Contemporary

What’s made of an educated person…

Recently I came across comments when a person was judged “educated” and “not-educated”. We all know that we grow up having parents on our back to nag at us, to guide us and most importantly, to make sure we are all “educated”. This branding term is so extensively used to brand a person, that it’s like comparing a “Adidas” and a “Asadi”. It’s like almost without a doubt, majority just likes the sound (and the originality) of Adidas over the local Asadi. Similarly, people would rather choose to know that the person s/he’s having contact with is educated, rather to not-so/non/not very educated.

Sometime ago, after a few incidents someone made a point to ask “How come an educated person like this exhibit such behaviour?” A shot came from me immediately was, “Oh, and you think all educated people are actually very humble and all nice, yada-yada?”

This post is not to side on whoever who have had, or did not, or currently still undergoing his or her education. Think about it, who actually, other than the generation before us really care right now? Because of the abundance of undergraduates, graduates and whatever status of a person who’d had at least some academic history, the “brand” of educated people had long depreciated.

There was once I overheard a girl claiming that she and her group of friends are educated people because they’ve gone through so much till tertiary level. Anyway, a group of undergrads were doing a tutorial session where everyone has their turns to ask questions to the tutorial. This girl that I’ve mentioned came about and she went asking her list of questions non-stopping… without having to pause for a moment to allow other students to have a go to get their questions delivered. And since she’d labelled herself once she was an educated person, it’s well enough she took the every(one’s) single opportunity to ask the questions, enlightening herself and everyone else would have agreed it’s a right thing that a student does that. Her parents would probably be freaking proud they had such a bright and opportunity-snatching daughter. So, as to describe her whether she is educated or otherwise, could she have actually displayed a general criteria for a term of “educated person”? Hmmm…

I think many have came across this sentence, “haih… don’t interact with this person too much. I don’t trust this person. This person doesn’t seem highly educated.” Now, I’m sure some of you have heard this line or similarly ones before, and often enough, many will immediately go check out the status of the mentioned person… of his or her education background. OR… the respond could have been… to simply think again. Could this person who had said that be educated enough to have labelled another person non-educated? What if the person who was regarded “not seem highly educated” in fact is some super intelligent and smart person who had the highest of high education?

The Cambridge dictionary states education mean “having learned a lot at school or university and having a good level of knowledge”. So let’s have an “educated” branded person vs a “non-educated”(eg natives, drop-outs, whoever) basic scenario. Simply have the “educated” not knowing how to clean after him/herself because dad and mom had oversupply of dollar notes to buy a maid for him/her but a drop-out who had no choice but to take care of his/her siblings for years cleans up for everyone. One day these two are casted in a remote house that’s all filthy and dusty and what-not, and they’ve to clean up their space? Who would have done a better job? And which tag is actually… really appalling?

On other say, the past two weeks never looked any brighter. i mean there’s still “the” sun, but there are tests as well. As you can see, the books and piles of notes have been sucking the colours of yours truly for the whole week then…

Haha, and to know there are my friends back home who misses my presence is such a warm feeling.*tee hee* —->