What are the characteristics of an educated person?

What is education?
Education, on the other hand, opens the mind, encourages a search for truth and develops a
mind that can engage critically with many different ideas.
Education is about learning, not teaching. As Galileo Galilei said, "You cannot teach a man
anything; you can only help him find it within himself."
The word "education" itself refers to "bringing out" or "bringing forth what is within" from the Latin
"e-ducere".

How are we educated?
This, in a way, is the nub of the question about what characteristics an educated person has. Too
often we think of education as something we "get" at school and university. It is something a
teacher drills into us.
As Mortimer J. Adler has written: "Everyone knows, or certainly should know, that indoctrination
is not genuine teaching and that the results of indoctrination are the very opposite of genuine
learning. Yet, as a matter of fact, much that goes on in the classrooms of our schools is nothing
but indoctrination."
Two other important Hubs on education and learning
Education vs. Learning
When so many of us agree that education is the key to freeing the mind, to solving most
of the worlds problems, to making people from all corners of the globe come together, we
also mean education in the...
The Difference Between Studying and Learning: Study Habits versus the Habit of
Thinking
Are study skills important for success in school? Is success in school essential for
success in life? And where does thinking come into all of this? If you spend too much
time thinking about the material but...
So what are the characteristics of an educated person?
An educated person (reminder - an educated person might not have a college degree or even
have attended school!) would be one who searches for excellence, one who does not take things
for granted, one who is concerned about people and things around him or her.
As philosopher Christopher Phillips (of Socrates Cafe fame) has written in his excellent and
entertaining bookSix Questions of Socrates (W.W. Norton & Co, 2004):
"I think an excellent individual and an excellent civilization do share certain attributes: they are
forward-looking. They are cognizant of how their actions impact others, not just today, but in
coming generations, and strive to act in ways that will enhance the lives of individuals and
societies not just of today, but also of the future - and not just the next one or two or five
generations, but the next hundred and thousand and ten thousand generations."
Phillips goes on:
"To this end, at minimum, they forever strive to diminish, rather than increase, those types of
human suffering born of a lack of food, shelter, clothing, education, and self-determination, not
just within its national bounds, but, as much as possible, globally as well. They not only seek to
liberate people from death and terror and oppression, but they also go the next step, and aim to
give everyone the opportunity to discover and develop their unique intellectual and physical,
spiritual and moral, aesthetic and cultural potentials."
To these ends an educated person in my opinion, would be a person who at
least:
1. has a deep and genuine empathy, striving to understand others, with
the ability to withhold their own judgement until they are sure that
they do understand;
2. is sensitive to the psychological, physical, moral and cultural milieu in
which they find themselves, showing respect and caring at all times;
3. has a clear understanding of his or her own values, wants and
preferences without wishing to impose these on others;
4. is independent, within the constraints of collaborative living, in action
and thought, taking responsibility for the health and well-being of their
body and their mind;
5. understands the connectedness of everything in the world, and even in
the universe, and so acts responsibly in everything they do - the slogan
"think globally, act locally" applies here;
6. is congruent, meaning that the person will be comfortable in their own
skin, able to acknowledge their own feelings and the feelings of others
without condescension.
Clearly these are characteristics that can be learned in formal education but
do need to be developed in such a process.
An educated person, in other words, is one for whom being is more
important thanknowing or having
Questionare