What It Means To Be Educated

Anyone who is interested in education must be aware of what it means to be educated. Rather than write a long article about my feelings on this subject, I will refer the reader to a link on the right side of this page. “The Disadvantages of Being Educated” an essay written in 1937 by Albert Jay Nock. Most of our schools are set up today to train, not educate. The commonly believed purpose of an “education” is to prepare one for a job. The truly educated person is instructed in much more. As suggested rather sarcastically by Nock, an educated person is of no real use to society in terms of the economy. What is implied though is that education is important for the culture to survive. The disappearance of “education” as the driving force behind schooling, and its replacement with “training” has, and will continue to result, in the loss of our culture. To be educated, a person must know more than how to fix a computer, fill a tooth, or remove an appendix. Some understanding of culture, music, art, and philosophy are equally important to the survival of our society.
To illustrate this, let me tell you about an encounter I had with a former student several months ago. Nick was one of the best chemistry students I ever had the opportunity to instruct. He was, at the time of our reunion, an engineering student at a prominent state university. I found out from our discussion that there were so many requirements for his major that engineering students had no room in their schedule for electives. In fact, there were no elective requirements for students in his major. Nick was not being educated, even though the university would have denounced any suggestion of such a thing.
When I attended college, my alma mater was proud to market itself as a liberal arts college. I was required to take courses in philosophy, mathematics, classical and modern literature, as well as courses in the natural sciences. My major was Biology and I had enough credits in both Physics and Chemistry to declare both as minors, but I was required to declare a minor outside of my major subject area. As a result I have enough credit hours to become certified in social studies if I ever wanted. I was educated, and I am proud of it. I was trained to be a teacher during my undergraduate schooling, as well as in graduate school where I received an M.S. in Science Education. Ironically, I feel I learned nothing important about teaching from any education class. I learned how to teach by teaching, and it took 5 years before I really knew what I was doing—some of my students might argue that I still haven’t gotten it right.

Enough ranting for today! I just graded my students’ first lab report of the school year. Needless to say, many of them lack adequate thinking and writing skills, something I will try to improve on all this year. Below are some of the more “interesting” answers I encountered.

Question: A student needs to find the volume occupied by a rock. Describe how this could be done using only the rock, a graduated cylinder, and some water. Answer in complete sentences.

(student answer 1)
The student could carve out the inside of the rock and fill it up with water. Then he could pour the water into the graduated cylinder and find the volume of the rock.

Author’s note: Someday this student will work for the government.

(student answer 2)
Drop the rock into the graduate annafing water displaced minus the volume of water raot with rock from regular volume [typed exactly as it was written.]

Aurhor’s note: WHAT????!!!!!

(student answer 3)
First fill up the graduated cylinder with rock. Next, drop the rock into the cylinder. When that is finished, read the top of the rock for the measurement and subtract the volume from the water up to the bottom of the rock.

Author’s note: I have nothing to say—I am just speechless!

All of these students are in Honors Chemistry.

I have much work ahead of me this year!