Critical thinking

In a way there's nothing that is "knowledge". Just use the easy thing of what you know about yourself and what others know about you. The rest of "knowledge" is similar. What universities teach you isn't necessarily knowledge, it's tools for you to gather your own knowlege and tools on how to deal with it. Repeating something a teacher has told you isn't a proof of you having learned anything at all, it's just a sign that you have accepted a certain amounts of facts. Whether or not those facts will lead to knowledge is up to you. Sound familiar? Places, dates, names, wars, events, revolutions, political parties, words, words, words. It's all good to have in your memory when you watch Jeopardy, but what does it lead to?

It'd be silly to think that one person can know everything and please everone's desire for the hunt of understanding the web that we would actually call, if not knowledge itself, but close to it. It's easier for a teacher to put out a test and expect his or her own phrases to be repeated, it'd be a bigger task to actually value the other thoughts brought up. Is this why in the academic world repeating well selected words is at a higher value than new ideas? Ideas and the urge to move forward is, ironically, what that world is built upon. Curiosity and creativity are two pillars that shouldn't become hollow and later on collapse.

Just like a poem can mean more than the poet intended the things taught aren't but seeds to be planted in the garden of the mind. We must water those seeds and let them grow into something splendid, and in doing so we can't answer questions in well prepared phrases, we must be humble to the fact that we don't know everything and instead develop a way of thinking that lets more ideas become the fertilizer for our mind garden so we can blossom and later on pick a flower and pass it on to someone else.

I'm not arguing that it's impossible to know things, but everything depends on the angle and what those facts are going to be used for. History is my favorite child for this "Many think that history has been written once and for all - that we already know everything we need to know to understand our past and and future. That is wrong. The picture must constantly be questioned and reevaluated." I think it was Dick Harrison that said it, and it's my translation from Swedish.

Language is another aspect of this. Nothing can be expressed exactly the same in two languages. Simple words like "yes" and "no", surely. But just think how many different things the phrase "Over there" can mean, so, what you're looking for is "over there", you just need to find it depending on your current position.