AES112 A Lifetime of Learning

People think of education as something that they can finish.

And what’s more, when they finish, it’s a rite of passage.

You’re finished with school, you’re no more a child,

And therefore anything that reminds you of school; reading books, having ideas, asking questions, that’s just kid’s stuff.

Now you’re an adult, you don’t do that sort of thing anymore.

You have everybody looking forward to no longer learning, and you make them ashamed afterward of going back to learning.

If you have a system of education using computers, then anyone, any age, can learn by themselves and continue to be interested.

There’s no reason why you should stop at a given age.

It seems to me, that when it’s time to die (and that will come to all of us), there would be a certain pleasure in thinking that you had utilized your life well,

That you learned as much as you could, gathered in as much as possible of the Universe, and enjoyed it. 

There’s only this one universe and only this one lifetime to try and grasp it.

And while it is inconceivable that anyone can grasp more than a tiny portion of it, they can at least do that much.

What a tragedy to just pass through and get nothing out of it.

-Isaac Asimov-