Wal, I just dunno. When I was in highschool about a hundred years ago, they gave us all a bunch of tests. I rather enjoyed them but didn't really pay much attention to their significance. I remember coming in second in the class in the intelligence test and first in class in reading comprehension. There were about a couple hundred kids in the class, as I remember.
I never really cared about being the smartest, etc., as it seemed to me that all of the "smart" ones would be stuffed shirts and real good at putting others down, but utterly helpless when up against life's emergencies. They seemed to be all theory and no practicality.
The one time I do remember being proud of my ability was the time in Analytic Geometry that we had a huge quadratic equation to solve over the Christmas vacation. The blasted thing took up half a page just to write down. Analyt was a study of the shortcuts of such things, so one glance told me that there were a possible 4 answers to it, as well as the approximate way it would graph: much like a McDonald's "M". Two of the answers became apparent immediately: a +1 and a -3. But I wasn't satisfied. It had been too easy, plus it looked like the center dip of the "M" came down suspiciously close to the abscissa (I think they call it the x-axis now). Anyway, I fiddled around with it for a while and sure enough, there were two more answers, a -.49 and a -.51.
One the first day of school after vacation I just waited to see what would happen when she took grades. She asked what the answer was and a bunch of hands shot up. She called on one and they gave the two easy answers. I waited, grinning. To my surprise, she came back, "That's very good! Now, for our next assignment. . . ." My hand shot up. "Yes, Tom?"
"Uh, I hate to say this, but there are four answers to that equation."
"Oh, there are??? Well, I'll tell you what. You come right on up here to the board and prove it to us."
So I did. After it was all over, I had proved the whole class, the teacher, and the answer book wrong, and she didn't take grades that day. Man, was I in the doghouse!!! 'Course, that only made it all the better. It's dangerous for you city slickers to be running on the assumption that we country boys are dumb! Hehehehe!!!
That about Einstein interested me. I guess that I'm a lot like him in one way at least. I've always liked to ponder over a thing for a while before answering, and others think I'm dumb or slow because of it. It's sure funny though watching their reactions when the chips come down and there I am way out in front of them!
I've always been rather offended by the general opinion that anyone without 4 years of college is uneducated. I think it depends on what one does after school is over and what he does with the knowledge he has that counts. I've long felt that any day that goes by that I don't learn something is wasted. I know I learned far more after my school years than during them.
What is an education? Two hundred years ago, you could have taken one of the south sea islanders, tatooed from head to foot, blindfolded him, and laid him flat in the bottom of a dugout, and he could still have guided you across 60 miles of open ocean to an isolated island.
Or how about the Austrailian Aborigine? They hadn't even come up with the wheel yet, but for generations they had been using one of the most sophisticated airfoil sections ever created. I speak, of course of the boomerang. Heck they even had dozens of different types for different uses, including one for warfare that went straight and took both hands to throw. It busted heads, legs, arms, and anything else in the way.
Those who've read Farley Mowat's book "Never Cry Wolf" might ask themselves who the "educated" one was, him, or the old Eskimo who was continually explaining why the wolves did what they did.
Did these people have "educations"? If not, why not?
I think "an education" is a relative thing, and it depends a great deal on the necessities of life in the time and place that the individual lives.
In addition, I find that the modern "intelligentsia" are as ignorant in their way as those they scorn. They appear to me to be like all other groups of people, regardless of the differentiating reason, race, language, or anything else. They have formulated a way of thinking that is "approved" by their leaders, and any thoughts that run contrary to that is heresy and worthy of ridicule. They too have a very difficult time of thinking "out of the box."
LoneWolf