Garth Jacobson sent the following letter (response sent from mail@cartalk.com).

Dear Car Talk,

You have asked the question, What make a person educated? Your question reminds me of Mark Twain's quote, "Don't let school get in the way of your education." As for myself, I was too stupid to quit going to school. That is why I ended up with four degrees and no answer to your question. But given the great quantity of tests I have taken, I can still say something about the subject. (Of course, this question has been around since the days of Plato, and no one has been able to effectively answer it--so why should I be any different?)

It appears that what you are really asking is, What makes a person a value to society? Certainly it is not what you learn, but what you do that determines your worth to the people around you and society in general. It is the process of learning and then doing the right thing, or asking the right questions, that determines if a person is educated. It is not the correct answers they get on a test that determines their value to society. The correct answers on a test may only indicate intelligence. But being intelligent only means that your brain holds lots of data and can get access to it in a timely manner. It is not what you know but what you do with what you know that shows you are educated.

For example: every year thousands of attorneys take bar exams that include ethics questions. Certainly some of those who pass the bar and score well on the ethics portion of the test will still end up being disbarred somewhere down the road because of something stupid that they did. It is not because they did not know what the right answer is, it is because they chose the course of action that did not reflect the right thing to do. It may have been greed, lack of time, careless work, substance abuse or a combination of those things. Certainly the person was "educated" but at some point was not valuable to society and acted contrary to the public good.

So, to answer your question, I believe that an educated person is a person of good character who strives to do the best with the talent he or she is given. That may not mean that they hit all of the categories on your checklist of qualities of "educated" persons. But that does mean that they strive constantly to improve themselves so that they might be valuable to society and those around them. It is not how they get there that is important, because each person approaches this by their own method. It may be through parental guidance, school, life experience or lifelong self-learning. How they get there is not important. What is important is that parents, teachers, bosses, friends and leaders should constantly be pushing for and encouraging the people around them to improve so as to be a value to society and be "educated."

Back to Tommy's Education Forum Part II

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