Friday 3 June 2016

READING AND OTHER ACADEMICS RITUALS

Yesterday, in my Structural Analysis class I said to my students the following (after many of them told me that they havent read the textbook on what I have lectured a week before). I said to them,

Academia (university) is a sacred place. Academia is not school, office or workplace but a sacred place.

Therefore, as a sacred place, anyone who enters it, resides inside it, would feel certain vibes. In university it is the VIBE OF KNOWLEDGE.

But where does this vibe come from?

Like other sacred places, the vibe comes from certain rituals. The rituals of academia (hence academics to include both teachers and learners) are:

1. READING

2. THINKING

3. Saying out loud your reading and thinking through DEBATES and DISCUSSIONS

4. DISSEMINATING what you have read, thought, debated and discussed by WRITING and LECTURING

5. READ AGAIN, THINK AGAIN, DEBATE AGAIN, DISSEMINATE AGAIN

These rituals what give the vibe to a university. The more, the higher the vibes. In turn, it is the magnitude of this vibe what differentiates between universities; the higher the better the university will be. And finally, it is the universities that differentiate between nations. The better the universities, the better the nation will be.

So now it is your choice to read or not. It is your choice to create the vibe or not. It is your choice to make your nation a better one or not.

Your choice indeed.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

dear sir,

just to share some thoughts.
http://firdaus-9898.blogspot.my/2016/06/pravda-vitezi.html

I find that reading maths is somehow helpful for my personal life.
even though reading it, requires patience, have to go through the steps one by one.

But at least in this current situation in Malaysia where a lot of bullshit is here and there, I think reading maths, or academic material, even wikipedia, trying to conceive the ideas slowly and painfully, is at least honest.

It is an honest thing to do in life.

Unknown said...

couldnt agree more..say no to spoonfeeding..