The Educated Ideal

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that over 1.5 million bachelor’s degrees were earned in America in the year 2007, alone. Combining all degrees of higher education, over 3 million were earned. For these millions of degrees, how many students are considered to be educated? Certainly the majority of these students are educated by the present standards of their respective fields of study. However, one field of study is but a single facet of the manifold realm of Education as a whole. How then do we determine an individual to be educated? Education and schooling are not inter-dependent. Focusing on education independently of schooling requires an abstract approach. This is the intended approach when evaluating the educated person. The Educated Person is fully aware- Aware of himself, aware of nature, aware of virtue. First, we must ask, “What is education?” Leona Okakok refers to the definition of her native Inupiat Eskimo language, “to cause to become a person.” (p. 80). Education is a process of becoming self-aware. Therefore, the educated person is primarily one who is fully aware of, and one with, himself. As humans, we become aware of the natural world around us far before we begin to truly develop any sense of our unique identity. Awareness is accomplished in three phases. The initial phase is the reception of information- the facts. Little is accomplished with information, alone. It is random, chaotic, and entirely formless until we reach the second phase: Knowledge. Knowledge is the recognition and classification of information. In this phase, we begin to observe certain cohesiveness to the natural world. Events start to appear to have structure and a purposeful order. In this phase, we perceive the existence of purpose. Awareness arrives at full-term with understanding- the ability to assign value to knowledge. Therefore, the