Knowledge and Wisdom
From Eduwiki
To attain knowledge, add things every day, to attain wisdom, remove things every day. We could look at this as an educational context or a religious/spiritual one. Educationally, this is a summarizing of Bloom’s taxonomy: knowledge as the “coarsest” level of knowing; evaluation as the most refined (that is, closest to wisdom). As Mark Twain said, “I would have written a shorter letter if I had had more time.” Achieving high levels of insight (i.e. wisdom) is a process of separating the essential from the inconsequential. In one word: parsimony.
The spiritual take on this is that a Daoist[1], [2] seeker of enlightenment moves to ever more refinement and subtle connection with the world, to the point where they separate entirely from the physical plane.
A way to look at this quote as it applies to our classroom experiences is to understand how wrapped up with "things" most of our students are. Their iPod, snappy shoes, cell-phone text messages, and general social drama are far more important to them than anything you could be teaching them at any given time. Part of our role as teachers to is to try and instill in our students the critical thinking skills necessary to pare down all the intake of knowledge they consciously and subconsciously engage in on a daily basis into a selective learning process so that, through the elimination of unnecessary information, they become more "wise" in the use of the knowledge they actually end up using on a regular basis. This follows the religious theme mentioned earlier because for students to be successful there is a necessity that they learn to not be so caught up in their small world-view where what they "have" is a basis for value rather than what they are or what they can be.
An analogy in the world of math would be the use of multiplication in place of over-extended situations of addition. By "wisely" making a choice to use a knowledge process of multiplication, an addition problem like 5+5+5+5+5, which might otherwise be time consuming and potentially difficult, becomes relatively simple. In this way, wisdom has culled an easier, shorter, and ultimately "wiser" way of doing a certain task.
"Those who speak do not know and those who know do not speak." Lao Zu
“There is a thing inherent and natural, which existed before heaven and earth. Motionless and fathomless, It stands alone and never changes; It pervades everywhere and never becomes exhausted. It may be regarded as the Mother of the Universe. I do not know its name. If I am forced to give it a name, I call it Tao, and I name it as supreme.” Lao Zu
From Wikipedia: Lao Tzu search.
A closer look at the tradition of science and philosophy of China may reveal the obsession in the TAO tradition to comprehend the underlying forces that create the manifest reality.
This search for the Source and its movements is clearly reveled in the I Ching which studies the cyclic nature of manifestation and its stages. This was used for prediction and guidance in social affairs as well as the practical actions such as agriculture. Therefore, the man who could see below the surface of things possessed wisdom and was valuable to society. This experience is essentially mystical and meta-physical and is not the subject of public education. In our culture we seek to predict by science and history and see the world as a straight graph of progress. However, we can begin to introduce this important concept through history lessons of eastern cultures, reflective writing on quotes such as the above and discussion about the creative process. The human experience is that truly relevant creative ideas arise from an unknown source “the muse” and then enter our consciousness for language framing. I have found the best way to get this point across to students is to point out that nothing can be painted or written with our first having a blank paper. Another analogy is that no music exists without first a silence to fill.
