Every Place Is a School

School refers to an institution for educating children or an organization which provides instructions in a particular discipline. On the other hand, it can be a group of people like writers, philosophers, or artists sharing like-minded ideas or methods. It can be a North American informal expression meaning a university; or even a group gambling together can be called a “poker school.”

At Oxford University, the hall in which final examinations are held is also called a school. For our own benefit we can expand the definition of school in a much broader way. I look at it this way for the sake of my own attentiveness- a school doesn’t necessarily have to be an institution; it can be any place where we are being educated. When I say “being educated” I mean the process of giving or receiving the systematic instruction of all positive things for life. I consider every place a school since I love to be in a constant process of receiving knowledge for my mind and soul from the many things around me. To increase our power of reasoning and judgment, to generally prepare ourselves intellectually for our grand mature life, we need to keep educating ourselves more so than just academically. All we
need to have is an observant mind with an indomitable aspiration for learning. There is nothing wrong in finding pedagogics everywhere.

One thing we need to ensure is that we must learn only the best things for the most favorable results of our lives. It is of course wonderfully rewarding when the learning involves nothing immoral. For instance, learning rituals from a Satanic cult has no significance in my learning style. This kind of learning never equates to joyfulness, health, or for a happy ending. I would prefer learning from a poppy flower’s sacrificial yielding nature, rather than the technique of harvesting opium poppies from Mexico’s heroin farmers.

Schools are everywhere, but we need to know what kind of education we are receiving. Similarly, only learning from educative elements like academic and scholarly books around us doesn’t solve the riddle of learning. We have to make certain that we extract only the great, good things from them. Our workplace is a school too; our own mind is our teacher there. If we work in health or human-related professions like law, teaching, psychology, or physician we need to learn from those multifarious human behaviors of our clients, students, patients and everyday people we interact with.
If we are chemists, engineers, pharmacists, pilots, geologists, forest engineers, architects, or professional technologists we can learn from many things of nature, and even from inanimate things like the machines, instruments, devices and many other things from our work environment. For instance, a chemist can find peace learning from miraculous molecular structure and bonding, or an engineer can attain mental satisfaction by learning to control his life because he can relate to the technique of controlling the engine of an aircraft or ship.

A dentist can learn that opening mouth doesn’t always mean talking; it can be an attempt at lifesaving at times. A pilot can rightly know the real meaning of life only by learning that soaring is not always getting lost in a total bliss of merely flying; it can be a burden of responsibility for hundreds of passengers’ lives.
A penologist can learn about many layers of dark clouds in life through his knowledge about prison and criminals. He can gather lesson from the fact that even a criminal, being a prisoner, can be abused in prison. Our evil deeds will return to us in time. We need to rethink before we attempt to do anything wrong. Sometimes we may have to learn from something evil or bad only to learn more of the truth or goodness. For example, a criminologist has to learn
from the criminal about how deep the force of darkness can be; but eventually he should extract something positive from this learning process. The source of learning can be dark, grey, evil, red or black, but the takeaway must be light-filled and white.

There are so many objects around us that we can observe to find meaningful inspiration for a positive state of mind. We can find learning elements in our kitchen, in the washroom, on the streets, over the bridge, at our workplace (as I have mentioned earlier), in the supermall, on the rooftop, all around us. “Learning has no limits,” people say. But I say, “There is a thin line separating the act of learning—the line of moral principles. We should learn only the good things, not the bad or evil things at all.