Brian Nomi sent the following letter (response sent from mail@cartalk.com).

I would like to take issue with one part of your definition. You said an educated person is a civilized person. This is patently false. It's possible to be a very savage, evil and amoral person while still being highly educated.

Take Hannibal Lector, for example, the villain from Silence of the Lambs. Ph.D. in psychology, well read and very astute. Or the villain from Die Hard who quoted Aristotle as he shot people and plotted to blow up buildings and kill dozens of other innocent people in his quest for money. Who can argue but that these are educated people? So it's clear that being educated doesn't necessarily include civility.

I have similar attacks on other components of your definition. Such as someone who loves and cares, someone who communicates well. These are not educated people, they are loving or eloquent people!

What do I think an educated person is? Simply someone with a grasp of the canon of knowledge generally accepted by that person's society. For Western society, I believe a familiarity with the 54 books in the "Great Books" series published nearly 50 years ago by Robert Maynard Hutchins is enough. These books include the normally accepted great authors and works: Plato, Aristotle, the Greek plays, Dante, Milton, Freud, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

Knowledge of this canon is (more or less) enough to be considered educated. You don't need to be loving, caring, noncriminal, have good table manners or anything else.

That's my two cents. Let me know what you think, OK?

Captain Brian Nomi
Lakewood, WA

Back to Tommy's Education Forum Part II

[ Previous Letter | Letters Index | Next Letter ]