Education the Definition of an Educated Person

Education

The definition of an educated person has no doubt altered over time. Certainly, many people have tried to formulate the ultimate definition of what an educated person is, and what achieving that state might entail. In my earliest thoughts about the subject, I probably thought an educated person was probably my grandmother; she seemed so wise, and certainly, I never asked her anything for which she didn't have an answer, and a good one at that. I hasten to add that I didn't necessarily think so at the time. When an adolescent love affair of mine had gone awry and I was miserable and mopey, she would advise me that the way to get out of the pits was to work at something, really hard. I wanted to wallow in misery. It took a few years more of life before I understood that, and even now, she was better at working herself out of a bad mood or a bad place than I will ever be. I still think she was an educated woman, although she had never finished her nursing degree. Later, I thought one of my high school teachers was probably the epitome of the educated person. He was my English teacher; he seemed to know so much about so much, and he had actually had short stories published. That seemed to me, when I was a junior in high school, to be the most educated thing a person could do.

If anyone had asked me on an academic quiz at that time who I thought best represented an educated person, I might have given the name Thomas Jefferson. He was the framer of the Constitution; pretty bright! He designed his beautiful home in Virginia, Monticello. He spent time in Paris: how wonderful! He had a greenhouse with plants unheard of in the colonies and the early United States; he grew oranges in his greenhouse. I would have chosen him over George Washington who was just a planter, surveyor, and general. Somehow, Thomas Jefferson just seemed so much more intellectual, despite the fact that his own concept of the educated person was the farmer. Jefferson admired a person who could live apart from others, pursue his own ideas about science, philosophy and art in his free time, and who could participate by choice in local community affairs. To Jefferson, a farmer's life "was a combination of aloneness, individuality, and self-learning with minimal but significant civic responsibility."

(Glickman, 2001) Jefferson himself, it seems to me, embodied all that. And when I first learned about him and began to admire him, I probably thought he was handsomer, too, and that might very well have influenced my impression of him as being terrible well educated.

I don't think there was ever a time when I would have said any U.S. politician during my lifetime was well educated, none that I can recall anyway. They seem to be too narrowly focused and too likely to bend ethics to expediency. And I certainly wouldn't choose any celebrity or actor/actress for the job. I might have chosen some of those from a previous generation, possibly Sir Laurence Olivier, for example. He seemed well educated, or perhaps it was just his regal bearing and British speech.

It is obvious, then, that communication is part of the definition of an educated person. Looking at these examples, the thing that stands out is that they all seemed able to communicate extremely well. OR at least, Jefferson seemed to have a more lasting public relations 'machine' keeping his talents and achievements more in the public eye than were Washington's.

Lynette Parker, in a review of The Cultural Production of an Educated Person: Critical Ethnographies of Schooling and Local Practice, tried to find in that book a workable and possibly universal definition of the educated person, based on the readings in that book. One of the authors, she says, believes an educated person is an "attempt to override the untoward emphasis that has been placed on the power of class to shape cultural production." (1997) I would agree with that: class has no place in the definition of an educated person. In fact, I would have to say that an educated person is classless, or perhaps a better way would to say it would be 'omniclassed.' An educated person should, I think, be sort of universal. He or she should be able to be perfectly comfortable in virtually any setting at all.

Communication is the first of the competencies an educated person needs to be aware of. It is one thing to possess good communications skills, written, verbal and non-verbal. But that is only part of it. An educated person needs to know when to use each form of communication. In Japan, I understand, there are three levels of grammar and it is literally insulting to use a lower form to a higher-ranking individual. I don't think Americans can or should go that far. In fact, that idea, in a way, is counter to my concept of the communication skills and uses of an educated person. While command of the standard use of English is necessary, it is as well to also know how to relax one's speech to fit the circumstances. One wouldn't say "How do you do?" To a five-year-old; one wouldn't "Hi, there!" To a visiting member of England's Royal Family. I think it is also appropriate for an educated person to achieve a relatively neutral way of speaking, one that allows that person to interact with members of any group of society without being thought of as an obnoxious outsider. Note: that is 'obnoxious outsider.' Obviously, in most groups, most of us will be thought to be an outsider most of the time. The essence is to communicate with any group with grace.

Grace is another concept that is important for an educated person, and it extends into another one of the six competencies needed to be an educated person, community.

