What It Means to be Educated

In Richard Mitchell's, Albert Jay Nock's and Craig Vetter's essays we are provided with various views of what it means to be educated, both explicitly and implicitly. Mitchell (1) maintains being educated encompasses being a "thoughtful inquirer" as opposed to merely "a receiver of communication." Nock (2) argues that "education is too little regarded as an end in itself," and Vetter (1) maintains that one cannot be educated to write well except for painstakingly facing the "enemy: a perfectly empty sheet of paper." This analysis will compare and contrast these authors' views on what it means to be educated.

In Richard Mitchell's "Hunger in America," the author maintains that critical thinking is imperative to be a truly educated individual. Instead of being merely a "receiver" of information, Mitchell (2) insists one must be an "understander" who is able to think for himself or herself rather than relying on feeling. Explicitly, he defines being education as knowing "the whole thing, the whole art and power of language and thought" (Mitchell 3). This encompasses

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Category: Psychology - W