THE KNOWLEDGE THAT EMPOWERS

by Joseph Adenuga

I have heard it many times and I am sure you must have heard it too that “Knowledge is Power”. Indeed knowledge is power, but why does it seem that we misconceive “Knowledge is Power” for “Education is power”? Do we think that Education is the Knowledge that truly empowers? Or can we be empowered by knowledge without Education?

What I will be speaking about this afternoon is not just another Toastmasters speech but a deep pondering I had some months back. I wondered if we equate Education to Knowledge and Knowledge is Power then what could be responsible for producing countless number of educated people who are not empowered as it were?

I will be asking many questions today just to give you a glimpse into my pondering mind. So is it possible to be educated and not knowledgeable? I would say yes because knowledge that truly empowers is not only about the acquisition of information regarding a trade or skill. According to the renowned scientist, Albert Einstein, “Information is not knowledge”. Knowledge that empowers transcends also into knowing about YOUR SELF, ENVIRONMENT and HISTORY.

Let’s take a look at Knowledge about SELF. How many educated people do not know their height, their weight, or the colour of their own eyes? Certainly, personality could be responsible for attention to some of these details yet the knowledge that empowers starts from there.

Knowledge about ENVIRONMENT. Again I ask how many educated people bother to ask when the house they live in was built, how many don’t walk around their neighbourhood to observe the most recent changes and ask questions. They are Educated but seriously unaware of changes in their immediate surroundings.

And what about knowledge of HISTORY? And this is really where my emphasis is today. We didn’t just happen, we came from somewhere. How many of us educated people at any point ask, who our ancestors are, what characterised their times or what lessons can we learn from them? What about the history of our nation. And this is very touching to me because with my little exposure staying in few places around the world, I have listened, watched and observed how people relish in the facts that they know about their history. Sometimes they even make commercial gains from them in form of arts, museums and exposition which some of us may have patronised. And I ask myself, where is our heritage? Where is our heritage when we have branded our mother’s tongue as a sign of illiteracy? Vernacular we call it.

Through all my pondering I realized what really empowers is Knowledge and not Education. This type of knowledge cannot be obtained by just sitting down and being fed with information as it is done in most schools. It is only obtained by asking Questions and when I say questions I mean internally generated questions.

Let me try to explain how learning works. Our memory is only set to learn when a question has been generated by the memory because now it knows where to place the answer it finds. Our memory becomes so resolute that it fails to pay attention to information provided that is not an answer to any question it may have. Thus making learning of information it is not seeking fairly difficult. We can categorize the questions the memory asks into 3 main categories corresponding to the needs that arise internally.

The first is Intrinsic-Interest: these are questions asked with the desire to know something out of curiosity.

The second is Goal-Instrumental: these are questions the memory asks to try to figure out how to go about achieving a goal.

And the third and the most important is Expectation Failure-based explanation: these are questions we ask ourselves in the process of resolving a failure in order to modify memory so that we will understand better next time.

Fellow Toastmasters and guest, I will not do well if all I have come here to do is only to enlighten you of what knowledge is and what it is not. Rather I would like to charge you and let you know that we would fail ourselves if we get all the education we can get and yet not truly empowered, it would be a waste if we entrench ourselves with numerous information at our disposal yet not empowered.

What questions are begging for answers inside you? Start asking them, align your education experience around them and search for answers. Surely in no time knowledge will come and power will be yours.

(An award winning Toastmasters Speech)