Sharing culture

Education is vital for future progression of human civilization as well as for development of modernization. Learning process involves input (via various reading materials) and output (concepts and ideas). Input and output of our knowledge are essential in learning. If we only receive information without sharing it with others, or at least applying it constantly, we’re not receiving a good education. Being stingy to others instead actually restrict your input and output volume. You don't believe? Just continue to read and you will understand the reason behind it.

Our brain is like a vast warehouse with billions of smaller stores inside. Each and every item we received are stored into the warehouse based on their categories. If we constantly put something in and take something out from the same store, eventually we’ll know where to find the location of the store. As simple as we get used of it, just like key idea of  Taoism philosophy, let everything comes into natural. 

Same goes to our brain, if we keep using the same information constantly, then when we need to retrieve that information, our brain knows where to find it.

However, if we receive something and stored in into its store and never touch it again. Then when the time comes for us to retrieve it, we won’t be able to find this “dark corner” storage item. This is equivalent to forgetting about it, and it'll be a shame to us.

Using my own experience in university life, I found out that everyone has his/her own study approach, of course it will be unfair to be judgemental towards others' study techniques. The only thing that I noticed is that people who opt to explain to others about certain topics (which I considered as initiation of sharing),  those people can retain their learning output much better, in context of duration. I believe they share the similar learning approach, i.e. learning by understanding.

Generally, learning approach can be classified into two broad categories: memorizing and understanding. Both have their pros and cons. However memorizing approach seem to be more "rampant" among Malaysian education system, beginning from pre-school until university level. On the other hand, Western countries apply mostly on understanding. In practice, both of them cannot be separated, they complement each other, just like YingYang philosophy, where both components (Ying and Yang) are closely together. So everything in the world is like a circle, a half of it is good and half of it is bad. So the start of one side is the end of the other one. Same goes with learning approach.

Similarly, I would to declare myself learner by understanding approach as major, my previous thought is that solely relying on understanding approach will be sufficient, but after sometimes (where I had few examinations encountered), I realised that both memorization and understand are essential to be a person with better knowledge (output), especially when I came in touch with YingYang philosophy in brief. However through sharing, the learner can be even better, because it shows that the person has the courage, confidence towards the words spoken from his/her mouth.

Therefore, don’t be shy or stingy to share your knowledge with others. Engage in info sharing or discussion. By sharing with one person, you’re contributing a small hand in human capital development, which will benefit the country and indirectly benefits you yourself. Besides, you don’t need to be afraid that he/she will be better than you, because if you’re the one who shares the info with him/her, that means you have one extra input-output cycle compare to him/her, so who is having the advantage here? 

Justify by yourself, is there any loss you suffered from sharing info with others? I would say NO, you earned the listener(s)' respect, had your confidence boosted, understood yourself that you were able to confer your idea(s) to the others. Learning output via understanding consume less memory space (my personal view), thus I often able to learn more info with less capacity.

My learning philosophy now will be "Sharing is caring, knowledge beyond boundaries, no restriction" , from now until my last breath.

I would like to thank my friend who wrote a note regarding importance of sharing in his Facebook profile which gave me such inspiration to write this article. Deep gratitude and credit were given via acknowledgement at the bottom of this article.

(Adapted and modified from Wee., H.S. (2011) , Importance of input and output of our knowledge , KLIUC , Diploma in Civil Engineering (Class 2007-2009) ,  Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Hons) (expecting graduation in 2012))