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How important do you believe education and knowledge is?
zenmyste
Veteran
How educated are you? And how great is your vocabulary etc.....?
Do you think its right to judge people by how intelligent/educated they are and how much vocabulary they use???
And how important is it to YOU (in terms of coming across intelligent to others?)
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Comments
There is a world of difference between knowledge, intelligence and intellect.
Having knowledge does not necessarily mean a person is intelligent.
Being intelligent, doesn't mean a person is an intellectual.
Being an intellectual does not necessarily mean a person has knowledge.
The three are not mutually exclusive.
And I have no right to judge anyone, unless I allow them the privilege of doing the same to me.
Frankly, how others see me, would be a measure of what they compare me to, within themselves.
A less intelligent person than I might deem me a genius; a more intelligent person than I might deem me an imbecile.
And how do we asses what is more/less intelligent/intellectual/knowledgeable?
I don't think it's really right/correct to judge people by any qualifiers like that at all. There are a lot of different types of intelligence, and not all of them come from being educated. My father is one of the smartest people I've ever known, and he didn't even graduate high school. He was one credit short because he moved in the middle of the school year, so he walked out 2 days before graduation. But there is nothing he hasn't done, nothing he hasn't learned that he didn't want to.
It used to be highly important to me that I be seen as intelligent, but it is impossible to fulfill that expectation of myself because everyone views it differently. There are some subjects I know quite a bit about. There are some I know nothing about. Attempting to appear intelligent in a quantum physics circle is likely to make me look like a fool, lol.
I try not to judge people by their vocabulary, but I have a hard time holding any sort of conversation with people who cannot speak. Where every other word out of their mouths is a swear word (we have a lot of those types of people here), and so on. I don't judge them as people but beyond the cursory greeting, I cannot converse with them. Some of them are very smart people...but very uneducated. Being uneducated affects different people in different ways, I think. My dad is not officially educated, but he is an autodidact and has educated himself his entire life. Other people have intelligence, but they do not know how to use it, and suffer very low self-esteem so they short change themselves by appearing dumb when they are not. It lets them off the hook, so to speak.
When it comes to learning, I always liked Will Rogers' observation, "There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."
Depends on the context I suppose - intelligence as a bare label doesn't mean much.
For example, if you're studying physics, it is probably not unreasonable to suggest that your teacher should be intelligent enough to teach the subject but that 'intelligence' doesn't universally translate across all issues and it is challenging making an accurate comparison as such.
The general caveat I suppose is that in judging any situation, one takes a stance and that stance has consequences - whatever the stance may be, there are consequences.
I don't find myself intentionally labouring over vocabulary and coming across as intelligent to others doesn't concern me as far as I'm aware.
Intelligence (say bare IQ) I think on some level means the ability to make mental 'connections' - I think therefore for two people to communicate they need to be making connections with each other - this I think is more smoothly facilitated when the participants have a similar connection mechanism.
Similar types of intelligence share frames of reference and connection mechanisms - I think therefore it is easier to relate to connections made in the mode that one is most accustomed to / comfortable with / able to - thus I think, right or wrong, judgements often incorporate an element of analysis (implied or otherwise) of the connection / mode... as judgements are a stance / a position, I think as far as conclusions are concerned, one tends to be comfortable amongst that which is known to a comfortable level of certainty.
I think you have to separate the discussion between "generally" and "specifically".
By specifically I mean that there are individuals who have received little or mediocre educations who have done great things and/or been wonderfully successful. And then there are brilliant and/or well-educated people who are total gaping ---holes.
As for me, I have 4 college degrees and administered in a middle school that had the "other side of the tracks" kids and a fair number of "A-lister kids" (the Quayles, Governor Robb's [Lynda Bird Johnson], at least 2 Senators, several members of the House Of Representatives, a fair number of diplomats). And while it was interesting to meet those A-lister kids and parents, I tended to spend my time choosing to chat with the families of the poor kids.
But what is "judging" someone? I judge people. It's human tendency to do so, and depending on what is meant by that, sometimes a wise thing to do. When a certain high ranking government official came to the school one day to pick up his child and take them to a particular "house of government", but upon finding out his daughter had been vomiting for much of the afternoon siad, "Oh, then you go ahead and ride the school bus home", instead of taking her home in his chauffeured driven limousine, and then heading on to the "house of government", which would have taken him 10 minutes out of his way...yes, I made a judgement. When the hick parent came in and tried to beat up my vice principal, who had also shot students walking home from school with a beebee gun...yes, I made a judgement about that parent. In college, when I was invited to drug and/or sex parties...yes, I made a judgement about that person. When I decided to pull the lever for Obama instead of Romney, yes, I made a judgement about two people.
