But if you confine yourself to the things you've always done, avoiding anything new and unfamiliar, you will have squandered a valuable opportunity. An open mind is a mind receptive to examination of new ideas and facts. Having an open mind does not mean that one jumps on the bandwagon of every new fad. A better characterization of an open mind is one which is willing to dispassionately and rationally analyze new ideas, weighing them objectively against established knowledge and the facts at hand. A critical habit of mind .
Education is more than the acquisition of information.
It includes the ability to acquire new information, to critically evaluate that information, and to correctly and effectively use it. With so many information sources at our disposal in this computer age we are awash in information, and in danger of information overload. But much of that information is fraudulent, worthless, incomplete, or just plain wrong. It has always been so. But it's not easy to determine just which books are worth keeping.