Ignorance Is Bliss, But Isn’t Learning More Important?

Posted in Philosophy of Education on Jul 27, 2010 - 12:00 PM

Sometimes, it is so begrudging learning new things. Does that mean that we should avoid learning certain things?

To illustrate my first point, consider an educator who has been devoted to our nation's education practices for the past 30 years. Perhaps a person as such would be very upset to learn that educating democratically actually caters more to the child in many ways. Consider possible issues of personal pride being hurt, and issues of doubting oneself as a person who is able to accurately reason through situations and information so as to make conscious, and deliberate decisions. Or perhaps this information could come as an unpleasing update if one had been trying to best educate children for 30 years, for the sake of benefitting children, and has now come to understand that their efforts were futile in regards to at least a certain percentage of their past students.

Another example which illustrates my first point could be a homeowner who has been renovating her home for 3 years in what she thought to be oh-so-fantastic ways, only to find, once an inspector came, that all of her renovations did not comply with modern building codes. In this case, the homeowner has invested time, energy, and resources into building her home up in a way that she felt confidently was to code. Considering all of the efforts the homeowner went through over the years to build her home into her paradise, it makes sense that once she learned, after her renovations, that the code had been up updated prior to her building, that she would be very upset.

Both of the above examples are very similar in that each person, in each case, has invested confidence, time, resources and energy, over the span of a relatively long time, into something that was all the while not what they thought it was.

I think these examples offer a dim lit glimpse at my point which is that, learning is sometimes painful. The disdain that can come from learning new information can be due to an array of reasons, an array which I can by no means fully illuminate. But a few examples follow.

History can be painful when, for instance, we come to know how unfortunately we, as humans, have oppressed people of the past.

Learning of peoples' feelings can sometimes hurt when one finds out that the interactions they have had with a certain somebody else have all been displeasing to that other person.

Learning that certain things we eat have very complex nervous systems which allow them to consciously experience and feel can be very sad and disheartening for some folks who find compassion for animals.

But does the fact that learning is not always instantly gratifying warrant that we ought to be careful of what we learn?

I think it is right to say that, just because new information may inconvenience the individual who has learned it, it is not the case that learning such information is bad, or ought to be avoided. In fact, I would argue that this sort of information ought to be the most sought after.

Learning from our mistakes, or from the regrettable history of our planet, is often times the most fruitful information one can attain. Once we can accurately understand the mistakes we have made in the past, we can then avoid repeating those mistakes, and at the very least, we can explore different options which may more efficiently strive to attain the goals which we have all the while been striving towards.

Without an ongoing analysis of our methods, and techniques, and the ways in which they affect our personal lives, and the lives of others, it seems that we might be more prone to pursuing faulty paths in the duration of our lives.

All of the above considered, it makes sense to say that there are definitely things that we can learn which are hard to know, and might cause us discomfort. But what's more important, is that it makes sense that we should desire to learn those things if we wish to further our potential as empathic, considerate, and more just members of the world wide community.

The final point I'd like to make is that, though the old saying, “ignorance is bliss,” does have a lot of truth to it, I think that we as a people ought to hold ourselves responsible for knowing what is actually going on in our world. Sometimes, it may be the case that what we learn is not the most pleasing thing to know, especially when we discover that things are different than what we thought they were. But that being said, I believe it is right to be properly informed, and that it is healthy to change your mind accordingly when new information is unveiled.

If we are unwilling to search for the truth, and we are unwilling to change our mind due to relevant, pertinent, true, and new information, then how can we expect ourselves to ever create communities that live up to our ideals?

Tags for this entry:
learning, what should we teach, open mindedness, hard truths

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