<p>When I read the posts in CC, I wonder, what is an education?</p>
<p>I go to MIT and become an expert in some math or science field. Now, I am considered educated; although, I may know very little about psychology, sociology, economics, literature, politics, history, foreign cultures, etc. </p>
<p>What does an educated person mean?</p>
<p>If I get a math degree from MIT, am I more educated than a person who gets a degree in English from Denison? A degree in history from Penn State?</p>
<p>What is an education, and why can I only get it at a few places?</p>
<p>I think you can get an education in many ways and through many avenues. The degree is a credential, proving to employers that you've met certain requirements in a particular field. Without recognized credentials, many job interviews would probably last about a month!</p>
<p>Some people think they are educated because they have that piece of paper. I think if you never open another book because you don't have to anymore--you didn't get "educated"--and aren't likely to be.</p>
<p>You will never be well enough educated. No one ever is. Being well-educated simply means that you have learned much. It is more than learning "facts" or even discrete skills, such as how to calculate stresses on wing parts at various speeds, altitudes, and attitudes. It's also about applying logic and creativity to problems, leaning how to "think" better, if you will.</p>
<p>mini's great quotes neatly set out two competing definitions of education: a body of knowlege (what they teach in school); and habits of thought and inquiry (what's left over after you've forgotten everything). </p>
<p>Maybe what we tend to think of as well-educated, or at least broadly educated is the combination of both. That seems to have been the point of most traditional college curricula: knowledge (including in-depth knowledge of at least one field) and acquaintance with a variety of types of thinking or inquiry.</p>
<p>I remember a class I took in my senior year (in my major). </p>
<p>Every day the professor would cite DOZENS of books-- not on our reading list-- during class. Always in the vein of, "Well, all of you have read X, right?" And we'd kind of shake our heads "no" with wide eyes and he'd just cringe and say "Well, my God! To understand anything about this subject you have to have read X!!" </p>
<p>So we'd all write it down in the margin of our notes: 'MUST READ X.' This went on for the whole semester and every day I would leave with 5 or 6 books I HAD TO READ.</p>
<p>That was when I began to feel like something shifted in me. Thanks to this teacher, I finally began to understand the scope & magnitude of what I did not know. And this was my field. And it excited me!</p>
<p>I think that is being an educated person. Understanding the hugeness of what is out there to be learned, and having an appetite to keep on learning.</p>
<p>In addition, I believe an education provides an understanding of the methodologies that a field of endeavor uses and evolves as it develops. My mother, an educated person, followed the progress in the areas of genetics and literature up to the day of the stroke that finally took her. Her doctor commented that she was interested in the world to a very great extent for someone her age.</p>
<p>I'm at Penn right now and having those exact same thoughts. What am I learning? Why? Am I educated now? How about next year after a few more credits?</p>
<p>I'm trying to take as broad a curriculum as I can, yet also as focused a curriculum as I can. I know it sounds contradictory to me, but I want to be an expert in the things I'm passionate about, but I also want to be knowledgeable about everything else.</p>
<p>I flip through my course catalog and I see SO many intro courses in SO many topics that i'm just not going to be able to take.</p>
<p>And then the issue that goes along with that is, when I do take one of those intro level courses, I am exposed to just how abjectly ignorant I am in that subject and how much more there is for me to learn in it. </p>
<p>The more I study the more my ignorance is revealed to me!</p>
<p>Socrates felt the same way. That's why I have always most enjoyed learning and teaching Socratically whenever possible.</p>
<p>When I was in the 8th grade, a teacher of mine opened our civics class by asking someone to prove something to him. Anything. Like the rest, I said things like, "your desk is solid," only to have him say, "How do I know that? Suppose my senses are deceiving me? Suppose your senses are deceiving you?"</p>
<p>Of course, I know the answer now and it's Cartesian. I should have told him to deny his own existence to himself, which would be a paradox. No matter. I learned much from that man, but the most important thing I learned is that I don't know, and can never know, for certain.</p>