Community is something many peopled didn't think about until recently, I think. It is something of a catch phrase on shows like Oprah. It probably arose as a popular concept along with the rise, at the same time, of isolation, first because of television and now -- and maybe worse -- because of computers and the Internet. Community is something children never think about; they just do it. They find their little friends and they interact and that's all there is to it. Later, though, it becomes a slightly larger concept as a child desires to be a certain way, act a certain way, have a certain bunch of people like him or her. And then, when that 'community' has been found, often -- during the teen years -- other communities are shut out. In fact, teenagers are often pretty graceless about shutting others out and very narrowly defining community. Grace, however, is absolutely necessary for the educated person to be in community. And the community that educated person will find himself or herself in ought to be much broader than that he or she chose to establish as a teenager. In fact, an educated person will have to conceive of community in a very, very broad sense. He or she will have to have -- in my view -- the grace to see terrorists as part of the community. An estranged part, but one that might well be won back rather than bombed into oblivion. All communities, however they define themselves or are defined by others, intersect at some point or at some level with every other human community. Therefore, one really can say that one must be one's brother's keeper.

It takes grace to do that, especially when that brother might have acted gracelessly. President Bush showed no grace in dealing with the terrorists; hatred begets hatred. Grace ....and that may have consisted in almost anything except what we did ... might beget grace. An educated person might have at least tried to determine whether there was a real grievance underlying the horrific actions of the terrorists. No educated person would excuse them. Most would actually probably want them brought to account. But at the same time, as the old saying goes, it takes two to tango, and an educated person would be looking hard for the point at which the community had broken down and people on both sides felt estranged, renegade and out of community.

Vocation intersects with community. An educated person needs to consider himself or herself as part of a vocational community, and that community as contributing to other communities. It is that idea, I think, that will make for excellence. An educated person need not be Provost of a university or CEO of a major corporation or the founder of a medical research nonprofit group to contribute, through vocation, to community. In Eastern thought, there is a saying, Chop wood, carry water. It simply means that whatever your vocational choice ends up being, do it because it must be done. If it is there to be done, it must be done. An educated person knows there are no demeaning vocations, that every vocation contributes to the running of the world for all of us. Again, grace is needed. Grace is needed when an educated person finds himself or herself underemployed, or unable to find anything in his or her chosen vocation. Grace might also be needed, or needed even more, if a person finds extraordinary success in his or her vocation. An ignorant person will self-aggrandize. An educated person will take pleasure in the achievement, look for ways to pass the good around, and then look for the next good thing to accomplish. Grace will keep that person from being a boor or acting in a trashy manner. To an educated person, the choice of vocation is not nearly so important as what one does with it, and how much one enjoys it and brings to it in terms of interest, even passion, and the will to excellence.

Competency in math and the natural sciences is difficult for some educated people, just as the humanities are difficult for others. I almost think that in these two areas, it is necessary to use some grace when contemplating requirements regarding competency for the educated person.

Some people find math awfully hard, although they may like the natural sciences. Their love of the natural sciences may express itself as an avocation, a desire to paint 'plein air' style like the Impressionist painters. Or it may be just an interest in leaning about new medical procedures. Their interest in mathematics may be truly unknown to them. For example, I am really fond of Stephen Hawking, the British physicist. I have no notion that I would ever understand the formulae he invented in his contemplation of the universe, but I'm glad he did it, and I know that his contribution to human knowledge and understanding is great. I applaud it, but I cannot replicate it. I can, however, know enough mathematics to perform the life of an educated person. That might include, like Jefferson, drawing up some designs, maybe for a cabinet for my office, maybe for a new room for my house. Or maybe some time I'll decide to become an architect. Every day math is necessary for an educated person, and maybe a bit more. Understanding the concepts of the stock market, of economics in general, would be very useful to planning and living an organized, prosperous life that would allow one to perform all the other tasks and pleasures of an educated person.

The natural sciences seem a more universal necessity. In an age of environmental problems, knowing enough to be able to decide what one believes about issues of conservation of land, air and water -- and consequently to vote appropriately to put into office politicians who will attempt to husband those resources intelligently -- seems an absolute necessity. From strip-mining to water fluoridation, there are endless issues for an intelligent person to consider. An educated person will be able to consider them from all angles, including ethical, fiscal, and scientific, and will be able to logically come to a workable conclusion. If that educated person also possesses the communications skills he or she should possess, then those ideas can be presented to the community. An educated person will, however, be able to choose those issues about which he or she can make the most difference or which seem to be -- weighed with logic as well as compassion -- as no one can do everything.

