~ Arenjungla Kichu
We like to think that we are an educated society.
We point to our degrees, our professionals, our examination results and the number of young people going out to study. Education is spoken of with great pride, and rightly so.
But I sometimes wonder if we have confused being educated with being qualified.
We are quick to decide how much importance a person deserves based on what comes after their name. A doctor must know. An officer must know. Someone with decades of experience must surely know. A person with the right degree is given a certain authority even when the subject under discussion has little to do with that degree.
And then there is the person who reads. Who is interested in history, politics, science, literature or philosophy. Who follows an issue because they genuinely want to understand it. Who reads opinions they disagree with. Who changes their mind after coming across a better argument.
What professional category do we put such a person in?
Perhaps that is part of our problem. We have become very good at recognising qualifications and rather poor at recognising intellectual curiosity.
Experience, of course, matters. There is much that can only be learnt by doing. But experience cannot become a permanent defence against new knowledge. A practice does not become correct merely because it has been followed for years. And “this is how we have always done it” should not be the end of a conversation.
Yet this is often how we approach new ideas, particularly when they come from someone younger or from outside the familiar circle.
We call it impractical. Too theoretical. Book knowledge.
As though reading and thinking are somehow detached from real life.
Perhaps our attitude towards reading reflects this. Outside examinations and professional requirements, reading is often treated as something optional. We know what we need to know for our work. We keep up with the news, scroll through our feeds and move on.
But a society cannot build much of an intellectual life on information alone.
There is a difference between knowing what happened and wanting to understand why it happened. Between having an opinion and having thought about it. Between repeating what one has heard and actually knowing something.
And this brings me to another habit we rarely question: our fascination with names.
Give something a large or familiar name and we are already inclined to attach greater importance to it. A smaller or less familiar name is made to prove itself before it is taken seriously.
But names do not produce quality. People do.
The name may tell us where something belongs or how widely it intends to reach. It tells us very little about the quality of the work behind it.
We should be able to understand that without feeling threatened by it.
Because ultimately, this is the larger problem. We have become too accustomed to judging the package before examining what is inside it.
The educated person is the one with the degree. The knowledgeable person is the one with experience. The important institution is the one with the bigger name.
It is convenient. It is also intellectually lazy.
Perhaps we need to become a little more demanding.
Read what has actually been written. Look at the evidence. Listen to the argument. Judge the work.
And if something is good, let it be good, regardless of the name attached to it.
If we cannot do that, then we should at least be honest about what we mean when we call ourselves an educated society.
Because having educated people is one thing.
Having an intellectual culture is quite another.
