Sharing Knowledge

Ellen - Winchester, Virginia
Entered on September 8, 2008
Age Group: 18 - 30

When I was younger, I was told something that became the foundation of my desire to teach. At first I thought it was a bit silly, even though it made sense, but I have truly come to believe that knowledge, no matter how profuse or obscure, has very little use if it isn’t shared with someone. I then realized that it not only applied to teaching, but everyday conversation and relationships. Most people don’t think about it that way. They just take their knowledge intake for granted, not realizing what would happen if no one shared that information they just learned.

From a teaching point of view, sharing knowledge is basically a job description in a nutshell. If that wasn’t the purpose for teaching, I think there would be no teachers. When there are no teachers, there are no students and consequently, there is no learning. Without this communication and sharing of knowledge, there would be no musicians for lack of music teachers. Our government would fail because campaigners couldn’t communicate their beliefs and experience. Universities wouldn’t be able to function because people wouldn’t teach. Students wouldn’t get in to universities because they couldn’t show proficiency on SATs and entrance exams. They wouldn’t be able to write the famously dreaded college entrance essays that could decide their future careers. There would be no doctors because no one could teach them how to be doctors. There would be no movies because no one would know how to make them. No one could enjoy a novel, because no one would know how to write or read. No one could enjoy ice cream in the summer, because the process of making it would have been lost with the death of the inventor. On the brighter side, there wouldn’t be religious wars, but that’s because there would be no religion at all. No one would be able to preach their religions, and religion, which sort of holds the whole human race together with hope, wouldn’t exist. No one would be able to communicate their fondness for their families and friends. Teenagers couldn’t say “I love you” to their high school sweethearts If no one did that, relationships wouldn’t even start, let alone mature. Without a need for communicating knowledge, humans may not have evolved to have voices, and there would be no talking or singing. The whole human race may have failed entirely without the fundamental need for knowledge sharing.

This belief makes me want to proactively teach people. I know about music, and I now feel a need to make sure everyone else’s lives are enriched by my knowledge. I want to ensure a future of young and talented musicians, competent in any and every way I can assist them with. I walk away from conversations with the hope that the knowledge I just transferred will be shared in a never-ending chain. Regardless of the knowledge I give people, I know that, because I have given it, it has not been wasted. I know that I have been useful in that the person I have just told about things the psychological aspects of Batman will go on to tell at least one person about it, and their lives will be better for it.

I believe that you need to share everything you learn: that everyone should teach everyone they know every day to get every little bit of use out of the contents of their brain.