ABOUT EDUCATION and the THEORY of KNOWLEDGE PROGRAMME

What Does It Mean To Be Educated?

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In a comment on my article, Wake-Up Call for The Gates Foundation,

Robin Cangie asked the interesting question: What does it mean to be educated?
I responded quickly:
Obviously there are whole libraries devoted to answering this question. Until recently, no one
imagined that it had anything to do with an uncanny knack to give the expected answer on
standardized tests.
In recent posts, I have been suggesting that being educated includes (to give a short answer): a
demonstrated ability to listen carefully, to think critically, to evaluate facts rigorously, to reason
analytically, to imagine creatively, to articulate interesting questions, to explore alternative viewpoints,
to maintain intellectual curiosity and to speak and write persuasively. If we add to that a reasonable
familiarity with the treasures of history, literature, theater, music, dance and art that previous
civilizations have delivered, we are getting to close to the meaning of educated.
If we were to adopt this definition of educated, many of the combatants in the ongoing battle in
Congress about the debt ceiling would not qualify.
Then I got to wondering about other definitions of educated.

What other definitions exist?

If you Google the question, one of the first responses that comes up is an interesting one from Alfie
Kohn:

ABOUT EDUCATION and the THEORY of KNOWLEDGE PROGRAMME

No one should offer pronouncements about what it means to be well-educated without meeting my
wife. Today she is a practicing physician and an excellent one at that, judging by feedback from
her patients and colleagues. She will, however, freeze up if you ask her what 8 times 7 is, because
she never learned the multiplication table. And forget about grammar (Me and him went over her
house today is fairly typical) or literature (Whos Faulkner?). After a dozen years, I continue to be
impressed on a regular basis by the agility of her mind as well as by how much she doesnt know.
Well, I havent met Mrs. Kohn, but clearly with her lapses in grammar, despite 29 years of schooling,
she would not pass Professor Xs courses on English and Literature that he describes so amusingly
in his book, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower (Viking, 2011)
Nor would Professor X see any need for her to do so. She is a perfectly successful member of
society without an ability to manipulate the English language or carry out even simple arithmetic.
Alfie Kohn continues:
Rather than attempting to define what it means to be well-educated, should we instead be asking
about the purposes of education?

Other definitions of being educated

While dismissing several obvious non-starters like coming from a good school, or having good test
scores, or memorizing a bunch o facts, or seat time in class, Kohn suggests several possible
definitions:
1. To develop the intellect, presumably including linguistic, mathematical and analytic
capabilities.
2. To produce competent, caring, loving, and lovable people.
3. To create and sustain a democratic society
4. To invest in producing future workers for the workforce and, ultimately, corporate profits.
On this basis, Mrs. Kohn might fail on criterion #1, but perhaps get by on all of the other three.
My own quick definition is oriented to #1, i.e. the intellectual aspects, and gives less weight to the
caring, loving and lovable traits of #2. That is an oversight. I agree that it would be reasonable to
add demonstrate empathy to my definition.

Producing the future workforce

I am disinclined to add #4 producing future workers for the workforce, because we dont really know
what the workforce will need. A large proportion of the jobs of today didnt exist 15 years ago and we
can assume that the pace of obsolescence will only increase.

ABOUT EDUCATION and the THEORY of KNOWLEDGE PROGRAMME

What is also becoming apparent is that producing an army of left-brained compliant, obedient
analysts might have worked well enough in the 20th Century. It is less and less adapted to the needs
of successful 21st Century organizations, which need workers with imagination and creativity and
innovativeness as well as analytic capability. Being willing to do what one is told is becoming less
relevant than an ability to think for oneself. Its clear that Google [GOOG], Apple [AAPL] or Amazon
[AMZN] didnt get where they are just by using obedient, compliant analysts.
One is tempted to predict that future employers will need genuinely educated people, not obedient
automatons. If so, it will be good news indeed; there will be strong demand from the marketplace for
good education.

Creating a democratic society

I am also disinclined to add #3 (the political dimension: create and sustain a democratic society) not
because it isnt worthwhile, but rather because it risks burdening the education system with a goal
that it cannot reasonably perform. If the system sets out to achieve that, it may fail to achieve even
the basics of intellectual education. As in other areas, an oblique approach is likely to work better: a
democratic society will be the result of having educated people but it should not be the goal.

Disposition as well as ability

But I am taken with Sasha Galbraiths insightful article, What If Women Were In Charge of the Debt
Talks. She argues persuasively that we might do better if there was less testosterone in Congress.
The posturing, strutting and acting out being done by the men in Congress, she says, is a direct
result of testosterone gone wild under stress. You see this most often on Wall Street where stress
and big-money decisions are the order of the day. Michael Lewis called those guys Big Swinging
Dicks and Tom Wolfe anointed them Masters of the Universe. If you need academic proof, take a
look at John Coates research on men and testosterone on the trading floor.
Alfie Kohn concludes in a similar vein:
Its not only the ability to raise and answer those questions that matters, though, but also the
disposition to do so. For that matter, any set of intellectual objectives, any description of what it
means to think deeply and critically, should be accompanied by a reference to ones interest or
intrinsic motivation to do such thinking. Dewey reminded us that the goal of education is more
education. To be well-educated, then, is to have the desire as well as the means to make sure that
learning never ends.
I like the final sentence as a short working definition that aligns with the recent book by Douglas
Thomas and John Seely Brown, A New Culture of Learning : a desire as well as the means to make
sure that learning never ends.
Whats your definition of being educated?
________________

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