The Truly Educated Person

I have recently read Randy David's "The case for 'deschooling' society" a few days back. It was an article that focuses on the problems in education, centering on how schools teach the students WHAT to learn instead of HOW to lean for themselves. 

Everytime I meet up with one of my best guy friends, who share the same regard for education as me, we start off our conversations with querying the other's life in general. Since we both are cinephiles and bibliophiles, we tend to talk more about the books we are reading and the movies we have recently watched. Then our conversation turns more serious as the topic shifts from literature and film to politics, poverty, and education.

We seem to share the same views, that education has become commoditized, that schools have turned into profit-oriented institutions, that students nowadays are in blind pursuit of certificates and diplomas. Worse, society place more importance on papers and certificates than the actual capabilities and skills of a person. A person with a PhD is more likely to be held in high regard, regardless of where he finished his PhD. (Because schools abound which impart not true knowledge nor skills but confer indiscriminately honors even to unqualified students.) Methinks people pay those costly tuition and miscellaneous fess just to get diplomas--- papers that they need to show to companies for employment. Studying is confined only within the duration of time one is enrolled in school. Just how many people continue to study and learn new things just because of their love for learning?

A truly educated person is someone who takes the initiative to study even when outside the classroom. He sees a learning opportunity is every situation. He sees every difficult situation as a challenge to test his capacities and skills. He knows how to think for himself and is thoughtful of how his actions affect other people. He understands the interrelatedness of everything and takes responsibility for his actions. He sees the value of cooperative effort in every undertaking but sees his own individual effort of utmost importance, thus he makes sure that he does his share with a cheerful and willing heart. He does not step on other people, does not manipulate nor threaten other people for his own self-aggrandizement. Instead he offers a ready hand to one in need.

All these are not reflected in diplomas nor do they appear in certificates. All these are qualities of a person one can only see when one has interacted with him. It is sad to see how nowadays people look at the superficial and the trivial with no regards to the real person himself. It is just as sad that many people have taken to accumulating tangible papers instead of becoming a truly educated person. We cannot blame them though, for life is hard and jobs are hard to come by.