Aref Aalam SN# 000419240
PIDP 3100
Foundations of Adult Education
Assignment #4
For Glenn Glay
Vancouver Community College
“an educated person is one who has learned how to learn…. how to adapt and change.” (p.31)
Objective
I selected this statement for my third reflective writing assignment because before I take PIDP courses and began reading the book “Adult Learning” by Sharan B. Merriam and Laura L. Bierema I used always asked myself: Who is an educated person? What does someone have to know in order to be considered an educated person, and what type of education would produce this educated person? As an instructor what is my role:
- Do I need to have an advanced degree in order to be considered well-educated?
- Does it mean being prepared to join any committees or training?
- Are there certain books that I have to have read?
Reflective
After reading the book, due to my background in teaching as an instructor and particularly in regard to my experience in scholarly I did some research in order to be able to answer these questions, along this lines, I was impressed by these quotes about “Education.”
Education is not about certificates and degrees—education is about how a person relates to life. As Greek philosopher, Epictetus, said, “Only the educated are free.”
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.”
Interpretive
After reading several lists of the characteristics of an educated person with humanistic approach, an educated person (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 book Six 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.”
I also believe that education is a lifelong process that consists of both formal and informal experiences that lead to the individual learning something. The setting could be a school, the home, a job, a volunteer position, or an internship or cooperative learning experience. Since an education is a continuing mix of experiences; I think an educated person is a person who has made the most of each experience and learned from it or understands how the experience falls short for what ever reason
Decisional
To these ends, what I will tell to my students: Education is a two-way process both teacher and student are in the education process and so both are learners. as an educated person, would be a person who at least:
- has a deep and genuine empathy, striving to understand others, with the ability to withhold their own judgment until they are sure that they do understand;
- is sensitive to the psychological, physical, moral and cultural milieu in which they find themselves, showing respect and caring at all times;
- has a clear understanding of his or her own values, wants and preferences without wishing to impose these on others;
- 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;
- 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;
- 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 Adapting and changing is more important than knowing or having.
References
Merriam, S. B. & Bierema, L. L. (2014). Adult learning. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. University of Queensland. (2016). Student as a Partner. Retrieved from
Merriam, S.B., Caffarella, R.S., Baumgartner, L.M. (2007) Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide. (3rd ed.). Sanfransisco: Jossey-Bass
Six Questions of Socrates | W. W. Norton & Company
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