Can you remember the last time you witnessed someone being wise? I know for me these moments are far and few between. This might be because of the circles I move in – but I do work in a university, so I might expect to come across it more often… A thesaurus provides a number of synonyms for wisdom such as; sagacity, discernment, insight, understanding, knowledge, perception, astuteness, intelligence, acumen, and good judgement. It’s interesting when you think that wisdom is all of these.
I’ve been thinking about wisdom for a few reasons. The first is my previous post and the idea of a big picture. The second was the coincidence that three friends blogged about a similar issues this week (I’ll get to them in later post). The third was the Macquarie University Vice Chancellor’s Annual Lecture by Steven Schwartz this week. The speech was called ‘Wise up: Restoring wisdom to universities’ and talked about the changing curriculum at Macquarie to ensure students learned how to think. Students will be required to participate in activities other than just book learning. They will undertake a range practical learning applications to provide better understanding of themselves and those around them. A range of contexts outside the classroom will help develop life skills that will make them ready to take on a meaningful role in society.
Wisdom is special, an ability to distil something to the essence and apply it to a situation. And it doesn’t come cheap. It takes time to develop because it is, as Confucius suggests, the culmination of reflection, imitation and experience. Some of that experience comes the hard way, but we do learn best when out of our comfort zone. Reflecting on what we know & learn and practicing things to understand the consequence all take time – maybe that’s why the stereotype of a wise person, is an old one. But I don’t think that’s an excuse for us not endeavouring to learn how to apply our knowledge and experience in wise ways throughout our lives. I reckon wisdom takes courage too and there’s a level of responsibility to use this talent to benefit those around us. Maybe some of us are fortunate to have a disposition to better thinking processes.
Of course just being wise isn’t enough to be an active, informed, participating, member of society – there are many other qualities (virtues if you will) that make us complete, but being able to think is a great start. So, I think changing (or realigning) the curriculum at University is a wise move.
You can hear Steven interviewed by Richard Aedy on the Radio National program ‘Life Matters’. You can also follow Steven on twitter @macquarievc or read his blog at: http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/.
