My unlettered grandmother taught herself to be multi-lingual
AS a medical teacher, I endeavour to inculcate a three-pronged approach to imparting the golden goose of virtues within the sphere of life-long learning.
Life-long learning does much more than prepare students for a job, although it realises that too. While supporting mundane goals, life-long learning boosts mindset independence for autonomous pursuit of knowledge, transforming facets of human experience.
My grandmother gifted me this priceless instrument in human education, in the most unusual circumstances, through emulation and admiration.
She, who did not have much formal education, left a monumental legacy steering generations that followed in her footsteps. Initially unlettered, she quickly self-educated and bloomed into a multi-lingual, versatile lady.
The motivation to educate herself stemmed from nifty perseverance for self-enquiry and self-discovery. Through her private reading, she developed an awesome sense of inclusiveness coupled with an earnest enthusiasm to unearth another’s multiracial or multicultural philosophy, ethos and all. She self-trained to keep the learning alive.
In my teachings, I oft reflect on her as I impart the first exercise towards stimulating the keenness to discover by oneself. It is a valuable skill to develop through fortitude and practice.
The impetus for life-long learning is critical thinking, which together endows students with a power package of discrimination (of what one reads or hears), the resolve (for voracious reading) and compulsion (to self-examine before acceptance).
Older citizens not spared the benefits of this either. By seeking knowledge, the hopelessness and loneliness of retirement vanishes. There is very little time to dissipate as the pulse of knowledge then becomes accessible to one and all.
Subject fascination is its important ingredient and this can be quite a challenge when the topic is mundane, dry or technical.
Fascination galvanises the mind and leads to potent question-andanswer sessions, and time for more effective exercise.
Experience is another component. This, of course, is easier done in a clinical subject put to rigorous practice at the bedside.
However, the necessity of the experience cuts across disciplinary distinctions because knowledge is knowledge in any form and all knowledge deserves the experience.
Involvement, practice and execution are mandatory search patterns that find their way to the brain’s amygdala (memory), switching to lasting and retrievable modes when necessary.
Knowledge and marketability often go hand in glove. One becomes reliably marketable when one is knowledgeable and capable of portraying it in a chosen field.
A knowledgeable person dabbles in dynamic conversation, enriched by self- experience or shared understanding of others. Versatility in communication style is immediately tangible in the well-read seeker.
A consistent consequence of lifelong learning is the habit of avid reading. Celebrating human differences through inclusive and constructive critique prepares for non-judgmental intercultural and interracial assessments.
Neither envious nor condemnatory, it inspires awe and admiration towards human variation. Such individuals often take pride in heritage as that only serves to further nationalistic sentiment.
In the plethora of the Malaysian Family, mere interracial and intercultural understanding per se is insufficient for effective amalgamation to forge ahead.
The potpourri of intercultural and interracial variation must be celebrated and reinforced, and not merely accepted, by citizens who passionately self-educate towards greater understanding of thy neighbour.
The noble concept of the Malaysian Family must take great pride in its people who are vested with potential for constructive critique and all its features, significantly contributing to the nation’s solidarity and life-long productivity.