Education...

[fajrdrako]

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. - Anatole France, 1844 - 1924

Comments

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

Pretty good quote. I'm not sure I quite agree with the idea -- I have heard an university degree (B.A.) being described as primarily a course in how to solve problems. The distinction between what is (generally) known and what is unknown is a lot fuzzier than even those educated in university might think ... and in a few cases (many of them cited in James P. Hogan's _Kicking the Sacred Cow_), scientists have refused to let anyone clarify the distinction any more than they already have done.

I might add that this philosopher is perhaps better known for the aphorism: "To understand all is to forgive all." I also don't agree with that one (does understanding the Nazis allow one to forgive them for the Holocaust?), but in many lesser cases, it comes closer than many people might think.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

"How to solve problems" isn't so much what you learn, as how you learn to think. How to analyze a situation. Some people do this well with no formal education at all. A B.A. helped me learn how to solve certain kinds of problems - analysis of facts, research for information, differentiate the truth from falsehood - but it didn't teach me to solve other problems that are more central to life, like how to overcome illness, lose weight, keep a spouse, balance a chequebook, and so on.

Re "To understand all is to forgive all," - I think it depends how you define forgiveness. (Recent episodes of Torchwood and Doctor Who have an interesting attitude to this.) I would say that "to understand all is to undestand all", which is meaningless, but it's along the lines of "everyone is the hero of his own story, no one casts themselves as monsters" - which I think is mostly true, even for Hitler and his nastier acolytes. They had a rationale. It was insane, fantastical, and monstrous, but it was a rationale.

This pokes at the edges of the very central question: what is morality? How do we differentiate the bad from the good? Does it change over time? Can we judge others? and so on.

I rather think 'forgiveness' is an irrelevant point. It hardly matters to Hitler whether I forgive him - it isn't a personal issue, it isn't even a theological issue. 'Forgiveness' only makes sense on a personal level - we can forgive family or friends or acquaintances who wrong us. To make forgiveness an abstract issue concerning people we don't know, is meaningless.

[wanderinunicorn.livejournal.com]

I've read that the definition of the intelligence is the ability to solve problems. I would say the intelligence plus education allow to realize the own limits. Usually, the educated and intelligent people are still unsecure of their abilities and knowledges;in the contrary, the idiots are always convinced that they're perfect.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Well, yes: and this can be annoying. The people I know with the most certainty about things tend to be the ones with teh least formal education. It isn't a matter of intelligence, or even of what they know - I 'm talking about intelligent people here. It's the approach, or scope of knowledge, and awareness of the process of knowledge - how things come to be known by the individual (i.e, hands-on knowledge) and how they came to be known by mankind as a whole. It makes for perspective.

Then there are the people who just haven't a clue and think they know everything, out of stubbornness.