Math and the natural sciences, but most especially math, seem to have become all-important in some circles, with the rise of technology. And with the advance of technology, of course, came the idea that we must have it. Still, there is a danger there, and that is becoming so enamored of the technology that one forgets what it is for; it is to be a servant to us, not our master. An educated person will understand that, and, as attached as we get to our computer (even I!), there is more in the world to be investigated than can be Googled. The natural sciences and math are also becoming blurred with religion, a very exciting prospect. For so many years, scientists claimed not to believe in God, or to be agnostics at least. These days, quantum physics is actually attempting to prove the existence of God. No matter whether one chooses to believe in God, or even in quantum physics, it is necessary for an educated person to know that these investigations are going on. Without that knowledge, an educated person just mimics what has been said about either one for centuries, blocking off the new information the pursuit of which is the hallmark of the educated person. Indeed, it is about the natural sciences and math that for centuries, those not involved mention 'discoveries' and 'research,' thinking erroneously that those two concepts do not apply to the humanities. But clearly they do. Of all these six competencies, the humanities might be the single most essential one. The humanities are a synthesis of all that has gone before, and all that there is. Discoveries happen in humanities, but they are more likely to be the discoveries of interconnections between things or events that the uncritical would never link. But linked, they suddenly shed more light on human life. For example, knowing that the Celts are not synonymous with the Irish might seem useless knowledge at first. But then realizing that the red-haired people inhabited what is now most of France and parts of Germany and northern Italy before moving to Ireland would help explain the points of similarity in all three cultures, or might cause someone to look for them. So what? That's about another of the competencies, community. We tend to narrowly define our community, unless our real education shows us that they are all interrelated. Again, so what? It's hard to fight with someone who is your mirror image. This sort of thing struck me a few years ago when some Irish friends invited me and a Japanese friend to an Irish concert. The band played some Spanish-sounding tunes, and it turns out the Celts were on the Iberian Peninsula as well. The Japanese girl was really into the music, but it seemed so un-Asian. And then the Irish band did some Chinese tunes on their Irish instruments, and all of a sudden it was clear that there are similarities in the music of all cultures. It was a discovery, a personal one for me, but others had made it before, and used it to increase knowledge, community and so on.

I will admit to some bias in favor of the humanities as a competency for an educated person. The connections, and the opportunity to find more, and just to realize how interconnected everything really is fascinates me. I think that that quality, the ability to be fascinated, is particularly valuable to an educated person, and particularly well served by the humanities.

Here's a connection between humanities -- which discovered and presented the connections -- and the sciences that makes it clear that so much is interrelated. One of the most rapidly spread modern inventions was eyeglasses. Few know that they were invented in about 1270 by English Franciscan friar Roger Bacon. An educated person can already see some connections; here is religion and science. But Bacon probably also wanted to indulge, and let others indulge, in reading and seeing beautiful things; humanities. And needless to say, communication -- both incoming and outgoing -- is more difficult for anyone who cannot see well. This was, in fact, the perfect educated person's invention. "Reading glasses for the elderly were in use at the papal court in Cairo by 1300, and at the sultan's court in Cairo by 1300, and at the court of the Mongol emperor of China no later than 1310." (Drucker, 1993) Only two inventions spread faster, the sewing machine and the telephone. (Drucker, 1993) And one of those was about communication.

In fact, things we might call technology were once thought to be scientific inventions. One of these was the stirrup, which made it possible to fight on horseback. Without them, riders fighting with lances, swords or a heavy crossbow would have been tossed off the horse by the force that Newton described in his Third Law: "To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction." (Drucker, 1993) A whole community then developed around this 'fighting machine,' an armed man on horseback. In fact, the stirrup created a political system, feudalism, because it required at least fifty peasant families' work to support each night, his squire, his three horses and his 12 to 15 grooms. (Drucker, 1993) That, it seems to me, was the beginning of specialization, and the very thing that caused the need of a concept of an educated person. . A specialized person could hardly be an educated one; a specialized person acts more like a machine, focused on only one facet of human life.