The wiser (and more realistic) question is, IMHO, what are the consequences of making judgements about people.
People in the West often poo-poo education and knowledge because they have the luxury to do so. In my parents' native Bangladesh and in much of the developing world, children are literally starving for education and knowledge. In many places, such as Haiti, free, government-funded education is non-existent, and so parents must scrounge up whatever money they can in order to send their children to school. Sometimes they simply can't afford it any longer, and children must suspend or end their education with barely a grasp of literacy. Education opens up the world to people, quite literally. It allows them a means to build knowledge of the world, and how best to eek out a living in a highly globalized environment. In a more prosaic sense, people who cannot read are often taken advantage of, as happens in many regions of the world in which indigenous people's lands are taken from them when they sign contracts which they don't understand.
It's important to recognize that someone's level of education is highly dependent on economic and social factors outside of their control. Even within the U.S., there are communities in which schools are vastly underfunded compared to those in neighboring counties or even cities. There can be huge discrepancies between the quality of education one receives in one district as compared to another. And unfortunately, it is often the poorer areas that have the most disadvantaged schools, while residential areas around "good" schools tend to experience huge escalations of rent or housing values. I believe that, without a good experience of education in the early years, it becomes very difficult for a child to really care about learning later on.
Why should we judge someone who simply did not have the luck to be born into a family that could send him to a good school? Or someone who was born in a country in which education is an extremely precious, expensive, and rare commodity? Or indeed, someone with intellectual disabilities? In the most important things, human beings can communicate with one another without any high-fallutin' vocabulary or arcane trivia.
As for myself, I have been very fortunate to have access to a lot of good education, at a moderate price. I value knowledge highly because it can bring about consciousness: consciousness of the world and its people and about oneself as well. I try to share whatever knowledge I've accumulated without making a show of education or intelligence, but being quite nerdy, that can sometimes be difficult, lol.
Would you say there is a difference between critical Judgement and discerning judgement?
I would say the first condemns, and the second evaluates.
The first is usually done in a discriminatory way, and the second can be done with compassion.
Critical versus discernment is an excellent way to phrase it.
However, I'm not sure that discriminatory versus compassion is.
For example, as a principal I had a very small pot of money, mostly from when some parent would say, "I want to donate some money to the school to be used however you deem fit", that I used to assist poor students who could not afford the field trip or a yearbook or some other school activity that was not free. So I was always discriminating regarding "need".
what I mean about discriminatory/compassionate, is (and I know this is a snap example)
'You deserve it and serve you right!' (discriminating) and 'you deserve it, but I feel for you' (compassionate)....
Well, I can't really get into that because I'm the one who doesn't think compassion is about simply "feeling for" someone.
Yeah...I agree with you.
I told you it was a bit of a snap example.
I think part of the problem is that the term discriminate has a connotation today that isn't based solely on the actual definition.
We do discern differences. vive la différence
However educated people can be stoopid in some areas. The ignorant are among us. Wait a minute . . . we are all ignorant . . . thanks Buddha! Smarty pants!
Mr Cushion knows Nothing . . .
and now back to the judgemental . . .
http://www.purposefairy.com/69430/7-clever-ways-to-deal-with-highly-judgmental-people/
My personal question is rather: "How does my education / knowledge" better enable me to lead a happier, more self-fulfilled life?
Like @lobster said above, you see all the time educated people with most outstanding academic credentials, I add, who are total failures in other areas of their lives, namely their personal lives. You also come across the simplest people with little or no education at all who are the perfect embodiment of a self-fulfilled person, who are absolutely happy with their lives as they are. The reverse is also true, of course: people from lower classes who are locked into a resentment pattern towards the person who has two more cents or has been one more year in school than they have.
I think wisdom makes all the difference, wisdom as the capacity to assimilate everything that you have learnt and every experience you've had in your life, to provide you with a privileged lucidity about your own person in particular and life in general. You can find this wisdom in people from all walks of life.
That is my personal quest with Buddhism: how can you better manage to put the theory into practice as often as you can. How to live up to the teachings, breathe life into the written word, no matter how hard this can be sometimes.
@dharmamom said it vey well.
__Do you think its right to judge people by how intelligent/educated they are and how much vocabulary they use???
And how important is it to YOU (in terms of coming across intelligent to others?)__
From a spiritual perspective intelligence, education, vocabulary, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and hat preference is irrelevant.
