On High Grades and Greater Learning

“You know when you do not know.”

This is the Socratic dictum. It means that the greatest form of learning is when one knows that he knows so much, yet he knows that he knows so little. Aristotle said in his Metaphysics that, all human beings, by nature desire to know. This is because knowledge is the perfection of man’s essence, which is rationality. Thus, from the beginning of man’s life until its end, man strives for the acquisition of knowledge.

When a child is born, he begins to wonder about the things around him. This is the first step to philosophy – wonder. He becomes curious about the stars, the sun, the moon, trees, shrubs, flowers, birds, fishes, and everything else. He begins to ask, what is this? What is that? Why is this so? How is that? He starts to experiment on things. He begins from what color to put on his coloring book to how long will the heat of the sun burn a dried leaf through a magnifying glass, and even how high can he build a skyscraper with his LEGO blocks.

As he grows up, he would begin to discover that the sum of one plus one is two and the product of three times two is six. He would be taught that matter is anything that occupies space and has mass, and that the atom is the basic composition of matter. When he gets a job, he would learn that the key to promotion is determination and ignorance is not really bliss. When he marries, he would discover that marriage is made in heaven and honesty is the best policy. If he does not marry, he would realize that there are many other ways towards happiness and fulfillment. If he is gifted with a child, he would learn that children are God’s gift to mankind. And when finally his last few moments on earth is almost done, it would dawn on him that life is fulfilled only when one is loved and he has loved others as well.

This is the course of man’s life: to begin from learning and to end in learning. The only thing that differentiates one man from another in learning is the quantity and quality of what is learned. St. Thomas Aquinas’ epistemology declares that the knowledge of the knower depends on his capacity. This means that the quantity and quality of the knowledge of the knower will correspond to his knowing capacity. Hence, man has his geniuses and also his fools. Here, however, lie some questions. Can man’s intelligence be measured by what he has learned? Can his intellectual capacity be gauged by the knowledge he has acquired? Is his rationality and intellect defined by his grades?