Well said. Like everything bulldog, and most everything in life there are differing opinions, so one would have to define 'educated'.

I work in the pharmaceutical industry myself, after time in the military and with a college degree I work with people from some of the most prestigious engineering schools from around the world. All are educated. Lots are educators to the educated. Most are extremely intelligent, IQ's and back grounds out of this world. And with that, some I wonder how they find their way to and from work everyday.

I once worked for a molecular engineer/molecular research scientist who pretty much summed it up as an education, at any level, is only as good as it is used. Just about anybody can go to a school memorize what someone else accomplished, repeat in orally or in text, and then receive a degree. it is the application of said knowledge that determines the value of that education.

He was from upstate New York. He was an Ivy league guy. He was a Rhodes Scholar. He went on a fishing outing down here with us and I had to show him everything. He could break the fish down to its molecular levels but he could not cast a rod, clean or fry fish. Still educated though.

It is all application. Who would one choose to condition his hound a noted canine sports scientist or Don Mayfield?

My pops dropped out of high school, went to work and then onto the Army in the late 60's. He came home with an education that no school can provide. Much the same as the young men and women returning from the middle east today. There is no school to prepare them nor no school that can return them to what they once were. But they have an education. My pops farmed, was in construction, a mechanic, a plumber, an electrician, a welder, all the things that make a farm and house go...he was as educated and versed as anyone.

Some say his schooling ended in the tenth grade, some would say it began when the other form ended. All opinion. All about application.

With that said, I am not knocking collegiate academia because it will open doors like nothing else. Once that door is opened it is what one chooses to do that matters. EWO




Quote Originally Posted by CA Jack View Post
I graduated UCLA with a degree in philosophy & have studied law (as well as medicine) as part of my education as an insurance claims/fraud investigator for over 12 years.

But, as far as useful information goes, the education and research I have done on my own has been AT LEAST as valuable to me as the formal education I have received.

In other words, reading, assimilating, and utilizing valuable information is *not* restricted to anyone and does *not* only come from within the walls of an established institution.

With intelligent use of one's time, books, the internet ... as well as the key people in one's life ... a person should be continually educating himself until the last breath of life leaves him.

Jack