Gliders

So you decide you want to study again. Your first thought, perhaps, is that you need to go back to school. However, you’re an adult now, no longer a child. Maybe you’re a parent whose children have flown the nest and so, with more time on your hands, you’d like to return to studying. You decide to visit your alma mater and see if you can attend a few university lectures to try it out. This is often the thought process of many people who want to start learning again, even if they don’t act on this impetus.

Of course, this scenario doesn’t just apply to a parent who finds themselves with more time on their hands as their children become more independent. Whenever we consider starting something new, we are always inclined to think that we need to begin with some kind of school. This is a natural conclusion for almost all of us, regardless of age or gender. We have accepted the way of thinking that says if you wish to learn something, then you first need someone who will be able to teach you. It isn’t a huge leap of the imagination to understand that schools have not only people who can teach you but also libraries full of knowledge to pass on. So it makes sense to think of going back to school as the established way to engage in learning.

It could be said that those who have acquired a formal level of education, with qualifications, have achieved society’s expectation of what qualifies as “learning.” And as an increasing number of jobs require us to have a base level of education, it is no surprise that schools are viewed with growing significance.

Our current society places an incredible belief in the power of schools. In Japan, 94 percent of all middle schoolers go on to high school. There is a belief that graduating from high school will give you a leg up in society.

At school, students are guided through their study by their teachers and textbooks. Although the concept of self-study exists in theory, while at school children are not encouraged to cultivate intelligence through their own efforts alone. Instead they are like gliders—unable to take off on their own.

From a distance, a glider and a plane seem similar. They both fly through the air, and we may consider that the way that a glider soundlessly soars through the skies is a more beautiful sight than an airplane. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that a glider cannot fly on its own.

It’s my opinion that schools are nothing more than training centers for “glider people.” They are not creating “airplane people.” Indeed, airplanes, with their noisy engines, are nothing short of a nuisance when it comes to teaching gliders how to glide. They are even considered dangerous—because what schools value most is the obedience of students who follow along to wherever it is they are pulled. Taking off of your own accord? Well, that’s completely against the rules. Which means everyone is constantly under surveillance until each and every student is turned ever more gliderlike until they finally graduate.

A model student makes for a perfect glider. But the thing about a glider is that it needs someone leading it in order to fly—a glider cannot simply take off just because someone asks them to.

As graduation approaches, students are encouraged to write their graduation dissertations. Now, a dissertation is a little different from the type of study that they have experienced until this point. A dissertation gives a student the freedom to write about anything they like. Yet this is where our top-class glider students stumble. They’re being asked to do something unlike anything they’ve done before. It is no surprise that they cannot do it. Indeed, the more capable a student is as a glider, the more they will struggle when led to direct themselves instead of following instructions.

Students like these will go to their teacher for help. They can’t be blamed for this; it’s not their fault that they’ve spent all these years not thinking for themselves. However, most teachers will respond that a dissertation isn’t an original work if they are guiding the student through every step of the process. As a result, the student will grumble that their teacher is being unfair and isn’t teaching them properly.

Next, they decide to go to a teacher who they feel will be more proactive in helping them. This teacher will kindly guide them, telling them what to read, giving them nuggets of information on what to look out for, and as a result a beautiful glider dissertation will be completed. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that most graduation dissertations are like this.

I find that the better grades a student has, the more they will struggle with their dissertation. These exemplary students are skilled at doing what they are told, but they’re not as capable of thinking up their own thesis of their own accord. The many years spent learning how to be a good glider cause you to lose something essential when it comes to original thought. And once you grow accustomed to that, you might lose the ability to generate lift and fly on your own.

It goes without saying that there are exceptions to this rule. However, the longer a student spends in school education, the more their ability to take off and fly of their own accord drops. It is no surprise that once a student becomes capable of safely and silently gliding around, they start to fear becoming a noisy and dangerous airplane.

Children are bundles of creativity. At an early age, most children can experiment with being poets or little inventors without much difficulty. Yet as they start going to school and are taught things, they lose this originality and become more adept at mimicry. It’s no surprise that there are many artists who are wary of school education for this reason. It is clear that if you want to become an airplane, you can’t waste time at glider school.

Even now, among professional shogi players, there are those who declare that compulsory education until junior high school is something that only gets in their way. They believe that there is no point being forced to train as a “glider” at school at a time when your brain’s development capability is at its peak.

It is important to note that people have capabilities for being both gliders and airplanes simultaneously. The former is the passive absorption of knowledge; the latter is active creation or discovering things of your own accord. Both of these facets exist within everyone. Without any glider traits, you cannot absorb basic knowledge; if you try to take off without knowing anything, then who knows what kind of disaster awaits?

However, the reality is that there are many people who are thought of as talented thinkers, even though their glider traits stifle their airplane traits. Furthermore, these very same people are lauded as being able to fly, when in fact they are simply gliding.

As we’ve established, the implementation of school education has resulted in a proliferation of glider people. And when you are surrounded by other similar glider people, it’s all too easy to forget the negative aspects of being a glider. When you’re surrounded by all the knowledge you’ve absorbed, it is easy to trick yourself into believing you are flying.

Human beings have a tendency to look at the flowers, not the branches and leaves of the tree. And then if we do look at the leaves and branches, we ignore the trunk. We pay no attention to the roots. What I mean by this is that our gaze is stolen by the result, the flower. We don’t pay enough attention to what supports and sustains the plant.

I’ve been told that the aboveground (visible) part and the underground (invisible) part of plants are of equal size. The reason plants can allow their flowers to bloom aboveground is because of the huge unseen network that exists below the earth.

Knowledge is the flower that blooms on the tree that is a person. If you decide to snip off just the flower because it’s beautiful and put it in a vase, it will eventually wither and die. It needs the whole system to survive. We are not just the flower of knowledge—we are everything else that sustains it too.

Ever since the Meiji period of the late nineteenth century, Japan’s intelligentsia has collected the flowers that bloomed in the Western world. Of course there were experiments in uprooting the plants, roots and all, but most cases involved snipping off these flowers of Western knowledge and bringing them back to Japan. In an entirely new environment, it is difficult to nurture the same flowers. And a culture that exists through translation alone is a sterile one.

The people of the Meiji period neglected the roots of this knowledge. Ignoring the roots makes it impossible for flowers to bloom of their own accord in their new home. However, the circumstances of the time meant that it may have been more convenient to prune and take flowers from elsewhere rather than grow one’s own. In such a situation, a glider person is far more valuable than an airplane. In this system of snipping off flowers, they would be able to follow orders and be declared an “intellectual.”

In situations where there is a leader and a clearly defined goal, people with glider traits are highly valued. However, when developing or nurturing a new culture, airplane traits are indispensable. Unfortunately, school education serves to stifle people with glider traits and they will run into difficulties if told to suddenly develop their neglected airplane traits.