Education (+ new pictures in scrapbook, page 2 and page 3)
I have a good formal education yet I've never felt well educated. Moreover, I don't feel my education is over nor that it will ever be over. I learn new things every day and every new thing I learn makes me want to learn more. I constantly think of questions and want to find answers. The answers lead to more questions. I feel like I'm constantly searching for new things. I find myself wondering whether, if I had been more diligent during my formal education, I would know more now, have fewer questions, need fewer answers. Would I be more satisfied with the state of my knowledge? Maybe it's that I expected too much from the schools I attended. Sometimes I look back and think that I spent too much time working toward credentials rather than education, followed other people's goals rather than my own. In any event, I am where I am and I'm not ready to give up, to believe my education is finished.
I meet a lot people who don't have the formal education I have, who didn't have the chance to gain the credentials I have, who, for a lot of different reasons, left school early or attended inferior schools or didn't learn what they could in school. Many of them are highly intelligent, "smart", in some ways "smarter" than I am, yet they won't have the opportunities I have had, will reach ceilings earlier than I have, will earn less in the way of material rewards, will have more difficult struggles in the job market and in society. Sometimes the problem is only that English is their second language and in an English-speaking society that causes them problems. To give a simple example, if you can't read warnings on product labels you're constantly in danger, no matter how much native intelligence you possess.
When I was young, I often found myself equating lack of formal education with stupidity. I thought some of these people were stupid. I was impatient with them, I was annoyed by them. I wondered what was the matter with them. Now that I've become more educated, I see how stupid I was to think that way. Now I applaud their efforts to learn, to continue their own educations without the help that comes from formal education. Now I try to advance their education, to help them through what must be a bewildering array of strange words and letters, to make their struggle less difficult.
I see the attitude I used to hold in other people and I try to educate them to understand that lack of education does not equal stupidity. Once alerted to the point, most people seem to "get" it and modify their behavior. But there's one context where I struggle to convince people: the workplace. Many people refuse to train, to give the opportunity for training, to understand the importance of training for jobs. They often meet the efforts of untrained co-workers, service personnel, and, even, managers with impatience and disdain. They think lack of training equals stupidity or lack of ambition or lack of interest.
No matter how much we might like to, we can't change the world, or even our own attitudes, over night. What we can do is be sensitive to this issue and improve our behavior in the best way we can. Give people credit for effort, try to help them learn, be patient. If we can't do anything else, we can sympathize and offer a friendly smile or encouraging word. In that way, we will help ourselves by speeding up the training process. And, as always, by helping others, we'll feel better about ourselves. Give it a try.
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