Free Risky is the New Safe by Randy Gage Page A

future still lies in education—just not in the way we know it now .
    Because I never finished high school, I’ll admit my experience with formal education is quite limited. When I was 30 years old, I took some college courses for about a year and a half to keep myself challenged. I was amazed at how little college actually prepares you for the real world—and I was incredulous that it seems to follow the same model of high school and primary school: It programs you with what to think, instead of teaching you how to think .
    Higher education still leads you to believe that learning is about memorizing facts, which I think is actually the least important element in education. The most essential areas relevant to education in the new economy will be:
Curiosity
Discipline
Discernment
Contrarianism
    Let’s look at each of these in greater detail.
Curiosity
    It shouldn’t come as a surprise that curiosity is important to a good education. This is what creates the passion for learning. The most intellectually developed people are also the most curious. A guy named Einstein once said, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” And he seemed to be a pretty bright fellow.
    If you want to grow and develop, you must maintain your childlike curiosity about the world around you, because curiosity drives us to knowledge. However, being curious is just the beginning. You also need the second trait we mentioned . . .
Discipline
    Casual curiosity ignites the spark of learning and leads you to investigate ideas and topics that have surface interest for you. But any learning of real substance requires discipline. It will require you to go deeper and study subjects that don’t seem as intriguing at first, but truly make you think.
    I have a CD series on the great philosophies of the world. I have another one of the principles of the Objectivist philosophy. They both give me a headache, literally. When I listen to them, I have to pause and replay, stop and look up words in the dictionary, or just take a breather to process what I just heard so that often I actually do get a headache.
    But that’s the good kind of headache, the one that comes from stretching your brain around new concepts, learning new vocabulary, and developing new thought processes. These things are the sure signs of growth and enlightenment.
    But just being exposed to enlightening material is not enough. You must employ the third trait from the list . . .
Discernment
    What a lost art this is today. So many people have worthiness and self-esteem issues that they desperately look for others to tell them what to think. This takes away the pressure of having to make decisions, discern truth from fiction, and actually think for themselves.
    But you have to do better . . .
    When you are exposed to new information, you must process it first through your powers of discernment. This is the ability to form opinions by objectively evaluating the information presented to you. This facility is what allows you to make good judgments. But that doesn’t happen if you blindly accept all the information presented to you. Intelligent people realize everything presented to them (including this book) comes shaded with some bias. And that leads us to the last very critical trait of enlightened learning . . .
Being a Contrarian
    Because sometimes even discernment isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to see the world in a totally different way than the rest of the herd.
    The reality is most people today are automatons, blindly following the herd through the motions of life. They are merely existing—not living. Most people today are not happy, healthy, or successful. So why would you want to think like them? You don’t. Or you’ll end up like them. So don’t be afraid to be contrary to what everyone seems to be doing. In fact, be afraid if you’re not. Not only is risky the new safe in the new economy; weird is the new