A friend tasked me over a cup of tea to expand on the concept I have raised about how many people may be well-schooled but are not very well educated. The first and most obvious point is that whilst schooling, at all levels, is an important part of an education, it is not in itself an education, which is a lifelong process. What schooling taught me was the methodology of how to educate myself. Karl Popper tells us that education is a process of unlearning and that was my experience as I had to unlearn many things, often things that were deeply embedded in me due to my socialisation. My schooling taught me the basic tools and strategies of how to both unlearn and relearn. A university degree does not make you an authority on any subject, all it does is introduce you to that subject and it is then up to you whether you develop your knowledge and expertise or sit content with the limited understanding that you were introduced to.
Take the British elite, people like Mad Tony, David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris the Spider etc. who were so central to British politics over the past few decades and who have managed to bring Britain to the brink of bankruptcy and divided it to the point that the United Kingdom may not last much longer. Such people are not particularly educated as they are people whose schooling was exclusive, who lived and learned in an all-white, all-male, all-middle to upper class environment and were raised and nurtured in a world so divorced from the world that the rest of us inhabit in that we are in effect two separate nations. Their daily lives are an extension of that world, a world that deliberately excludes non-whites, non-males, non-middle and upper class, and so they have no experience of the real world, and, what is worse, have no intention of ever gaining such experience. They are in charge of the nation's public transport which they never use, they are in charge of the NHS which they never use, they are in charge of the nation's public education which they despise and don't understand. They were schooled in a completely different way from most of British society and therefore have a socialisation process that cannot relate to the majority of the British people and that provides them with a towering sense of entitlement, that the privileges they enjoy from their lifestyle are theirs by right, particularly the right to be considered as our natural rulers. They then spend the rest of their lives in a similar environment where they are cushioned and protected from the kind of everyday pressures and experiences that the rest of us deal with on a daily basis. Importantly, they never meet other people, ordinary people, different people from different backgrounds and cultures, unless such people are of the same privileged background as themselves. They are uninterested in other people, in other cultures, classes, experiences and so they build a cultural environment for themselves that excludes the undesirables, the people who are different from themselves, the others. This manifests itself in their political acts when they finally gain power, their hatred of Europe, of immigrants, of the Scots, the Irish etc. It is most noticeable in their social policies, their hatred of working people, of the unemployed, the disabled etc. These people who we falsely attribute the accolade of educated are in fact the know-nothings, well-schooled but uneducated. They have none of the experience that marks the educated person, they have none of the curiosity, the passion for enquiry, the desire to learn of difference and diversity that marks the educated mind. They are actually quite sad.
I spent my life in education and it never ceased to amaze me how many people go to university and think that when they graduate they have learned their subject. I realised that when I graduated I was only beginning to learn, that what I didn't know was so vast that it made me realise how ignorant I was and I entered education with trepidation due to the knowledge of the depth of my ignorance and of a fear of being found out. University was only the beginning of my education, it was not the end. Most of my colleagues in education never ever bothered to develop their learning and so didn't even really begin to master the subject they were supposedly educated in. I actually worked with graduates who are supposedly educated but didn't even vote, who if they did vote normally voted Conservative. As John Stuart Mill told us, not every Conservative is a stupid person, but most stupid people are Conservatives. We put our trust in the well-schooled at our peril. One of the educated people I enjoyed reading was the most famous criminal lawyer in American history, Clarence Darrow. Clarence Darrow had no legal training, and no formal qualifications, but he was one of the most legally educated people you would be fortunate to meet. He would not get the chance to practise in today's world of elitist exclusivity, a world that mistakes schooling with education and talent. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
No comments:
Post a Comment