Do You Have What It Takes? A Breakdown Of The Educated Person

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Do You Have What it Takes? A Breakdown of the Educated Person

An educated person is a well rounded person. To be educated is to

knowledgeable in many areas. Diversity is essential in the sense that many

different things inspire thought, which then derive permanent conclusions from

these experiences. Anyone who has the audacity to call themselves educated

needs to have a firm grasp of many different areas. These categories span

through Science, Technology, Language, Art, Feelings and Values. All of these

are building blocks that help make up an educated person, but just as important,

these are the same qualities that form an individual.

One of the most important concepts that a person learns from Science is

a fundamental thinking process. This process starts with curiosity, asking the

question," Why does that work?" It then moves on to theorizing or guessing.

Next, this person takes his or her theory and puts it to the test by conducting

various experiments. Finally this individual will draw a final conclusion from

those findings. Science also helps a person look at things objectively, which

means there is no feelings influencing experiments that can lead to fraudulent

conclusions. This can be a double edged sword however, because in many

instances when a scientist is emotionally removed from the experiments performed,

the question, "Should I?", is never asked. For instance under the reign of

Hitler many cruel medical experiments were preformed. In The Medical

Experiments by William Shirer the author states,"Prisoners were placed in high

pressure chambers and subjected to high-altitude tests until they ceased

breathing. They were injected with lethal doses of typhus and jaundice. They

were subjected to 'freezing' experiments in icy water or exposed naked in the

snow outdoors until they froze to death." This also deals with the subject of

values and will be discussed detail later.

Probably the most positive way to utilize Science would be to take it to

the next level, Technology. This is were an educated person takes what laws and

theories he learns in science and integrates them into everyday life, finding

ways to make life easier and arguably better. I say arguably because many

educated people are against technological advancement. These...

... middle of paper ...

...m any language. Susanne K. Langer in

her article The Cultural Importance of Art states,"There is, however, an

important part of reality that is quite inaccessible to the formative influence

of language: that is the realm of so-called "inner experience," the life of

feeling and emotion.

All of these attributes lose power without an individual set of values

to focus this energy. Adolf Hitler influenced millions by being a masterful

orator. Hitler also was very innovative in science and many other areas.

However do to his grossly warped sense of personal values he was labelled by

leaders and peers as a madman.

It is very difficult for any person to be a master of all of these

categories, but to be truly educated, there needs to be at least a small

concentration of everything in that individual's background. For the one reason

that it is so difficult to posses all of these traits, it is also that same

reason that makes all of the truly educated people of our past stand out in

history as heros and leaders. This is also the biggest reason that so many

people admire them and strive to be like them.

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