I have spent forty-five years of my life as a professional art historian working in universities and, at one level, writing and teaching the history of architecture, sculpture and painting.

But at a deeper level what I have really been trying to teach, however successfully or unsuccessfully, is problem solving.

The whole of life involves the making of decisions, small or great, hour by hour, day by day, year by year, and whether or not we recognise it at the time, each one of these decisions is a matter of problem solving.

In the history of art, when trying to find out and say what actually may have happened and why, there are often too few facts to go on and too little time to get to the bottom of things, yet decisions still have to be made.

The same is true of the worlds of business and industry and, no less importantly, when we are trying to deal with the infinitely complex problems which surround and condition our personal relationships with our families, our friends and acquaintances, and with our colleagues at work.

At one level, therefore, education should be about learning how to solve problems and how to approach and make decisions of every kind.

For teachers and students alike it is all about questioning what one is told; about asking whether whatever is said or proposed is really the best answer, the best solution, and then, if we think that perhaps it is not, of searching for one that is better.

Perhaps we may find one; perhaps not, but all of us will, in any case, learn a great deal from the effort to do so.

We must question and struggle and search, not from pride or a wish to prove ourselves better than than those who are trying to teach us, but from a desire to find something that maybe a little bit nearer the truth or a better way of carrying out some particular task for the benefit of all those who may be affected by it.

Indeed, the first thing that all good teachers know is how little they know.

The aim of any good teacher, should therefore be to equip his or her students to learn more in the course of their lives, and to know more, than he or she could ever have learnt or known.

As very young children instinctively know, and as most of us tend to forget; or are even taught to forget, we must all of us learn from our teachers and all of us question our teachers, and no good teacher will ever mind.

All the best teachers, like all the best of the pupils that they teach, remain students throughout their lives and, out of humility, out of excitement at searching for knowledge, never stop learning until they are dead.

Indeed, if we ever stop questioning, ever stop learning it means we are dead before even we die.

We all of us hope to be taught by the best teachers, but that cannot always be so, for teachers, like everyone else, are only human, and if we once learn to stand on our own two feet and feel the excitement of learning and gaining new knowledge, we can all find ways of teaching ourselves, and of learning from even the worst of teachers.

If instead of turning off and becoming bored in a badly taught lesson, or a badly delivered or incoherent lecture, or giving way to purely destructive or arrogant criticism, we ask ourselves what exactly is wrong and how we ourselves, if we had the chance, might be able to do it better or come a bit closer to what might be true, then, instead of wasting an hour of our lives, we learn.

I can only say that some of the most productive and useful thoughts that I ever had, when I myself was at school, or at university as a student, resulted from trying in this way to make good use of what I thought was a boring or badly conducted class or an ignorant lecture.

But whatever may be the problem that we are engaged in trying to solve, our chance of success is greatly improved if we set about it in sensible ways.

Too often, we see only part of the problem before us, mistaking the part for the whole, or see only the up side of what we believe to be a solution, completely forgetting to look for or take account of the down side.

If, when we propose some course of action requiring consent or cooperation from other people, we only consider its virtues as we see them, and concentrate only on bringing together those who will gain advantage from it, or those who are like-minded, natural friends and allies, we are making a grave mistake.

It is vital to look just as closely, or even more closely, for possible disadvantages in doing what we propose, and at who may lose by our actions.

We must always do our best to put ourselves into the minds of those who oppose us and try to understand, as fully and as dispassionately as we can, why it is that they do so.

Good generals, and those who win wars, think as much and as coolly about the motives, emotions and habits of thought; the strengths, as well as the weaknesses of the opposing commanders and their troops; of their likely courses of action or reaction, as they do of their own forces and their own plan of campaign.

It is often said that when nations go into battle, they almost invariably start by fighting the last war, and only learn through initial disasters that times have changed, and much the same is true of many of the peacetime, everyday activities of governments and individuals.

We must always learn from the past, and if we do not, we cannot possibly understand the present or why it is that we are as we are, and think as we think, and do as we do.

It is because we so often fail to look back to try to find out what actually made us what we are, that we remain trapped, the prisoners of an unknown or ill considered, mistaken view of the past.

If we do our best to see every problem in the round and engage in lateral thinking, it often turns out that the obvious, seemingly sensible, way of proceeding is by no means the best or most likely to succeed.

If we look for a moment at the problems which faced us all and the risks that were taken in making the Zen Garden at Three Wheels in London, perhaps you will see what I mean.

When Chimyo Sama and those at Shogyoji decided it would indeed be a good idea to make such a garden, it was by no means the obvious solution to ask me, an Englishman, speaking no Japanese, and completely without experience in creating any sort of a garden, to make it for them.

The most obvious way of going about it, in terms of economy of effort, would have been to bring in a bulldozer and clear the site in a couple of days. But if we had done that no one would ever have got involved or felt, in any deep sense, that the garden was theirs.

Instead, we demolished an old garage, with its three feet deep concrete foundations, and cut down and cut up the bushes and trees that were there, and dug out their seemingly endless network of roots, entirely by hand, as if we still lived in the middle ages.

By the time we were finished, the garden truly belonged to all of the men and women who toiled so long and so hard, and to all the followers in the temple, for whom every action was fully recorded.

The garden was theirs, a part of them, and they, without thinking, became a part of the garden.

When it came to the search for the rocks, we chose each and every one for itself and not for itself, in the hope of creating, out of diversity and contrast, a rich and overall harmony.

In each and every decision, and every action, however seemingly insignificant; in the midst of the welter of detail on which any final success entirely depended, we tried, as best we could, to achieve our initial, overriding purpose.

That purpose was, indeed, not to create just a pretty thing, a tourist trap, if you like, but a garden for quiet contemplation, a place for meditation and, if our hopes were ever realised, a springboard for spiritual growth.

You may perhaps feel that this long, and somewhat personal digression has nothing much to do with your own education, but I think that perhaps it has. You are all now immersed in the details of education; in learning facts and in passing exams.

Whatever you do in life, you must, while doing it, do it as well as you can, and that, whatever your individual talents or limitations, involves both discipline and determination, and will always stand you in good stead.

But education is not just a matter of passing exams, or getting a job, or entering university, however important these may be both to you and to those around you. You must look at the whole; you must face and consider the problem of what your own education should mean to you as an individual.

It is not just something imposed on you from outside, to get through as best you can and then leave behind with a sigh of relief. It is yours, your very own, for you to make for yourselves and to think about now, not afterwards, or at some future date, or possibly never.

The true aim of education, and it should be yours as well, is to help you, each one of you, to fulfil your utmost potential, to equip you to lead, in every way, the fullest and richest life of which you are capable; to learn to stand on your own two feet; to challenge society and also to be a productive part of it; to help to leave it a better place than it now is; to open the path to a wise and a happy life.

But wisdom is more than mere knowledge acquired at school.

It is not dependent on intellectual prowess or physical strength. It may take a lifetime of self-education to acquire.

Perhaps for some of you it may come quite naturally and quite soon; I hope that it will.

For some of us wisdom may never come, may always be out of our reach.

But still we must all of us go on learning and gaining in knowledge and understanding, and all of us try, if we can, to enjoy and to savour each moment of being alive.