WHO IS AN EDUCATED PERSON

WHO IS AN EDUCATED PERSON

What does it mean to be an educated person? This is the most important question we must ask ourselves on a college campus.

Universities, by definition, turn us into educated citizens — men and women with more access to the accumulated learning in various disciplines (biology, history and engineering, to name a few) than the average person who has not attended a similar campus. The college experience is an immersion of the individual in a sea of ideas, perspectives and provocations. It is like jumping into the ocean and then swimming in various directions to see different coastlines. The “universal” root of “university” is the recognition of how enormous the world and its elements are. The educated person does not think he can master everything, or even a fraction of it. He seeks to make some sense of the enormity, to chart worthwhile pathways and to find meaning that gives the journey enduring value.  

The learning that college opens for the graduate is about the many sources of meaning and value that individuals can pursue amid a disorienting and competitive world. Returning to the ocean metaphor, life without higher education is like swimming without full vision. Education helps us to see more.

College, then, is not about earning power, although it increases the income of nearly every graduate. College is, instead, about adventure and growth. It is a mind-expanding enterprise, setting its participants on a path of continued exploration and learning that is hard to replicate any other way.

College is an intensive training of the intellect and the senses. Educated men and women are not always smarter, but they have a richer and more complex understanding of their surroundings. To be educated is to appreciate — and ultimately benefit from — the many colors, shapes and sizes of the human experience.

Education can help us live more complete and meaningful lives by nurturing essential values and skills. By valuing uniqueness and diversity, we accept our responsibility for their protection. By valuing open-minded inquiry, we may accept that, while we can seek certainties, perspectives may be the best we can gain. By valuing growth as a lifelong process and recognizing change as inevitable, we may work towards goals whose fruition may lie beyond our lifetime. By valuing the ability to analyze and make reasoned judgments, we may gain insights into ourselves and our world and a greater understanding of the interdependency of all things. By valuing the ability to communicate, we may give expression to our vision of the world where people can work cooperatively to improve their environment and the condition of their lives.

QUALITIES OF AN EDUCATED PERSON

1. They listen and they hear.

This is so simple that perhaps it doesn't seem worth saying, but in our distracted and overbusy age I think it's worth declaring that an educated person knows how to pay attention--to people and to the world around them. They work hard to hear what other people are saying. They can follow an argument, track logical reasoning, detect illogic, hear the emotions that lie behind both the logic and the illogic, and ultimately empathize with the person who is feeling those emotions.

2. They read and they understand.

This too is utterly simple to say, but very difficult to achieve, since there are so many ways of reading in this world. An educated person is literate across a wide range of genres and media. They're able to read and absorb the New York Times, including the front page, the arts section, the sports section, the business section, the Tuesday science section, and the editorials; they can read not just Time magazine but Scientific American, the New York Review of Books, Better Homes and Gardens, The National Enquirer, and the Reader's Digest, they can enjoy reading popular fiction ranging from the latest bestseller or detective novel or comic book to a work of classic literature; and they're engaged by works of nonfiction ranging from biographies to debates about current public policy to the latest discoveries of science.

3. They can talk with anyone.

An educated person knows how to talk: they can give a speech, they can make people laugh, they can ask thoughtful questions, and they can hold a conversation with anyone they meet, whether that person is a high school dropout or a Nobel laureate, a child or a patient dying in a hospital, a factory worker or a farmer or a corporate CEO. Moreover, an educated person participates in such conversation not because they like to talk about themselves but because they're genuinely interested in the other person.
4. They can write clearly and persuasively and movingly.

What goes for talking goes for writing as well: an educated person knows the fine craft of putting words on paper.

I'm not talking about the ability to parse a sentence or compose a paragraph or write an essay. I'm talking about the ability to express what is in your mind and in your heart so as to get it across to the person who reads your words so as to teach, persuade, and move that person.

5. They can solve a wide variety of puzzles and problems.

This ability to solve puzzles and problems bespeaks many skills. These include basic numeracy, an ability to handle numbers and to see that many problems which appear to turn on questions of quality can in fact be reinterpreted as subtle problems of quantity. These days a comparable skill involves the ability to run a computer, whether for word processing or doing taxes or playing games.

CHARACTERISTICS OF AN EDUCATED PERSON

1. An educated person has the ability to think clearly and independently.

2. An educated person has good judgment.

3. An educated person knows how to learn.

4. An educated person knows how to acquire desired skills by identifying and utilizing available resources, deconstructing the process required for learning a particular skill, and experimenting with potential approaches.

5. An educated person has the ability to take initiative and work alone.

6. An educated person has the ability to communicate thoughts and ideas in writing, clearly and concisely.

7. An educated person has the ability to speak clearly.

8. An educated person has the ability to reason analytically and critically.

9. An educated person has the ability to think inductively and deductively.

10. An educated person questions assumptions.