What Does It Mean to Be Well-Educated?

A friend of mine recently told me about two boys she knows who were homeschooled partly in New York City, where at an early age they had incredible experiences like working backstage at the Metropolitan Opera and studying martial arts in Chinatown. Yet when comparing these boys to her own son, who attends our local high school, she said she believed they were "not as well-educated."

I didn't question this comment at the time, but I wish I had asked her what she meant by "well-educated." Is there a measuring stick for a so-called good education, and if so, what is it? Who gets to decide? Is the meaning of "well-educated" the same across cultures? Across time?

I did a quick Internet search today, hoping to find something like an Oxford English Dictionary definition of "well-educated," but I found something better. I found an article by Alfie Kohn called What Does It Mean to Be Well-Educated? In it, he completely deconstructs the word "well-educated," asking those same questions posed above along with many more, until the jig is up and "well-educated" is revealed as the emperor who's wearing no clothes.

Kohn is incisive and thorough, looking at such yardsticks as standardized tests (which he connects with short-term memorization and "a shallow approach to learning") and labels like "cultural literacy" (which "have the effect of taking time away from more meaningful objectives, such as knowing how to think"). Instead he favors schooling arranged around in-depth projects, problems, and questions - schooling that involves active participation with the larger goal of having kids think for themselves. Imagine that.

The quote at top? That's Nel Noddings, professor emerita at Stanford University. Now that's wisdom.

homeschooling
Alfie Kohn