Learning

Would people still bother to learn if there were no exams to work toward?

When you motivate a person with monetary or material rewards, what usually happens is that the intrinsic motivation would soon be lost. Artists who are paid to paint all the time might lose their natural inclinations in producing art pieces over time. Psychologists know this well, and suggest using non-material rewards such as praises to avoid corroding a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a task.

And exams, if you ask me, totally kill our intrinsic motivation to learn.

Okaylah, that's me being overdramatic again, but looking at all the other students nerding in college today staring blankly at their notes (like me) trying to memorise some facts to prove that they know something (like me) kinda gives me the feeling that the real true value of learning is lost in the education system.

I count our ability to learn as the one of the most profound skills we have, mediated by a dazzling array of neurons and countless electro-chemical reactions within the little organ that we call the brain. But to spend all our neural computing power on memorising pseudo-facts (things scientists aren't even sure themselves) seem a little....illogical, to me. Learning is an amazing process. But I feel that learning in our real-world context falls a wee bit short of that ideal.

Yeap, we're not perfect all right.