Sep 8, 2014 By Al Owens 4 min read

“A society’s competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic table, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity.”

– Albert Einstein, May 12, 1953

Old Al Einstein was onto something.

He’d figured out that the true value of education may not always be gauged by what is learned, but the many journeys you may take to gain knowledge.

I thought I was the only person who thought that way. Now I know I’m in full agreement with Albert “E = mc2” Einstein.

I’m really proud of myself.

To be more illustrative (a word I hardly know the meaning of), I was in a store the other day, and the items I bought added up to $10.66.

I saw my opening. There are some days when I can’t help being overly friendly.

When the cashier announced that I owed 10-66, I replied, “10-66, The Battle of Hastings.”

Her response was unexpected. “Huh?”

“You know, 10-66. The Battle of Hastings,” I replied.

Suddenly, a knowing smile crossed her face.

“Ah, yes. The Battle of Hastings — 1066,” she laughingly agreed.

There, in the middle of her workday, she’d found herself recalling one of the most disposable bits of knowledge universally dispensed to school kids of our generation — that The Battle of Hastings had taken place in the year 1066.

I’m willing to wager that hardly anybody who ever memorized that fact even knows the significance of the date, or where the heck Hastings is on map.

Nor, would most students of world history have the slightest idea about what happened in 1065 or 1067 — just 1066!

The only year that ends with 66 that has any importance to me took place exactly 900 years later. In 1966, I graduated from Uniontown Joint Senior High School.

That’s the year I realized that I’d managed to escape the bounds of my high school education with a head full of assorted facts, many of which, I haven’t accessed since.

Case in point: the difference between stalagmites and stalactites.

I’ve tried hard to remember the difference. I’ve failed miserably.

I’m certainly not opposed to learning the basics. Math, science, history and English are essential, I think, to, well, thinking.

But why did we dissect frogs?

I’m sure I was in school the day that my biology class dissected frogs. I can’t remember much about the experience.

I think I may have blacked out.

I haven’t been able to look a frog square in the eye since.

There’s the Dewey Decimal System.

It has something to do with picking the right books in a library.

I have a better way of finding books – ask a librarian.

“The square of the hypotenuse is equal of the sum of the squares of the other two sides,” so said Pythagoras, when he calculated his Pythagorean Theorem.

Did he know, back in 570 (or so) B.C., that school kids in the 21st century would rather Google his theory than to understand what it really means?

Where’s my blasted slide rule?

Did I ever have one?

For what did I use it?

Who said it was required learning?

Personally, I don’t care if the area of a circle equals Pi r2.

I don’t even know what Pi is.

Don’t try to teach me, either.

I’m in accord with Mr. Einstein, who eloquently stated the necessity of learning how to learn, being more important than what we learn.

I remember a day when my English teacher, Earl Smith, took an abstract painting to class. He asked students what they saw.

Each student interpreted it differently.

But I was so convinced that I’d figured out what it was, I stayed after class to argue my point.

Mr. Smith politely told me that it didn’t really matter what the picture depicted. It only mattered that I saw something in it.

It was a lesson about reaching for the meanings of things.

Mr. Smith probably tried to teach the class how to diagram a sentences.

I’m not sure that stuck.

I’m positive I’ll never forget that picture.

Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.