You may not be aware of this on your first day at school, but what you’re experiencing is a privilege not witnessed by many – even if you think being a nerd is uncool:)
Why do so many people lack access to abundant knowledge? I ask myself this question many times a day – especially when I am among people with more financial resources than the average.
Apart from being born in an educated family and getting good nourishment, I would say there are two main causes:
1 – these people don’t speak English
2 – they have no interest towards using the Internet (most of them even have a phobia towards everything PC-related)
Why are these so important for gaining access to quality education?
Since resources are limited – and by resources I mainly mean money, time and neurons – it is most efficient to find desired information in the language that is spoken by most (civilized) people in this world – and that is English – the commonly used language in sciences and computing.
Secondly, people have gained access to skills through printed books for a long time, but there is nothing that can match the speed of Internet – if you limit yourself to the written word, you lose a lot of things you didn’t even know existed, so how can you search for them in a regular encyclopedia?
Having a PC at school where the administrator is responsible for everything doesn’t cut it – you need to have your own device to learn efficiently. Only this way will you make mistakes and hopefully learn from them – it’s like having your own space for software, books, music and so on.
Just because something is not published in English or on the Internet – it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist – but the stakes are pretty high that you’ll find an answer to your questions if you search it in English and if you make good use of any computing device!
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