Isaac Asimov on Education

From Bill Moyers Rewind: Isaac Asimov (1988):

• Bill Moyers: Do you think we can educate ourselves, that anyone of us, you once said, at any time can be educated on any subject that strikes us fancy?
  
  Isaac Asimov: Well, the key word is "strikes us fancy". There is something that simply don't strikes me fancy. And I doubt I can force myself be educated in it. I have never really be interested in economics.... Therefore even if I try to read about it. It fence off. On the other hand, when a subject is fancily  interested in, then it is easy for me to learn about it. I read it, I absorb it, I take it gladly, cheerfully. I read more books in astronomy than any other science. None of us ever complain my astronomy books are wrong, silly, or anything like. I have never take a course in astronomy. I can completely self trained in it. On the other hand, I read un-avoidable few book about chemistry which is my training. I got PhD in chemistry. But I know too much chemistry to get excited over it.
  
  Bill Moyers: Excited. Learning really excites you, doesn't it?
  
  Isaac Asimov: Oh, Yes! I think it is actually a process of broading myself knowing that now a little of astronomy universe, you know about it, can think about it, can understand. It seems to me that when it's time to die, that will come to all of us, there is certain pleasure in thinking that you have neutralize your life well, that you have learned as much as you could, gather in as much as possible, of the universe. And enjoy it. And it's only one universe, and only one this lifetime, to try it a last bit. ......
  
• Bill Moyers: How do you explain to yourself, what is it that cause the man want to know so much that would write 400 books?
  
  Isaac Asimov: Well, I suppose []. I just enjoy itself.
  
  Bill Moyers: Pleasure?
  
  Isaac Asimov: Yes. ... You can't take a human being, and put him into a work that undertake his brain. And keep him working out it for decades and decades. And say, well, that job isn't there, go do something more creative. You have beaten the creativity out of him. But if from the start, children are educated into a appreciating on their creativity. Then probably we can, almost all of us can be creative. ......
  
  Nowadays what people called learning is the force on you. Everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at same speed in class. And everyone is different. For some [it] goes too fast, some too slow, some on the wrong direction.
  
• Bill Moyers: The revolution you are talking about, personal learning, is not just for young, isn't it?
  
  Isaac Asimov: Yes. That's a good point. That's not just for young. That's another trouble with the education now happening. It IS for young. And people think education or something that they can finish. And what's more, when they finish, that's right of passage to the manhood.
  
  Well, what's wrong with it is that you have everybody looking for no longer learning. You make them shame afterwards to going back to learning. If something happens like this, the nanyone any age can learn by himself, can continue to be interested. There is no reason, then, if you enjoy learning, why you should stop it as a given age? ......