Knowledge is a hard thing to measure. I mean it’s not like you can say ‘Oh yes, I have 100 litres of knowledge in my brain right now,’ because that would be weird. Some people choose to measure knowledge by making competitions to see who is the smartest in any given subject. The winner gets the title of being smart while everyone else goes home empty-handed. I mean, who needs other people to tell you how much you’re worth? Google says knowledge is ‘facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject’. I don’t agree. I believe knowledge has no solid form. There is no smartest person in the world because everyone lacks in something. Just because you get A*s or over 90% in all your exams doesn’t make you a smart person. Just because you know a lot of facts doesn’t make you a smart person. Just because you know all the right things to say doesn’t make you a smart person.
School practically separates kids that are ‘more able’ from the rest because they want to improve the name of the school, not because they genuinely care, no matter how much teachers like to tell me otherwise. There are so many kids that would ‘die’ just to be considered smart and be put in this corrupt system, created to just toy with the minds of youths, in order for them to feel special. We spend years of our childhood in school, learning things we probably won’t even remember by the time we leave the school gates for good. We spend years trying to soak in information, being forced down our throats, only to receive letters/numbers telling us what we are supposedly worth. The school doesn’t take into consideration that a majority of us have other issues that could affect our end grades i.e. health or family life. We are just forced to suck it up and carry on. We learn what we are told to, handed a curriculum from the minds of the corrupted. We can’t complain because to those in power, we are not fully developed to understand that the education system is put in place to ‘help us’.
We say we are advancing as a race in terms of technology and what not, yet we are moving backwards in terms of actually being humane and actually using our brains. We say we are better than animals but animals aren’t the ones polluting the earth and cause an unnecessary ruckus on the earth. What makes humans different from animals is that we are quite stupid. We kill over such trivial things; let our own go hungry while we eat in excess, segregate and bring down others so we feel better about ourselves. Instead of using what we know for the greater good, we end up using it for destruction or, my favourite word, corruption. Corruption is found in everything, from the ingredients used in McDonald's chicken nuggets (how sure are we that it is 100% chicken breast) to the leaders of the world (two words; Donald Trump).
We are responsible for the existence of bombs that take away innocent lives. We are also responsible for the use of guns. Is it really necessary for there to be over a hundred different types of guns, all for the same purpose? The so-called reason for the gun to be created was to protect. If this is true, then why is the amount of gun related crimes so high? Why do guns have more than one bullet if the intent is to self-defend? We as a society complain over murders, segregation and prosecution, yet we are the ones responsible for this. Even if we don’t directly commit these vicious crimes, we sit here, literally, and talk about current events but never do anything with what we know. All my rambling comes back to my main point; knowledge is hard to measure. We don’t need exams to tell us what we know because deep down inside we know what kind of people we are. We shouldn’t need to have certain grades to prove that we are worthy of a job; we should be able to prove ourselves by being ourselves.
Knowledge shouldn’t be based on how much you can cram into your brain the night before a big exam. Knowledge should be whether you can use what you know for good use rather than bad. If you know how to help cure cancer, by all means, do it. Rather than use what we know for destruction, we should all be able to be who we want to be (even if your dream is to be a mythical being, i.e. unicorn) rather than what we are told to be. We shouldn’t limit ourselves or others from our or their full potential and maybe, just maybe, we could become a better species on this failing planet.
‘Knowledge has no value unless you put into practice’.
So when will you?
