During our earlier classes of Academic
English, we have participated in an activity of drawing the world map. The
procedure of the activity was to draw the map then, observing works of the others
and drawing the map again. Through the activity I have noticed an interesting
feature; no map was the same.
A famous German
physicist, Albert Einstein stated that “Information is not knowledge. The only
source of knowledge is experience.”*1 Through our life all of us have seen the
map and should have done some learning about it. Then why have all the maps
differed? The answer is simple: we have experienced a different type of
education.
The type of
education each took will give an influence to where the center of the map will
be. As I observed through the works of others, I could guess where each is from
since they have drawn their home country in the center. This unique feature
relates back to our educational background. At school we are taught with
certain set of standard such as your home country being in the middle of map.
Having diversity of people in our class, it is hard to say which standard we
should base on. From this result I can state that what each think as the “common,”
or the “standard” is a standard just for you and not for the others.
During our
second trial of drawing, I also saw an interesting result. I saw many maps
getting more details and shapes which looked like scribbles started to look
more like a map. We were capable of drawing a better map on the second trial
since, we got ideas from others; this situation is often seen in the scenes of
education. We face new ideas through reading other’s work and the work will not
mean anything unless we cannot place in any values to it. We should take in the
knowledge given the writer and blend it with our own experience so that we can
use it as our own idea.
After we have
drawn the map we discovered that we have some mistakes in our works produced. Albert
Einstein has also stated that “A person who never made a mistake never tried
anything new.” *2 I believe what Einstein
says fit in any situation we face upon and how we should be thinking. Mistake
is not a failure but a step to success, no result will be produced without
trying. Since we have tried in drawing a map we were able to learn what we were
missing and through these mistakes, we were able to increase our knowledge.
Through the
activity of the map making, we were able to see many interesting features and
differences in how each other think. The more we tried, the more it got better
and probably it will get better as we kept trying. We can state that the differences
in the maps are due to different experiences we have had and the differences
are not mistakes but, a feature of uniqueness.
Nachika
*1 Quote from
Albert Einstein, #9,
*2 Quote from
Albert Einstein, #5,
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