Ramblings of a Lifelong Learner

Ramblings of a Lifelong Learner

When my daughter commented, after examining the things I brought from vegetable market, that I had bought lime and not lemon, I learnt the difference between the two. She wanted fully ripe fruit and what I purchased was raw ones, good for pickles. Though I am 76, it is no age to cease learning: it had to happen at that moment. That’s it.

My father was a good English teacher. He used to comment that I was capable of making four spelling errors in a word of three letters – by adding an extra letter to it. How to make six spelling mistakes in a word of five letters? cycle --> saikel

I am very poor in mathematics – arithmetic, to be specific. Fortunately, in a mathematics exam, even if you make mistakes in many steps in solving a question, if the final answer is incorrect, it is taken as only one mistake and you are penalized just once by not getting any marks for it.

This reminds me of a Tamil Teacher’s experience. In good old days, Englishmen, who were posted as collectors, were required to exhibit (not acquire) certain minimum knowledge of the local language of the region they were posted in. Home tutors were engaged who had to certify in this regard. Once, a teacher asked such a student to write the Tamil word for cow. The student wrote ‘aadu’ in Tamil while the correct answer is ‘maadu’. The teacher gave 50% marks and passed him.

The essential thing to note here is that almost everyone with above average intelligence keeps learning something or the other all the time. Learning need not be formal. It may be just experience based. The newly wedded husband learns quickly when and where to keep his mouth shut. The wife learns how to hide her true feelings and to fake orgasm. Employee learns how to smile at silly jokes of his boss. Let me stop trivializing the concept of Lifelong Learning. It is a lot more than what I am  blabbering here. If I can fool Google to index my blog post under Lifelong learning, I have achieved my goal.