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A TOOLKIT AND A MACHINE

Once upon a time there were two kids living in the same neighborhood but went to two different schools.

One school taught the child all the concepts and the skills necessary to make the child as competent as possible. It pruned and trimmed the child's way of thinking by feeding the child content that would make her employable for a job in future.

The other school had a different approach. It didn't focus too much on teaching the child the content but instead taught the child how to seek knowledge. This school taught her how important it was to always learn something new and laid the foundation for her to be enthusiastic about whatever she wanted to learn or work upon. It didn't limit her teaching to whatever was provided in the books but asked her to explore beyond papers and see the world through different lenses of philosophy, science, math, art, nature, society or from a lens of her own creation. It didn't prune her way of thinking but instead urged her to grow and think in whichever direction she needed to grow towards.

The first child was made into a machine. A super-class, niche, well-trained one but it's task was just one: to work. To work in one field, with one job and with one direction and to get a good salary. As with all machines, every machine can work best in only one setting, can be used only till it works well or is required for and thrown away in the scrap when you are done using it.

The second child turned out to be well; a child. But she had a toolkit. This toolkit would be her most valuable and indispensable upgrade that she had acquired from being in the school for all these years. With this toolkit, she could do anything she wanted when she entered into the real world. She could work if she wanted but not like a machine with a fixed algorithm; but instead thinking on how to solve problems that were not solved yet; finding solutions that were not found yet and giving ideas that were not given yet. She was not used, she created. She could never be thrown like a scrap because there was no field she couldn't embark upon and not succeed, no bonds that could stop her from building her own empire and succeeding in it. She had learnt how to use her brain, not what to store in it.

Moral: In this world of machines, have a toolkit.