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May 4, 2008
On Being Educated
Jay Crisostomo at MU-PÀD-DA is both bemoaning and cerebrating the number of languages he thinks he "need(s) to control for (his) own eventual research." He comes up with 16 with another 10 that are on his wish list. This is a formidable challenge to both Jay and most the rest of us.
A number of years ago, I was discussing the definition of "educated" with a philosopher of my acquaintance. The real question was, "When is it okay to think of oneself as educated?" His short answer was, never. His longer answer, obviously from a western perspective, went something like this.
Before one could even begin to consider oneself educated one need be fluent, reading, writing and speaking, in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. One should be able to read and write Latin and Greek. One should be able to read Arabic and Mandrean with high comprehension. In addition, one should be able to read two other Indo-European languages and one other what he called "foreign," meaning non-Indo-European, language with ease. Then, one needs to understand and be able to explain mathematics through at least partial differential equations, assuming that things like statistics and probability, victor analysis, set theory and multi-dimensional geometry are prerequisites. And of course, one should be able to outline in considerable detail most contemporary scientific theories and the long history of all the major countries and regions in the world and recent history of all the current countries. To be sure, one needs to have read and have working recall of much of the world's great literature and a solid grounding in the arts and art history including music. Knowing some philosophy might be a good thing too.
The bottom line, in his view an educated person should be able to read with over 90% comprehension and be able to meaningfully critique anything written in any of the requisite languages on any subject.
Well, I know that this person, by his own standards, is not educated. I surely am not educated. But the person who made these formidable claims is a lot closer to being educated than I will ever be. And I know at least one person who is educated, or nearly so, by these standards. Frightening!
But there are other ways of getting at this issue. My teacher, Loren Fisher, told us that one of his teachers, it may have been Cyrus Gordon but I'm not sure, said that an educated person should read the equivalent of four books a week, a fat one and a skinny one in one's field and a fat one and a skinny one from outside one's field. One of these books should be in a language other than one's own. Loren may well have come close to this goal. He may still come close to this goal. I do not.
Finally, there is the story of a heated conversation between two great scholars. At one point, one says to the other, "You may speak thirty languages but the only thing scholarly about you is that you speak them all with an accent!"
Posted by Duane Smith at May 4, 2008 1:28 PM | Read more on Odds and Ends |
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Comments
Most of us don't have the intellectual capacity nor time to be educated, apparently.
Posted by: Alan Lenzi at May 4, 2008 2:48 PM
Alan, I agree. The point I was trying to make, and I did it poorly, is that no matter how much you know there is always more to know. And by my story of the two scholars, I wanted to point out that there is more to being a scholar than what you know.
Posted by: Duane at May 4, 2008 3:15 PM
Right, I got that. I almost said something about how the people who find themselves educated by the standards mentioned above may also find themselves alone, socially ill-adapted, or hygenically challenged. :) But I'm sure there are exceptions.
I was just sort of being facetious earlier. . . .
I constantly struggle with "gaps" (huge holes that whole planets could pass through) in my education, and I frequently have fantasies of knowing everything or at least much, much more about the world than I presently do. I think most "semi-educated" people, especially those in and around academia, experience this.
About languages, I really believe there are many who claim to know more than they in fact do. Language skills get rusty very fast because the time to keep 10 languages in good working order would require one's full attention unless one learned them early in life and uses them all very frequently (almost daily).
Finally, the best sign of an education is critical thinking in my book. Facts and languages are all very important. But method, logic, and critical acumen trumps them all.
Posted by: Alan Lenzi at May 4, 2008 5:14 PM
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