Okri, Ben

The academies of the future will do one thing we do not do today. They will teach the art of self-discovery. There is nothing more fundamental in education. We turn out students from our universities who know how to give answers, but not how to ask questions. The wisdom centres in our culture do not reach our students. They leave universities with skills for the workplace, but no knowledge of how to live, or what living is for. They are not taught how to see. They are not taught how to listen. They are not taught the great art of obedience, and how it precedes self-mastery. They are not taught the true art of reading. True reading is not just passing our eyes over words on a page, or gathering information, or even understanding what is being read. True reading is a creative art. It means seeing first; and then an act of the imagination. Higher reading ought to be a new subject in the academies of the future. As we read, so we are. I meet people in all walks of life, and most notoriously in the fields of literature and science, who, though professionals, do not actually read what is in front of them. They read what is only already inside them. I suspect this is true of listening; and that it is happening now, even as I speak to you, or as you read this page.