We're All Educated Here, Ain't We?

Unless a human person turns up who has been raised by wolves or apes we have to assume he was reared by other humans; therefore educated. Now semantically the root definition of this human condition from Webster's seems clear and simple enough, from:

educare. to bring up, rear, or train a child.

Today this simple definition has no merit in the eyes of the vast industry grown up in the name of education. This, from Wikipedia, is perhaps a more apt description of what occurs:

...education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another

This definition of education is also quite limited, specific only to that transfer of knowledge, etc. 'deliberately' transmitted by a society. It fails to include how all of us are, in fact, 'educated' by simply being alive at any time, in any human society. Alas, without the blessing of some form of a formal teaching mechanism having been employed, one is by definition; uneducated.

Scholastic education in the West in the Early Middle Ages had been parochial and confined to monasteries, later to Universities, and was for the fortunate few. Most others received knowledge, skills and values as they encountered life. Early universities were the province of ecclesiasticism. The franchise was expanded to include scholars and other 'useful idiots' and became training grounds for creating Gentlemen.

Compulsory popular education has been with us during our lifetimes and is assumed benign and natural although always enforceable by law when necessary. The modern 'cult' of higher education began after the Second World War. It was a huge success and now on some campuses both the University President and the Football Coach are millionaires. Under the G.I. Bill, hundreds of thousands of returning veterans were warehoused in schools until the economy created the jobs they were to fill. This was a quite reasonable expectation in 1945 as the country was awash in good prospect and, therefore, had realistic expectations of future prosperity.

In 2009 folks are again being bribed with government handouts to remain in or return to school. The jobs are not currently here for them but will magically appear in this withered economy in just a few years. This appears to be a cynical attempt by the authorities to offer hope where none is warranted and has little credence. Unless enrolled in courses in spinning straw into gold most will be wasting their time and be greatly disappointed.