An educated person is a well rounded person.

To be educated is to knowledgeabl
e in
many areas. Diversity is essential in the sense that many different things insp
ire thought,
which then derive permanent conclusions from these experiences. Anyone who has
the
audacity to call themselves educated needs to have a firm grasp of many differen
t areas.
These categories span through Science, Technology, Language, Art, Feelings and V
alues.
All of these are building blocks that help make up an educated person, but just
as
important, these are the same qualities that form an individual.
One of the most important concepts that a person learns from Science is
a
fundamental thinking process. This process starts with curiosity, asking the qu
estion,"
Why does that work?" It then moves on to theorizing or guessing. Next, this pe
rson
takes his or her theory and puts it to the test by conducting various experiment
s. Finally
this individual will draw a final conclusion from those findings. Science also
helps a
person look at things objectively, which means there is no feelings influencing
experiments that can lead to fraudulent conclusions. This can be a double edged
sword
however, because in many instances when a scientist is emotionally removed from
the
experiments performed, the question, "Should I?", is never asked. For instance
under the
reign of Hitler many cruel medical experiments were preformed. In The Medical
Experiments by William Shirer the author states,"Prisoners were placed in high p
ressure
chambers and subjected to high-altitude tests until they ceased breathing. They
were
injected with lethal doses of typhus and jaundice. They were subjected to 'free
zing'
experiments in icy water or exposed naked in the snow outdoors until they froze
to
death." This also deals with the subject of values and will be discussed detail
later.
Probably the most positive way to utilize Science would be to take it to
the next
level, Technology. This is were an educated person takes what laws and theories
he
learns in science and integrates them into everyday life, finding ways to make l
ife easier
and arguably better. I say arguably because many educated people are against
technological advancement. These philosophers say that technologies are being p
robed
without understanding and therefore they are being abused. These philosophers fe
el that
this will be the chief downfall of humankind. Mary E. Clark showed her oppositi
on in
her article Science and Values, in which she states,"When such knowledge is used
to
manipulate Nature we call it 'technology', and over the past century this manipu
lative
capacity has grown to the point where we can now annihilate ourselves as a speci
es."
Another important aspect of being an educated person is a firm grasp of
the use of
Language. This person needs to develop the gift of relating his thoughts and fe
elings into
a clear and interesting way. Many people try to use large words and awkward voc
abulary
to sound educated, but a true educated person can relate an idea in a way that a
ny person
could understand.
In his article Simplicity, William Zinsser advocates this idea when he makes poi
nts like,
"We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompo
us frills
and meaningless jargon."and,"The person snoozing in a chair, holding a magazine
or
book, is a person who was being given too much unnecessary trouble by the writer
." To
be an educated person is a person that not only can relate ideas to someone else
, he can
also understand other peoples ideas and feelings and can use them to draw over a
ll
conclusions to answer the questions at hand.
In addition an educated person must be in touch with inner feelings, thi
s person
must know thyself, and must value the importance of feelings and life itself. R
obertson
Davies in his article about people with emotional atrophy called The Deadliest o
f Sins,
says this about these people, "They seldom make mistakes, because they never put
themselves in a position where they are not complete masters of the situation...
.they have
died to joy and pain and thus feeling." One can not be educated without experie
ncing the
joys and pains of life, this would leave nothing to learn from.
One aspect of being considered educated that is imperative is the abilit
y to
communicate, or in some situations, vent his or her feelings in a positive matte
r. This
demonstrates pure knowledge of ones own spirit. One of the best ways to do this
is
through an artistic medium. This is the main reason why so many artists are ref
erred to
as ingenious. These people not only display feelings constructively, they do it
in such an
interestingly radical way that they invoke emotional responses from their admire
rs. Art
has the ability to express feelings better than any words from any language. Su
sanne K.
Langer in her article The Cultural Importance of Art states,"There is, however,
an
important part of reality that is quite inaccessible to the formative influence
of language:
that is the realm of so-called "inner experience," the life of feeling and emoti
on.
All of these attributes lose power without an individual set of values t
o focus this
energy. Adolf Hitler influenced millions by being a masterful orator. Hitler a
lso was
very innovative in science and many other areas. However do to his grossly warp
ed
sense of personal values he was labelled by leaders and peers as a madman.
It is very difficult for any person to be a master of all of these categ
ories, but to be
truly educated, there needs to be at least a small concentration of everything i
n that
individual's background. For the one reason that it is so difficult to posses a
ll of these
traits, it is also that same reason that makes all of the truly educated people
of our past
stand out in history as heros and leaders. This is also the biggest reason that
so many
people admire them and strive to be like them.

Do You Have What it Takes?

A breakdown of the educated person
by Thomas Burkhardt