Knowledge vs Wisdom

For many young people (and some not-so-young) May and June are the most stressful months of the year. It is the time of year when all their accumulated knowledge, gained by hard work in classroom or lecture theatre or library, is tested. And on the results of those exams, their entire futures often depend.

It seems so unfair that our academic year is structured to end in the Summer, although I understand why it does: in former times, children had to be available during the Summer months to help with the Harvest.

But it is so hard to have to be indoors, either revising, or in an exam, when outside the sky is blue, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and there are so many fun things they would rather be doing. I can remember sitting my O and A levels in a sweltering, airless gym, wishing I could be anywhere else.

Looking back across the many years since then, I wonder at how little of the knowledge and facts I crammed into my brain in those days has come in useful in later life (except in pub quizzes!). Admittedly, I am eternally grateful to Mr. Griffith-Jones, the English teacher who passed on his love of good literature, but otherwise, not much else has had any lasting meaning for me, or influence on me.

It makes me wonder whether we are teaching our children the right things in school. I think that perhaps there is too much emphasis on gaining knowledge, on the accumulation of facts, and not enough on learning the important lessons of life, through gaining wisdom.

Perhaps wisdom cannot be learned through study, but only through the experiences of our lives. Wisdom is more about being awake, about paying attention to what is going on around us. Wisdom is more a way of living in the world; of responding to it, following the best that we know. it is about working out what we believe is right and good and true, and then trying to live wholeheartedly, with all of ourselves, as Brene Brown would say.

There are many great teachers of wisdom around, if we could only learn to wake up and pay attention to them. We may learn wisdom by reading the words of wise men and women, or by listening to the worship leader in church or chapel on a Sunday; but I think that a surer route is through our own life experiences.

There is nothing to beat actually experiencing something to teach us the wisdom it holds. For example, a child can be told repeatedly that fire burns, but it is only when she sticks her finger in the candle flame that she learns.

The opportunities to gain wisdom are all around us - in the wonders of Creation, in our interactions with one another, and in the things we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste.

Let us resolve to be awake and pay attention.