Knowledge or Database

Sitting today at work I came across some general based GK questions online and to my surprise, I could not answer most of the question. Thinking regarding why I was never able to remember anything regarding facts or data, it suddenly hit me that education in my life has always been based on facts and data rather than a practical understanding of the subject. In fact, this is what is fed us from the starting of our schooling. Kids are molded in such a way, that they are introduced to mugging up data and entering in their brains since day one of actual schooling. Before that whatever you learn is purely based on discovering and exploring for your self such as colors, shapes, and letters by linking to your senses. Therefore it can be said that to learn you have to link data to something else which you have practically felt for. In kindergarten as mentioned children understand letters by their sound, color names by their blend and shapes with their edges. While understanding these, humans feel in their own way for these shapes, colors, and letters and accordingly and easily associates with things around in the environment for understanding. E.g. I see a circle, and I associate it with fat as it is huge and has no edges. At the same time, it even reminds me of pizza, something that you have a lot, then it makes you fat (lol not necessarily). In the same way, black is recognized by me as a dark presence and the evil lurking as it gives me a powerful and dangerous feeling (for many it might be uneasy or scared feeling).

Knowledge is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as: facts, information and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of the subject. (http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/knowledge) Whereas Data or database is defined as: facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis or a structured set of data held in a computer, especially one that is accessible in various ways (http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/data?q=data, http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/database?q=database). Let's take some examples of all our subjects in school:

Subject	Data	Knowledge
English	Falling is a verb	Falling is a verb because it describes an action and you see it, and you hear everyone say the ball was falling and not the ball was fell/ fall/ felled.
Science	Human body is made of trillions of cells and contain our DNA structure which consist of genetic information	Discovering the types of cell and its components under a microscope. This genetic information of the DNA can be seen in a human’s child who would resemble and behave to a certain extent as the human and would have similar genetic alterations in the body as the human
Math	2, 4, 6, 8, 10 are even numbers	Even is anything that has no irregularities, is fair and equal to each other and balanced. Therefore these numbers they can be equally divided whereas numbers like 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 can’t be divided equally and therefore are odd numbers.
History	1.      India gained independence on 15th Aug. 1947 from the British rule. 2.      The Nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 during the 2nd World War by a B-29 bomber was the Mk-II “Fat Man”	1.      Talking in figures, Indian history still does not have an account of the total people who died since the noble cause of independence was started. (As an individual history does not mean anything to me. I still don’t know how to feel about this. History has never explained why the British behaved this way in the first place.) 2.      History does not look into the point of how such a powerful bomb was made during such a year and what America and the maker of the bomb thought and experienced after they annihilated a region with nuclear power.
Geography	Shanghai is located in the world map at coordinates 31°11′N  121°29′E	I have been to Shanghai and it is in China, near Korea and Japan and therefore falls on the south-east of Europe and north of the Philippines and is part of the Asian countries.
Art	Red + Green = Yellow Green + Blue = Cyan Blue + Red = Magenta / Purple Yellow + Cyan + Magenta = White	After actually mixing these colors we can now identify which primary color to add more or less with each other to produce different blends in colors such as sky blue, orange, maroon, pink, brown, violet etc. Seeing and understanding the intensity of the colors we understand how to produce a color.

Explaining all of these we understand that it is highly how you take this data and analyze it to get the realization of what is meant by that data. Gravity has been and will always be there on earth. But it was Isaac Newton who discovered gravity in 1650 sitting under an apple tree by the falling apple from the tree. We see it then can analyze it and produce positive results out of these facts or data is knowledge. Now we believe and accept gravity as a universal truth, but as long as we are on earth. If a fact is provided that there are other intelligent life forms out there in this galaxy, would you be able to accept it? Maybe not because there is no sound analysis of the fact. No one has experienced any other life forms out there.

They say knowledge needs to be passed from generation to generation, that’s why we have schools. But schools are very rigid and have recently in this day and age become highly commercial. Data is provided in schools, not knowledge. Knowledge requires a lot of patience and perseverance. But we have 12 months to mug up 12 different subjects as it is provided to us. People who provide their research work and thesis use up to 1 – 5 years or maybe more. So people get the realization easily and faster, but some need ages to get it. So now we can say that knowledge depends on 4 steps or 4 requirements of a human:

1.      The attentiveness or intensity of a human to observe a particular object/ fact/ principle/ action etc. (imagine a reflex of a sort)

2.      The rate at which the human can grasp or understand the nature of that object/ fact/ principle/ action etc.

3.      The time taken to link it to real life experience and understand the whole practicality of the object/ fact/ principle/ action etc.

4.      Applying that object/ fact/ principle/ action in real life in other different situations with the possibility of altering it as per the situation.

Many have argued that what good is knowledge when you can’t even explain it. I’ll put it very simply for you; “Action Speak Louder Than Words”. A person who has the knowledge and can’t act on it or does not use it does not know the value of that knowledge and would lose it sooner or later. Whereas a person who can act on it and use that knowledge would know the value of that knowledge and would never forget such knowledge. It may not be necessary that a person who can explain a fact actually has knowledge of it. It might be confusing for a couple of you as you might think “Gee, he just mentioned that the person has the knowledge but now he says he does not have the knowledge…..What is he trying to say?”. The simple answer to that is, knowing the value of a particular knowledge is also knowledge.

I can’t say more as knowledge is something people choose to learn and use according to their want. This can or can’t be affected by bias and opportunity. Sometimes given the opportunity for gaining the knowledge you might still not pursue it because of bias or the complete opposite that you might want to gain knowledge on something but you were never given the opportunity. Usually, children are highly biased and therefore do not understand the value of the knowledge. It is something that can’t be forced upon them as a child’s mind is highly clouded with imagination. The only thing that can be done is of finding out ways of linking their imagination with the reality of the knowledge. Unfortunately for this, parents have to be much more imaginative and creative in finding out ideas which sadly they tend to not have being in such an age where they only see reality. Once done children will not only achieve the particular knowledge they want to acquire but at the same time dig for more knowledge and information. It is highly necessary that after they have discovered the knowledge they are given continuous opportunities to use this acquired knowledge in imaginative and creative ways as they are more dominated by distraction as they have a shorter attention span and if the knowledge does not live up to their imaginative side they will lose interest.

   

This article can be read by you as a story and kept as data or you could analyze and convert it into knowledge which is entirely up to you. If you have understood the meaning of this article and know this can be used in other situations I’m happy to say that I gift you with my years of knowledge, I have achieved through understanding my environment.