Wisdom is the criteria to seek in ourselves and others. If something does not resonate, it may be because the communication is unskilful or does not equate with our present condition. Some people are ahead of us. We too can make progress in a real sense - despite what the 'here and now' say now and again . . .
:clap:
This is something I have always struggled with, but is improving thanks to my practice. It has to do with observations I made from an early age that seem to carry over, hopefully I can explain it decently.
It's always seemed to me, that the most highly educated (whether officially or self) and logically intelligent people have the hardest time with other people's emotions, and compassion. I come from a family of pretty smart people, and I for a long time prided myself on that, that I felt lucky to have those good genetics that made learning whatever I wanted really easy. People always considered me to be a smart person, and I was always glad for that. I saw people who weren't smart in that same way, and they were very simple people. I used to feel bad for them because they didn't have that same genetic intelligence.
Then as I got older, I realized I felt more sorry for people of that higher intellect because most of them lacked so much compassion. Instead of simply feeling with others and interacting on that level, they think too much about the right way to interact, they dissect their emotions, and those of others (myself included, yes). Those simpler people are the ones who reach out more, they aren't lost in their intellect like myself and a lot of others. For them, compassion comes very naturally. And I don't mean that they aren't smart people, hopefully that is clear. They just have a different way of going about life than people who pride themselves on their logical intelligence.
I saw a stark example of it today. Another mom I know, we have sons the same age. They both tried out of baseball yesterday, and did equally as well. My son made the team, hers did not. Her son was having a very hard time and I was trying to talk to her about how to help him understand and feel better. Of course using more logic than anything. And then another local aquaintance whom I know well jumped in and said what she had to say, and made some really nice offers for helping the boy and inviting him to spend time with her children and their family (this woman's husband is a state awarded high school baseball coach). And I couldn't help but think why my first instinct isn't to be like that, to offer help rather than logic. This woman is another of those people that most would judge as less intelligent (but not unsmart, just different like i said) but extremely compassionate and non-judgemental.
I think it's hard for people who have been told,and long considered themselves to be intelligent, to truly grasp emotion and compassion on that level. I understand it, I work for it, I do not look down on others because of their different type of intelligence. In fact, I quite look up to them, they are an inspiration. Logical intelligence has it's place, but it doesn't work well in relating with others, and opening up to that place that spontaneous compassion comes from, is hard. For me. It takes a lot of work and practice, and despite my lifetime of pride over some perceived intelligence, I'd rather have the compassion and the ease of relating with others that some people have, and I do not.
Education and knowledge is important if you wish to do certain things in life.
However, I get really upset when certain people are put on a pedestal and some even call them a genius because they've got a piece of paper with some letters on it that they have studied x for 3 years and can blurt it all out again onto paper. I did just that and got my MB BS BSc(hons.) MRCS PGDIP PADI (open water/adventure/nitrox) Powerboat level 2 RYA 3 etc etc but I'm no genius, I just paid to get permission to put them after my name, after jumping through the various hoops they placed in front of me. It has meant that I can practice as a doctor, drive a powerboat, dive recreationally etc.
What really makes me laugh though is that there are some people out there regarded as educated heavy-weights, who have pulled the wool over peoples eyes to the extent that they are now held in such high regard that they can dictate what people do and achieve, and are lousy at what they do...
However, having said that I wouldn't let a person without my qualifications prescribe a drug or perform a minor operation on me or a member of my family, drive a ferry with me and my family on it, or teach my kids to dive without them...
So certificated education and knowledge is important to some degree in raising awareness of what people have accomplished...
Is a degree really required for that, or could we, like was done in the past, investigate the knowledge of a person without asking for their degree? Many doctors with advanced degrees, have hurt and killed people with their mistakes and mis-training. That doesn't mean you should let the person down the road who grows pumpkins, do a surgery on your heart. But what if you knew someone who didn't technically have the degree, but still had the knowledge and training, and perhaps could in theory be a better surgeon than the person with the degree who happens to be a closet alcoholic? It wasn't until more recent times, in human history, that we required people to prove their worth with a degree, whereas in the past, their experience and first hand knowledge was enough.
I trust my pharmacist a million times over more than my doctors with regards to knowledge on medication. Doctors make mistakes ALL the time about what drugs interact and so on. But pharmacists, with all that knowledge, cannot prescribe drugs, they can only count them and hand them out. Seems kind of backwards.
