Defining Knowledge

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." - Albert Einstein

This quote from Einstein is by far one of my favorite quotes of all time. When I tell this to people, they usually ask me why I aspire to be a teacher if I don't believe that knowledge is important. To that I say, "You must not understand the quote in it's entirety." Einstein does not rule out the importance of knowledge, but rather states that imagination is simply more important.

As an individual who will soon be in a teaching position, I must evaluate what is most important for me to teach. Obviously, as I would think, learning is about gaining knowledge in some facet. So how do I have students obtain the information and skills they need to become more learned individuals. Do I simply regurgitate facts to a crowd of wide-eyed 10-year-olds or do I promote an environment where the students will explore learning to gain that knowledge? I would hope the later to be true in my own classroom; where students can have a wealth of knowledge and are not limited in their imagination which creates an expansive and beautiful world for them to live in. Yet still I feel that knowledge need be defined more if I am to stand by the word of Einstein.

One definition of knowledge, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is "the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association." This, right here, is a perfect example of why I love education and learning. Watching the spark of a new experience on anyone is a fantastic feeling as it is, let alone, a child, someone who has a vast amount to learn and experience, is such a delight and wondrous thing to behold. Imagine, if you can, the first time you tasted your favorite food. That moment was such a happy and delightful thing to you, so much that you placed a GIGANTIC smiley-face sticker on it and filed it away as "favorite". Now, as a teacher, seeing that happen in a sense of greater understanding of the world around to the student, there has to be such a feeling of elation and self-worth, providing that experience for the young mind at hand. In the past two weeks, I definitely hope that there were obvious sparks you could see in both myself and my fellow classmates. I was constantly learning, through our lectures, speakers, readings, and field trips. There is now more in my pool of experience and association that I can pull from with familiarity and confidence that I do possess that skill, ability, or information. Simply put, I have more knowledge than previously.

As Einstein puts it, "knowledge is limited." But where does that knowledge end? I would highly doubt anyone has ever traveled to the end of the rainbow and seen a pot of knowledge sitting there, consumed the rest of that knowledge, and then become all-knowing. Or better yet, fallen off a suspended bridge of knowledge, as there was nothing else to learn. That doesn't seem quite probable, at least not in this lifetime. Humans are capable of having unique and amazing abilities to recall facts and images. Take Stephen Wiltshire for example. He is an individual with autism, who, after one 20-minute helicopter ride over New York City, drew an 18 foot picture of the city from memory. That is an incredible feat for a man of flesh and bone. He has, essentially, the same mind as nearly 7 billion other humans, but there are less than a handful of those 7 billion who can do anything even remotely close to what Stephen has accomplished. One might say his knowledge is far greater than mine, but still not at 100% of what he could know.

The analogy I made in class that pertains to this quote was about giving a child LEGOs. That something I'd like to touch upon a bit more. I feel that both handing a child instructions to build a castle and letting them run free with their imagination to build that same castle are equally as important of skills to have. However, as the quote from Einstein says, that knowledge is limited. You can only follow the rules to an extent, but without those limitations, there is nothing stopping the child from putting a door or window that wasn't once there in to their castle.

I guess as I look more in to it, the less limited I think knowledge actually is. I don't fully know what Einstein had intended his meaning to be, but as it is, knowledge is not completely obtainable. By this, I mean that there will always be an experience you have not yet had and even if you were to know everything, there will be more revealed in time that we, at one point, did not previously know.