Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2014 09:09:44 -0500
From: “John R Dykers”
Subject: Joe’s post; smart or educated?
Joe asked an important question: “And in what context is it right to basically tell someone that they are stupid and you are smarter than they are because you have four degrees and a doctor behind your name?”
We all often misuse the words and confuse the difference between Smart/dumb and ignorant/educated, ignorance/knowledge.
We are all ignorant, just that the level thereof is changed a bit by education which tries to teach us what other people have learned. Out at the edge of knowledge is always ignorance, and when we reach that edge we say “I believe —-“.
Smart/intelligence is the capacity to apply the law of cause and effect in the broadest expanse of time and place and person. This quality enhances our capacity to become educated, but they are not the same thing. There are plenty of smart people who never finished formal schooling at any level, but they know how to figure things out.
There are some folks with lots of degrees who “crossed the stage to pick up their diploma, declared themselves educated, and never read another book or learned anything again” to try to quote Lehrer, the PBS newsman, not Tom Lehrer, the mathematician turned songwriter.
Some folks with degrees also obtained them without learning how to think, and especially those from “diploma mill” institutions. Having knowledge is a good tool for figuring out solutions to new problems, but it ain’t the whole ballgame. Insight and imagination are also required.
John Dykers