david henderson sent the following letter (response sent from mail@cartalk.com).

What Should A Person Know?

Let's start with cars, since you are experts there. What should any owner of a car know? If you can answer that question, then you are probably ready to extrapolate to the rest of knowledge.

What should a person who drives or owns a car know? How to keep it running well: fuel, fluids, maintenance, required service, service history, who to trust for advice and help. How to use it safely so as not to hurt anyone, including oneself. How to enjoy using it.

What should a person know? The same sorts of things about:

1. Their own body: how it works, fuel, fluids, maintenance, required service, history of repairs, what to do when it breaks down, how to enjoy using it, who to call in case of trouble, how to use it without hurting anyone.

2. The earth we live on: how it works, maintenance, required service, history of repairs, how to keep it running so their children can take it to college with them and pass it on their own children.

3. The government: how it works, required service, history of repairs, maintenance.

4. The economy: how it works, history of repairs, periodic maintenance.

5. The arts: This one is a bit different. Knowing how to build, operate, and repair a car does not address that most human and humanizing of activities, the fun of driving. The sheer joy of cruising up the back roads of the Connecticut River Valley on the first beautiful spring day in an MGB-GT with the windows down. The difference between a Porsche and a Pacer. There are aesthetic matters that make life worth living. The comparable educational matters are literature, music and art. They must be included in education if people are to be creative and to live a full life in addition to the more utilitarian things listed above.

6. A sense of one's place. Where did we come from, where are we going, who else is using this road with us, how to avoid road rage. This leads to compassion, empathy and community.

That is what I think an educated person should know. Do we teach these in the "educational system"? Probably not very well. As a professor of chemistry here at Trinity College, I have done my best to break the mold of traditional teaching and get students to look at the big picture. Our analytical chemistry students do an environmental analysis project in the community as a service project. We teach how the environment works and what you need to know to keep it working in courses in environmental chemistry. But there are still only a few places in the educational system where anyone is looking at the big picture and where their little part fits in. So, congratulations for focusing attention on this issue. I hope you can get some publicity for it.

Back to Tommy's Education Forum Part II

[ Previous Letter | Letters Index | Next Letter ]