4 Answers

  1. I don't know how it used to be, but my generation and the younger ones simply don't have a system of knowledge. They have a rough idea of how to write words, but how exactly these words are interconnected is very poorly understood. There was such an anecdote when someone, writing down the address, instead of” Vera Horuzhey Street “wrote” Verh Oruzhiy Street”. And this anecdote perfectly describes the modern use of the language. Some words were memorized in school, some stuck by themselves – and from this set, not knowing the word formation and root words, people are trying to figure something out. That is why the most important mistake of our Internet is “tsya/tsya”. You can't memorize them, you need to understand the rules here.

    With other school subjects, everything was about the same, and now, probably, even worse. You don't need to know why or how something happened – just a date is enough to evaluate the history. In chemistry, physics and biology, you can happily go to khoroshisty for colorful presentations about the figures of these sciences. Or you can at least copy the answers from standard workbooks, and memorize a couple of definitions for the test.

    How the subjects are related, or at least the topics within the subjects, can only be guessed.

    So it turns out that you can only learn if you are in spite of it. The desire to do this is also discouraged completely. I, for example, hated history until the first year of the Institute just terribly. As a result, people can't stand studying, they are happy that they have got rid of it and don't want to continue, they don't have much knowledge, they have a huge piece of it from the Internet (and it doesn't differ in reliability). But it is convenient for these people to sell all sorts of yoghurts with new formulas and scare them with GMOs and telegony. Everyone is comfortable and everyone is happy.

  2. The explanation is actually very simple. There are several reasons why people are or appear to be uneducated. I will deliberately limit myself to examples from Antiquity because everything was already known then.

    1. With the time of Parmenides, we know that there are two paths. This is the path of truth and the path of opinion. Let's focus on the second one and see what the sources of opinion are. The sources of opinion on Parmenides are the eyes that see nothing, the ears that hear nothing, and the tongue (I don't remember the exact words, but something like that). I think that everyone had to deal with a situation when a person made some kind of conclusion on the grounds that he had heard or seen something from someone somewhere(this is how rumors are born and partly propaganda works.)

    Parmenides also has a wonderful line: “To talk about many things does not mean to think intelligently.”

    1. Already from Socrates and Plato, we also learn that there are biases in knowledge.

    Socrates ' method consists in the following scheme (very roughly speaking):: Socrates first asks the interlocutor to make some kind of judgment on the topic. Then, with the help of leading questions and discussion, it reveals contradictions in the judgment. By uncovering contradictions, we can verify our knowledge or ignorance. People think they know something, but in reality they don't know anything or know something else. All this is clearly presented in Plato's dialogues.

    1. Plato and Aristotle talk about things that are speculative and intelligible. The first is what we grasp with our senses. We see, hear, taste, touch, and so on. But we often face the fact that our feelings deceive us. It happens that we hear or imagine something. Therefore, you should not trust the sensual.

    The second is what is actually there (given that we may be mistaken) and it is not grasped with the help of feelings. The intelligible is projected onto the mind and is associated with the qualities, properties, and causes of things. For example, we see a crying person. But the reason for his tears, we can only assume – he was offended, cut onions and so on. Or the Cartesian example with wax. Wax can be in the form of a candle or already amorphous(when the candle has burned out). It can also be fresh from the apiary. In any case, we know that it is wax. Since the form does not define its own subject. And it determines its meaning, essence, qualities, and so on.

    1. Leo Tolstoy in his” Confessions ” wrote that he and his creative crowd taught something, but in fact did not know what and why they taught.

    Total.

    (1) The lack of education of people is explained by the fact that they make their judgments on flimsy grounds(they have heard something and are saying it).

    (2) At the same time, it is enough for them to understand that everything is simple and obvious(The killer should be subjected to the death penalty. But the killer can be a pregnant girl who fought off a drug addict in the alley or a drug addict who killed a pregnant girl in the alley. These are two different stories as we understand it).

    But in fact, it is necessary to understand everything clearly and deeply(If the court decision was made on the basis of the most obvious options, then half of us were no longer there or we lived in Mordovia).

    (3) They are also convinced of their knowledge and try to project it onto others.

    Thus, the reason for the lack of education of many people is their prejudice in their knowledge, dubious sources of knowledge and a shallow view of things, as well as the desire to transfer this knowledge to other people.

  3. First, it is very difficult to define what it is. What is meant by education: general culture, literacy, possession of specific knowledge, intellectual abilities? I can be educated in one area and completely ignorant in another. So some people will think I'm uneducated, while others will think I'm very educated. Well, for example, I found at least one spelling error in each previous answer. But if you ask me to explain the theory of relativity, even in general terms (which I think is part of the general culture), I will immediately sit in a puddle. So we can grumble at others that they are not educated, but we need to look first of all at ourselves – and learn all our lives.

  4. Many people believe that they are educated. They are not ready to study all their life, receive and accumulate new knowledge, having graduated from any educational institution. Most people do not believe that it is necessary to develop continuously. Stephen Hawking said: “The main enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.”

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