by Jean Sidden

Created on: September 10, 2009

Grade level is not all that is necessary to possess an identity as an educated person. Though, in the strictest sense of the word, an educated person has an education, it is still a shame that lifetime learning and field experience are not recognized more formally as education. Matching skill for skill, a person with a PhD may very well still need to call an electrician or a plumber when the house requires rewiring or the pipes are backed up.

Certainly attaining a high level of formal education qualifies someone as educated but a proliferation of people with years of university degrees is somewhat new. There have been many more centuries during which the majority of the population did not have college degrees, let alone graduate degrees and PhDs. To shut out those who have vast amounts of life experience in specialized areas from the notion of being educated is pure snobbery.

In the United States the GI Bill was the stimulus for many more adults to pursue college degrees. These were primarily men but women followed in larger numbers as gender biases in college programs broke down. Prior to this time, in the 1950's, a college education was not the norm.

However, compulsory public school education taught the basics and many went through their lives having only attended through the sixth grade. These were the folks who went on to work and gain long experience in a trade, becoming experts in their field. This form of self education was invaluable at creating competence that spanned a lifetime.

So what is the most basic requirement of an educated person? A person must be literate. With literacy the world opens up. Anyone can utilize a library and read their way into education. Every book on every subject is available to everyone. Therefore the choice to take advantage of a self directed form of education resides with the individual.

We would hope that formal higher education would create open mindedness, tolerance and empathy for all life, but we know that's not the case, so a philosophical approach to a standard by which we judge education doesn't hold up. A printed degree, which produces a Scarecrow effect, is no sign of an educated person, or a brain, though it may be a sign of having the stamina to slog through a degree program. Once that degree is conferred the real education begins, and that is the education of life.

So when asking what a standard is for describing an educated person, the next question might be "Educated in what? In plumbing? In writing academic papers? Educated as a hairdresser or a registered nurse?" We all can't learn everything there is to learn and the standard becomes pliable when specifically applied. It bends to the individual and one size does not fit all.

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