Each of us is born with an intellectual potential. This comes from our DNA. Yet, whether we reach this potential depends on a variety of factors such as our family environment, our schooling and our tribal connections. If we are lucky enough to be born into environment in which education is highly respected, we have a huge advantage. Parents, uncles and aunts will feed our intellectual interests and nurture our intellectual growth, giving us a head start on the development of our intellectual acuity.
If we are gifted with highly intelligent teachers, they will pique our interest in a wide variety of subjects. They will help us discover how the world was revealed by the explorers of a few centuries ago and how they discovered that the world was not flat. We will also discover how people realized that the earth was not the centre of the universe and how careful rational thinking has revealed truths inaccessible to myth and naive belief.
If our studies take us into the domain of mathematics and science, we will begin to learn how to move from postulates to conclusions in a systematic way. We will challenge our hypotheses with observations that threaten our beliefs and will revise our conclusions based upon what we observe.
This voyage of intellectual growth has been the path travelled by almost all of the great intellects of the past. This is the voyage that we call “education” and whether or not it is formal through institutions or through self-instruction, it is the only path to enlightenment.
In the process of becoming “educated” we accumulate a great deal of information. This is a valuable resource that will play a large role in our decision-making in the future, but it may not be the greatest gift from our educational experiences. Perhaps, even more important is the way of thinking that we acquire from the experience of sorting through mountains of information and deriving inferences. We will begin to attack intellectual challenges in a thoughtful, yet humble fashion, recognizing that human intelligence is limited by our evolution as slightly sophisticated primates.
Even though education can equip us with the knowledge and skills we need to pursue a lucrative career and accumulate a level of affluence that provides a comfortable lifestyle, the real benefit of education is our enhanced ability to see life through a less-clouded filter and observe a reality accessible to only a few of the very few elite.
When Einstein was in Boston, a reporter challenged him with a question taken from the famous Edison test, that the Wizard of Menlo Park had used to screen new hires, “Dr. Einstein, what is the speed of sound?” Einstein responded, “I don’t carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books.” The reporter persisted, “Mr. Edison contends that a college education is of little value.” Einstein responded, “The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”
Indeed, what Albert Einstein understood, is that the greatest gift of the human intellect is the ability to penetrate through the excruciating minutiae of popular consensus to the real essence of truth. That is the ultimate gift of an education and it is this greatest gift that is so often overlooked.
