The Educated Person

         My interest in the educated person question goes back a long way.  How far back I confirmedthe other day  when I found a tattered, forty-year-old file containing my diploma, my transcripts and a list of graduation requirements.  These documents recalled a sweltering day in June, 1964.  The day I graduated from college . . .

                   At 11 a.m., several thousand black-cloaked comrades and I gathered outside the football stadium for the graduation ceremony.  Soon we trooped into the stadium and spread over row upon row of folding chairs parked between the 20 and 50-yard lines.  Once seated, I started daydreaming . . . imagining myself quarterbacking a dazzling, length-of-the-field touchdown drive.  Unfortunately, the droning of innumerable deans and dignitaries bogged down my football fantasy well short of the goal line.

                  Frustrated in my make-believe athletic glory, I tried to forget the sweat pouring down my neck and tried even harder to focus on the major commencement speaker.  Only his final words caught my attention.

                  He spoke earnestly about the need for students to reflect on the question  “What is an educated person?”  He said that answers to that question should be the preface, substance, and measure of an undergraduate education.  For those of us planning to continue on in academic life as college faculty, the speaker emphasized that the educated person question should be at the center of our professional lives.

                  “What the hell is he babbling about?” One of my friends, still suffering the aftereffects of the previous night’s party, surfaced for a moment to ask his question.

“I have absolutely no idea,” I said.

                  But that wasn’t quite true.

                  I understood much of what the commencement speaker had said, and I took him seriously at that moment because I planned a career in college teaching.

                  I didn’t remember, however, my university ever discussing the educated person with me or any of my classmates.  It seemed odd that the last formal activity of undergraduate study would be the first mention of this consequential question.  If, as the commencement speaker had so strongly suggested, the question had such importance for higher education, my classmates and I should have confronted it at some point before we graduated. 

                  We completed our college educations without questioning the rationale behind graduation requirements, without any process by which to plan out our four years of undergraduate study, and without any standards we understood by which to judge our educational progress.  We drifted from one classroom to another following the required paths toward graduation, and rarely took responsibility for making our own academic decisions.   Speaking for myself, only by chance did I acquire some of the essential perspectives I identify now, many years after the fact, as essential for becoming an educated person.

                  Of course, the transcript of my college education -- a curious jumble of numbers, course abbreviations, and A, B and Cs --gives the impression I gained the depth and breadth of learning so honored by college presidents in their graduation speeches and fund-raising pitches.  But I know better.  That transcript merely charts my stumbling, unwitting progress toward graduation.

                  I didn’t master a number of important subjects and skills during my undergraduate years.  I certainly had little exposure to interdisciplinary thinking and teaching.  I didn’t appreciate the values and abilities that survive the memory of specific course content and give college study its strongest hold on a life.  And finally, I couldn’t explain to anyone with any measure of confidence and sophistication exactly why my college education gave me a special claim to being an educated person.  Given the views of most colleges and universities about undergraduate students during my college years, I’m not at all surprised I came through four years of higher education with so many deficiencies.

                  Most colleges and universities in my time didn’t consider students capable of understanding or responsibly discussing what makes an educated person.  The majority of institutions communicated their ideas about the educated person through graduation requirements: those unquestioned requisites for majors, minors, credit hours, general education and the like that students tried to decipher and abide by.  At my university, page 43 of the catalog and its tidy formulas for graduation encapsulated any historic discussions faculty might have had on the educated person.

                  I have the sneaking suspicion faculty at my university hadn’t reviewed the reasons behind graduation requirements for years and would have bypassed any substantive discussion of the educated person even if presented the opportunity.  Faculty in my undergraduate days concerned themselves mainly with building departmental majors and specializing in what their areas of research.  Larger academic questions devolved to infrequent faculty meetings and to a growing cadre of professional administrative managers who cared mostly about running a smooth ship and the bottom line.

                  Anyway, Harvard could always be counted on to decree some new standards for a college education and these could be boiled down to fit local conditions without much effort.  Page 43 of the catalog -- that’s all students needed to know.

                  What I know now about my college education and the educated person, obviously, is the product of several years of study, teaching, and experience subsequent to my college years. But what if I had confronted the educated person question as an undergraduate student?  Would it have made a difference?

                  The process of posing the educated person question and searching for legitimate answers to it would have been invaluable for me as I started college and progressed toward my degree. I could have planned my college study with some larger vision -- even within the structured system of graduation requirements on good old page 43.  I could have understood better why certain subjects had to be included in my education.  I could have looked for the understandings and skills in each learning experience that would serve me in study across the curriculum and in the contexts of life outside the college classroom.  I could have tried a wider range of study with my elective choices rather than building a specialized major and minor.  I could have seen more clearly the relationship between various disciplines and how they strengthen and enliven each other.  I could have judged the value of my overall college education as well as the academic reasoning that stood behind it.  Most important, I could have known that becoming an educated person is part of a lifelong process of learning, study, reflection, experience, and action -- not merely four years of classes.

                  In the years since graduation, as a graduate student and a college professor, I’ve often returned to the educated person question as a basic guide for learning, teaching and working with students.  In each of these contexts -- and in the best of all possible academic worlds -- the educated person question is basic and should be a starting point for all students (and their professors).

                  The dimly remembered words of the commencement speaker at my graduation have a practical application, an everyday meaning for both students and faculty.  And many years after that speech, students and faculty should struggle each day with that simple question, “What is an educated person?”  As everyone soon discovers, the question admits to no simple answers, no lasting bromides.

                  What are the qualities, understandings and skills that distinguish the educated person?  Is formal higher education the path to becoming an educated person?  Does everyone follow essentially the same requirements to become an educated person?  What part does professional and technical study play in the making of an educated person?  Will what defines an educated person be the same in twenty years as it is today?  Are some fields of study more important to the educated person than others?  Is it even possible to define an educated person?

                  One question triggers several, and those searching for answers must range widely in matters of education far beyond the college requirements for graduation.  As the answers accumulate, planning an education starts making sense and what takes place between teachers and students becomes more than a one-way street.

                  The time spent at the beginning of an education investigating what makes an educated person can be frustrating for those who are anxious to build careers and get on with the “real world.”  It can be an anxious time for many students who, just returning to college study after some years’ absence, have had little experience with basic matters of academic philosophy and issues of higher learning.  But, whatever the frustration and anxiety students face in all this, the time spent pays its dividends and what takes place is essential to college students: the right to have some control over the direction and substance of their education.

                  And, unlike myself, students will not have to wait for years after the fact to fit their learning to the larger goals of the educated person.