What It Means To Be Well Educated Essay

I am ignorant, unsophisticated, stupid, and uninformed. In other words, I am not well educated. This assertion holds true based on the definition of well-educated found online in the Oxford Dictionaries. The definition states well-educated is “Having or showing a high level of education.” Based on this definition, my girlfriend is well-educated since she has two bachelor’s degrees, a masters degree, and a doctorate in Human Physiology. But would that imply everyone without a PhD is not well-educated? If we broaden the definition of well-educated to be as individualized as the person it is describing we obtain a better picture. With this expansion, education that occurs outside the classroom is also a factor. Therefore, being well educated goes beyond the basic education given during grade school and is not tied to one’s career success, number of degrees, earning potential, test scores on standardized

And forget about grammar ("Me and him went over her house today" is fairly typical) or literature ("Who's Faulkner?").” However he goes on to consider a number of topics to more individualize the definition of well-educated. I believe the point of school is not to give someone specific knowledge, but to train someone in how to learn. We should evaliuate people by their capacity to learn rather than their education. In this country there is no single definition of “well-educated”. If we don’t know what it is, how can we assume that our children will be well-educated by attending the local school? Granted there are some poor definitions such as seat time, job skills, test scores, and a ability to recall facts. Finally, Kohn suggests that possibly the entire problem is the attempt to madate a single definition to what should be a braodly defined