another. Sometimes, this means is a main factor for their intellectual development and they feel that they cannot do without it. In other words, they sense that they are obliged to carry out all the orders of that main informational source, not because of the right information that they get but for other considerations we will get to know.
The most outstanding example is the student-teacher relationship. The system of teaching in Yemen, and almost in the whole Arab world, falls into two stages: the first stage is the primary-preparatory-secondary-school phase. In this stage we find that the student is no more than an information receiver. He does not argue with his teachers about anything because he tries to get as many pieces of information as possible. However, there are some students who argue, but not with a logical reason.
Some of them ask questions because they do not understand their essence, and that, of course, is not an argument. Rather, it is a doubt or question that he or she wants to get correctly. An argument is some thing that you say with full mouth, confirmed heart, convincing speech, and concentrating mind. No one can stand the fire of your speech if you are arguing with the above features.
The second stage starts from joining college upwards. In this stage we find that the student has grown intellectually. His mind is broaden and his understanding is clearer.
He thinks over everything and expresses himself in the best way. He squeezes the idea in his mind, turns it into considerably piercing thought, then brings it fresh into existence in the form of persuading words of magical touch and charming impact on the audience's ears.
He can listen to his professors at college and argue with them convincingly. If he could not convince his professor because that his professor is a dictator, at least he can convince a whole nation, a whole world that is right. This means that, in most cases, such a student can excel his teacher as did Aristotle.
He excelled his teacher, Plato, but the Aristotelian respect to learning and to the teacher pushed him to say: “Plato is dear to me, still dearer the truth”. So the truth should be dearer than any thing else to us being real knowledge-seekers, seeking the truth, and truth only.
Unfortunately, Yemeni-college students suffer from suppression of expression. They are creative and there is “one genius person inside them that seeks to come out” but there is no way, because of the professor's suppression. They restrict the student to some handout, not all of them, though, and they want the student to copy all that handout on the exam papers.
They do not accept anything else out of that handout. In this way, the creative student finds himself intellectually paralyzed and cannot do but what he is asked to. This is how the creative become uncreative, the rich poor, and the meaningful meaningless.
To sum up, the path of learning is always risky and we find what is good and what is bad, so we have to choose for ourselves what is forever best for us. The effect of our instructors on us should be a short-term one from which we take the good things only so that we can shape our own independent personality.
Also the professors should be humble and allow students to express themselves in their own way for the ships cannot go when they are anchored, and at last, the evaluation is theirs. If not so, then be sure that the student would be no more than a copy of the original and as “the copy falls short of the original”, as stated Plato, the student would be a distorted copy of his instructor that is of no avail to the society in which he or she lives, nor can they “trust themselves”, the main factor that one needs to be a creative person.
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[archive-e:855-v:13-y:2005-d:2005-06-30-p:community]
