Who are the "Educated"?

This month I wrote about education for the newspaper. Who exactly qualifies as an educated person? What does it mean to be educated? ...here is my attempt to answer these questions, or at least provide some food for thought on the issue.

Humanity. We're a curious thing. We were designed with the unique ability to evaluate ourselves. We are able to choose how we act or react to our surroundings. Although this self awareness should be good, it seems that mankind often finds ways to organize people into categories and types. Whether it's a positive way to understand people or a way to feed our insecurities and control others, we continue to subject each other to tests, stereotypes and ethnic groupings.

The recent election coverage is a perfect example of how divisiveness is fueled. The media used terms like Hispanic, black, and female, lumping voters into groups while attempting to sort out the election results. In the name of statistics and data, they also foster an elite class of citizens. As if subjecting their viewers to racism and sexism wasn't enough, one additional term was used to separate the intelligent from the dumb, the elite from the average. It was the term, “educated voters”.

The media draws attention to a matter that has been an issue in our society for some time. The fact that we often judge someone's intelligence or worth based on their education level. Assuming that the media's definition of “educated voters” are people who've finished 4 or more years of college, does that mean everyone else is uneducated? Or maybe a 2-year college course still counts as 'educated'? Does a high school education count? What about alternative forms of learning?

Research the successful people of the world and you will find many names of great renown that don't live up to society's standard for education. George Washington, Ben Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain and John D. Rockefeller... All these men had either limited formal education, didn't go to college or dropped out of college. What about successful women? ...Rachel Ray, Florence Nightingale, Doris Lessing, Coco Chanel, Melania Trump. The list of successful yet less formally educated people is long.

Author and Boston University educator Karen Arnold said about valedictorians, “I think we've discovered the 'dutiful' – people who know how to achieve in the system. But valedictorians struggle as surely as we all do. To know that a person is a valedictorian is to know only that he or she is exceedingly good at achievement as measured by grades. It tells you nothing about how they react to the vicissitudes of life.”

Daniel Goleman wrote in his book, Emotional Intelligence: why it can matter more than IQ, “At best, IQ contributes about 20 percent to the factors that determine life success, which leaves 80 percent to other forces.” Goleman mentioned a study of highly educated graduates, “When ninety-five Harvard students from the classes of the 1940s – a time when people with a wider spread of IQ were at Ivy League schools than is presently the case – were followed into middle age, the men with the highest test scores in college were not particularly successful compared to their lower-scoring peers in terms of salary, productivity, or status in their field. Nor did they have the greatest life satisfaction, nor the most happiness with friendships, family and romantic relationships.”

In a 2012 article titled, Defining the Educated Person, Jill Anderson wrote about a forum discussion at Harvard Graduate School for Education. In a two hour session five very bright and influential minds from government, media and educational institutions aimed to discover what it meant to be educated. Anderson wrote, “To be considered educated, said the panelists, students should leave school with a deep understanding of themselves and how they fit into the world, and have learned what some call “soft skills”, complex problem-solving, creativity, entrepreneurship, the ability to manage themselves, and the ability to be lifelong learners. As Professor Fernando Reimers, who moderated the panel, summarized, there is a disconnect between how education gets delivered in the classroom and the common desire for students to become good, well-rounded people.”

Why then, does the media draw attention to educated voters as a factor in presidential elections? Should a person's education be an employer's first priority? Why do communities pressure youth to attend college in order to obtain success and social standing? Why do we listen to someone with a college degree over someone who has abundant experience? Certainly, it is the condition of a person's mind that matters more than their sex, race, or education.

Education can give a person a wonderful advantage in life. Yet, it does no more than to equip an individual with the understanding to better employ themselves in a given occupation or field of knowledge. Here in America it should not be about race, gender or education. It should be the land of opportunity for everyone. Whether we think America needs to be made great again or not, we can all agree that life isn't measured just in how well we perform scholastically. It is what we do with the knowledge we possess, how we treat the people around us and how we deal with life's challenges that count the most.