But who determines whether they have the skill and knowledge?
Pharmacists train pharmacists; and they also train doctors, but they don't train doctors.
I don't disagree with you @karasti, and I have often listened to a pharmacist, over a junior doctor on what drugs to use - many doctors have and continue to cause harm, but that is because they do not understand the limits of their knowledge. Having been one for nearly 20 years, I know how easy it is to think that just because you have some knowledge, it doesn't mean you can necessarily use it properly. This is why specialisms are important.
We used to have a maths teacher at school, who technically, was brilliant, and I do mean, brilliant. he had a mind as mathematically perceptive as anyone you could ever meet.
He absolutely sucked as a teacher.
could he adequately and skilfully convey his knowledge to his pupils?
The hell he could, he was hopeless. He didn't have a clue how to transmit his knowledge.
I have no accredited qualifications as a Qi Gong teacher, yet I have actually had OTHER Martial Arts teachers tell me that their skills as teachers couldn't touch mine, and my ability to successfully convey the lessons was commendable.
That's the truth.
I am not qualified to teach universally, yet I had these so-called 'masters' telling me I was miles better than they were.
Go figure.
No argument with that; it's just the way the professions and educational establishments dictate how the system works...
I know there's good reason for it. To weed out the charlatans and fakers; those who purchase false qualifications and behave dangerously as a result of their complete ignorance, in order to profit and make a fast buck, all the while under the pretence of being an expert.....
I get it.
But it also has adverse effects....
There are some really caring people I know who would have made great doctors/nurses etc, but were put off by the cost and challenges involved. Sad really, because that is why our healthcare system is in tatters...
...And a good portion of experts have gone overseas where the pay - and appreciation - and the hours - are better.
I think that we expect general practitioners to know everything about every condition and every medication out there, and that's not reasonable.
Fortunately, at my general practice they aren't afraid to check their tablet if I question any medication, particularly how it may affect my heart rate issue. And, I do ask! Before I actually fill a prescription, I look it up on the internet to see if anything catches my eye, and if something does come up I call back the doctor, or if it's something more minor ask the pharmacist.
I think one of the advantages of the scary stuff in prescription medication advertisements is that many of us have become more alert to side effects. Once I did discover that a prescription would have had a likely effect of worsening my mild tachycardia.
Self-advocacy in medicine is something everyone ought to learn about.
That's why I think education should be a basic human right including university courses (providing a passing grade). That way we would have more doctors that care about healing more than money.
I came out of university owing £25000 (for 6 years study) nearly 20 years ago, and I had to work hard and live in accommodation, that many people today would see as 3rd world to pay that loan off.. Fortunately, my wife and I worked as a team and within 5 years had paid it off, but it made us respect money and what we had. I look at the graduates of today who are expected to pay £27000 in loans for 3 years study with even poorer prospects and wonder how the hell they are going to pay that off, buy a house in todays ridiculously overpriced uk housing market, and start and then support a family.
I knew one guy who I went to secondary school with, who got no qualifications and had the idea of starting up his own estate agency agency in the early 90's. He was driving a Rolls Royce and had a mansion aged 21... So what does that tell you about the value of education.
It tells me he's educated on how to hustle....hahaha. From my experience, it's hard to make long term good finacial decisions on just a hustle though....quick money has a price to pay too.
If you think success is being a Rolls Royce driving estate agent you need educating . . .
To rail us back from the healthcare sub-discussion, Matthieu Ricard, for example, came from a privileged, high-brow French milieu. Artists like Picasso and Stravinsky, and the most famous philosophers still alive, assisted his mother's weekly intellectual salon back in the sixties. Ricard himself was a brilliant scientist with the best credentials. But he had a vague feeling of ennui with his environment. He could not quite understand how these highly-gifted people could be such failures in their personal lives. There was a gap between their intellectual knowledge and how to apply them to the enhancement of their lives.
After watching a documentary on the life of Buddhist monks and succesive trips to Asia, he gave that life up to become a Buddhist monk. He said that at last he had found people whose ideas were coherent with the lives they led, and who led more self-fulfilled lives in their simplicity.
By no means am I underestimating the value of education. Just want to say that education is per se no guarantee of happiness.
Being educated is not entirely about vocabulary. If it is, do you suppose it should be the English , Indian, Chinese or Latin vocabulary?
I now think having my rear massaged by a cushion with a sesame street characters face is much more likely to be a sign of achievement...
And cushions and their maintenance, are much more affordable than Rolls Royces!