Journey of learning: Quest for an 'A' or knowledge?

Brother in law of mine commented in my last post re: Motivation and us. He brought up an excellent point which inspired me to write about this topic: Journey of learning! How do we ensure that the journey of learning doesn't become a quest for an 'A.’ But for knowledge?
 
During crunch time, inevitably, learning fell thru the crack. How do we prevent this? Or could we?

Yesterday, our family took a side trip to apple picking. It was a fun learning experience for all of us. None of us have ever seen the apple trees before. On the way back, we were discussing about how much efforts we should put in to learn a subject. Pepper, our older one, said, “What is the point of putting extra efforts!”  If we put enough effort, we would get an A anyway. Why not distribute the effort into another subject, and then we would get an 'A,' as well.

What my hubby said in return "It is true that if we study the night before (or whatever we deem enough,) we would probably get an 'A' in the test. however, we tend to lose the knowledge weeks later." He went on, "If we put extra effort and study well to understand the underlying principle. we will not only get the 'A,' but we have also gained the knowledge for life."

What Pepper and my husband said are both valid. Ultimately, learning is like playing golf. I am one month into learning how to play golf, one thing that struck me hard is what the instructor told me, "Don't aim for the ball!" Isn't that the whole point of golfing is to aim at the ball then hit it? Apparently not! If we aim at the ball, we will probably hit it but we could miss it as well. Hitting the ball as part of completing our back swing, will get us more consistent results.

Learning is a long journey and that takes time. Sometimes, when time hit the limit, learning takes its toll. That was what Pepper mentioned, when we don’t have time, we need to put what we deemed as enough effort to reach the goal. In this case, learning for knowledge becomes our lower priority. This hold true for us in the working world as well, a lot of time, we spent enough time to learn what we could so we would fulfill our tasks. Often enough, when time passed, we tend to forget what we have learned. Isn't this the same as our kids quest for an 'A,' instead of knowledge?

--courtesy of ovelychck06.deviantart.com

Ultimately, this ties back to ‘Motivation.’ Motivation triggers our effort which triggers us to thrive for knowledge. Then the journey of learning becomes the journey for knowledge.

Hopefully this discussion open our mind to the 'Journey of learning for knowledge.' In return, we could motivate our next generation to thrive for knowledge! or perhaps us as well!

Until next stop,
Journey of Life