The More I Learn...The Less I Know

"The more I learn, the less I know." This was the feeling I had a couple weeks ago when Andrea and I attended the homeschool conference held at the International school where Micah is enrolled. Ok so the statement isn't exactly true in relation to the actual quantity of knowledge stored on my mental hard drive, but it is true when viewed from the perspective of my expanding worldview. By that I mean, many times, exposure to new information opens the realization of my basic ignorance in a given subject. So, when I attend a conference in a field like children's education, I am exposed to a whole set of knowledge, most of which is completely foreign to me. As I listen to the statements made by the presenters and the TED talk video clips we watched, I am blown away as if two tidal waves simultaneously collide on my head, that is the first wave of "This is REALLY, REALLY important stuff!" and the second wave of "Travis you know NEXT TO NOTHING in this field!"

 

I imagine my mind like a huge dimly-lit library. While there are certain sections of the library where the shelves are asked to carry a decent weight in books, but peering down the "Philosophy of Education" stack, or the "Child Development" section, I find the equivalent of only a few flimsy paperbacks thrown haphazardly on the shelf, beyond which I see an endless surface begging to exchange its accumulated dust for real books of knowledge in these fields. Wow, to learn how the mind collects and organizes data…that's fascinating. How amazing it would be to understand the boundary between realistic expectations on a child's developing mind and on the other, pushing him/her to go beyond the basics? I'd love to be able to see the perfect balance between divergent thinking and conformity to a standard. Oh, and the creativity required to inspire artistically-minded children in black-and-white subjects like Math! While exciting, for sure, at the same time, I find it profoundly discouraging. There is much I don’t understand, in fact, I don't even feel I have the tools to process through the subject. I find that the piddley few things I've picked up in my 35 years until now don't even allow me, I feel, engagement into the conversation.

 

I stumbled out of that week excited and wanting to be a part of the homeschool process with Andrea, but terrified at the sharp learning curve ahead of us if we expect to be able to do it with any level of excellence. "The more I learn…the less I know," I suppose it could be better stated, "The more I learn…the more I realize I don't know."