One distressing trend in modern society, so well documented on the Internet, is the increased use of the term "overeducated" to describe a certain set of individuals. It is not unreasonable to believe that the term had its origins in the classification of "overqualified," a logical designation for someone whose skills exceed what is required for a certain posting.
"Overqualified" and "overeducated" are hardly interchangeable. While the former denotes a valid situation that keeps certain people from acquiring employment (i.e., in other words, university graduates willing to take on jobs that require no education as there are so few other options), the latter is utterly improbable.
It is true that many great thinkers have made great errors in judgment (e.g., Martin Heidegger and his enthusiastic support for the Third Reich, as well as George Bernard Shaw and his ideological alignment with the Bolsheviks). Yet one cannot automatically derive a correlation between extensive education and an automatic affiliation with the extremes of political theory. It is also true that many great thinkers, ineffectual in their dealings with others, and sometimes isolated from those with whom they share no intellectual interests, have entertained -and actively supported-regimes that, while promising utopia, delivered us the Purgatorial instead.
What one must consider is just how rarely a Shaw or a Heidegger is born into this world. Most critical thinkers are today occupied with the mundane task of earning a living, and the most appropriate environment for them is often academia. Academia, despite repeated accusations from the reactionary right, can hardly be called an instrument of the neo-Bolsheviks. Today's students are churned out with a sole purpose: to use their newly attained credential to secure gainful employment. Thus, the graduate is sent out into a world where his ability to be a consumer will be the metric by which his worth will be established. This is a process that repeats itself generation after generation. When one compares the number of graduates who will dedicate themselves to lifelong radicalism as opposed to climbing the social ladder in a consumerist society, one sees that the latter is by far almost universal.
Returning to the theme of "overeducated," the very concept is an impossibility. At what point does a person become overeducated? Surely no sane society would look at the acquisition of knowledge as a dangerous form of excess. Although the "overeducated" individual may now have trouble relating to someone whose evenings are dedicated to reality programs, he may very well have prepared himself for a leadership position in an increasingly benighted society.
There is no point at which an individual should say, "I've already learned too much; going past this point would render me 'overeducated,' thus I need to desist from filling my head with any new information." No, the acquisition of knowledge should be a lifelong activity and the more acquired, the better!
The full-time pursuit of knowledge may isolate one from peers whose free time is dedicated to discussing the antics of the Kardashian sisters, but that is hardly a reason to close one's mind. The mind is an organ constantly in need of sustenance. To neglect it would be a crime against nature. If "overeducated" means not being able to adapt oneself to the norms of a society that disdains critical thinkers, one should look at life from the outside as a more virtuous life indeed. You will have more allies than you think, and small numbers have often dictated positive trends despite widespread opposition.
You can never be "overeducated," just educated to the point where you can more clearly see just how beneficial ignorance is to a small, but influential sector of society.
I totally agree that there is no such thing as being "over-educated" (yet another completely absurd idea). And yet, I am wondering if perhaps the problem lies in the word "educated" itself, since we almost inevitably link it to the educational system, a system with so many flaws that I sometimes feel it consumes rather than feeds my intelligence. I usually equate "educated" with "learned", but perhaps the two are less alike than they seem. After all, haven't we all known people with a high level of education who do not seem very intelligent or open-minded? Furthermore, "academia" does tend to impose many intellectual restraints upon us. I think that our educational system can open the doors to learning, but it's up to us to go out into the world of knowledge and explore. So in a sense, perhaps one can become "over-educated" without being sufficiently learned. Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteAlso, your comments about Heidegger and Shaw are interesting.
ReplyDeleteIn the ENG 101 class I'm teaching we were reading an article on "anti-intellectualism" in the US. The article tied it back to glorification of the non-intellectual in the media, but as you brought up, it's also tied to deeper cultural ideologies. People are really never encouraged to be overly educated or intellectual because it often leads to progressive-type thinking and the espousal of new ideologies (be they 'good' or 'bad', but as you point out the Heideggers and Shaws are rather rare). Anti-intellectual culture is just another way to keep people from questioning the status quo.