Reflection on “The Educated Person”

Now and then we are stock with this question ‘what and who educated person is?’
Upon reading this book, I notice that it deals with the goal and real purpose of education and
search for which argument is the most accepted. As I observe, the Intellect, capability and
education bring controversy in this book. Perhaps, it is important because it tells us the origin of
the true educated man from the discussion of old great philosophers that gives contribution to
the future until now. After reading, I experience asking myself Am I an educated person? For
anyone who accept this question I salute you for accepting changes and challenges within
yourself. To sum up all the points of the philosophers according to them: True educated person
accepts changes and know what he is doing, in short it is ‘us’ the human itself that are full of
courage, have faith, intellect, purpose and understand himself more than others, as well as not
afraid to agree or disagree with other people, they are not stock with what they know about the
present nor in future but holistically capable of understanding the past, present up to
succeeding. Metaphorically, I agree that ‘The Man is rational’ has the ability to think, to write to
speak, to judge, and to be independent in knowing what is right, pursuing truth and catering the
nature with his own effort. Perhaps among all of the mention conversation and exchange of
philosophies the one that I agree with is that when we say educated it is not about how
intellectual we are, how knowledgeable we are, how academically good we are, rather educated
one is a man with his own faith, devotion, happiness bringing to other or happiness even alone,
and can accept challenges using his/her potentials. If we analyses it carefully, we can see that
education is not only about the profession and the behavior we have, it’s the value of
knowledge that makes us happy and bring happiness to the students, to people and to our
community.

At the introductory part, the writer tries to question liberal education, questioning what
suitable education must fit for future students to be called educated person of this day. There
we view the assumptions of 3 philosophers on the issue. Pascal says that educated person
learns ignorance, perhaps Rousseau says that it must be the one who can best endure the
good and evil, and William James says that there must be a superiority that can be agree and
disagree with the situation given by the world. In this part the author catches my interest and
attention on the conversion given by the philosophers. Making me realize that there is a need
for us to understand the past, future and present as it connects the true meaning of the context.
In the middle portion, it was clear that renaissance man classifies educated person as the Man.
Therefore, a lot of philosophers again try to add controversies since man has its uniqueness
and can be the best rather than animals and angels since we know much of themselves and
individual has a right and capabilities on thinking, designing, planning and understanding one
self.