Sorry if my writing is a bit messy. English is not my native language and I’m still learning.

I’ve just been reading a bit of (and about) Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci (notebook), Machiavelli, etc. And I am trying to figure out what is needed to be educated by today’s standards. I like to think some elements like rhetoric, basic understanding of the world ( physics, math, chemistry) seems preferred, together with a rudimentary insight in law and medicine.

But I really wanted to know what you guys think are important abilities and knowledge for the modern man/woman to have, with a reason for why they are.
Also: references to books would be nice.

Common Sense.

Not acting like a total idiot.

I'm sure there's a book on it. Try Amazon.

You can look up most of what you need to know on the internet now, it just takes not being an idiot to know what information you find is relevant and reasonable.

I dunno; there's a lot of very misleading stuff out there, but often the only way to spot it is to be experienced in the subject in question, in which case you wouldn't need to look it up in the first place... Some of it you can spot a mile off, other stuff is more insidious.

As Peace Bullet said common sense is a huge part of it, being rational and at least semi-logical is also a must.

Really there is no way to truly define how intelligent someone is because saying someone is intelligent in general might mean that s/he doesn't know as much about a certain subject as someone who might be viewed to be not as intelligent. As these things always are, intelligence is highly relative.

Common sense and not being an idiot are both really good proposals.
But must admit I were hoping for something something a bit more tangible, like; art because a creative mind is needed to solve the problems we face today or rhetoric because a man need to be able to defend himself with words.
Or maybe what is needed to have a good common sense and not ending up being an idiot. Moral philosophy training and focus on empathy?

edit:

So basically you believe that what is needed is to practice rationality, semi-logic (why semi?) and common sense? Is it even possible? Or is it more of a way to see and anolyses the world as not to jump to any wrong conclusions? Which I guess also could be practices to become efficient in it. Unless it’s something inborn and unchangeable?

I don't think it's possible to learn something like common sense. This is from firsthand experience, since I have a relative with zero common sense. (but a decent amount of book knowledge)

I'm half book smart and half common sense. Of course, I think I wwas that way since I was five. Still debating about that.

I think the ability to understand and learn is probably one of the most important abilities in acquiring knowledge or being knowledgeable. As long as we continue to learn we can continue to develop/grow.

In regards to books -- I think its kind've difficult to point you in a direction without knowing whats relevant to you.

I say at least semi-logical because it's not incredibly important to be completely logical about everything, but it shows intelligence if you apply logic to things where it's common sense to apply it.

Everybody can be wrong, intelligence doesn't really affect that as much as people usually think (you just end up being wrong about different things, not necessarily less things). I personally feel that a very good indicator of intelligence is if you recognise when you are wrong.

Incidentally there is no way to better yourself if your common sense is lacking? You are doomed to fail? That sounds like trying to educate yourself is a fruitless endeavor since you either have a good common sense and as such is already well equipped to take on life’s problems or you have a bad common sense = svcks to be you?
I tend to disagree, not because of evidence to the contrary (I have no idea how to define common sense for a start) but because knowledge in some shape or former must be favorable over none at all.
Only by experience can you make a good judge of character or choice. And only by understanding of business can you make a (consciously) good trade.

Also: this tread may just derail into trying to define intelligence and traits (?) as common sense and such.
Not that this is bad, but maybe I should ask “For personal growth what do you study and why” instead.

Edit:In Danish we have a word called ”dannelse” which is the practice of trying to reach a greater level through education. Like Leonardo da Vinci would learn painting, mechanics and math. Aristotle believed this came thought the practice of good and Machiavelli through power. I’m having a hard time finding a word in the English language that fit this description. The direct translation (Manners) have a very different meaning, like how to behave at a party and such right?

I have recommended this here before, but get "History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell and learn it off by heart. That is the easiest way to get what used to be called a "classical education".


Since those days (1940s), two areas I would recommend are general systems theory and quantum physics.

THIS!
...And also discipline and history.

Could you elaborate on why those 2 topics would be favorable to study? And do you yourself believe that a “classical education” is a necessarily or a good thing today?

(I have been looking a bit into quantum physics and I would probably enjoy reading” History of Western Philosophy” (so thank you for the reference.))


How would you go about learning discipline? And is one kind more favorable then another? Like anger management or consistency?

Traditional education can be explained a little bit here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Do not try to become "educated" by today's standards. You are never "educated" fully, but instead are always learning. The only thing you need is a thirst for knowledge that does not end, and a pursuit of that thirst throughout your life.

Go to college and take courses and hear lectures. Just remember that college is not the only place where knowledge can be found, in the same way that church is not the only place religion can be found. Read books, talk to people, watch movies, do experiments, travel, play games, and write stories.

Just don't stop.

There was a topic along these lines on the older forums. I'll try to type of what I wrote in that thread here to the best of my memory.

When it comes to standardized "learning" we'll say there is a necessity of your basics. English/written communication is a necessity where people can learn how to communicate with one another. Without that people would just be grunting at one another not figuring out what the other one wants/means/says. Even animals out in the wild communicate with one another through certain means. Some of those means are instinctual but others well they learn them from their parents.

Math is another necessity so that people can function in a society. Some may think it to be a waste but not learning simple formulas or basics of 2+2=4 or learning how to figure out what X means in 3*X=15 you'll be in rough shape. This extends building your own stuff needing to know how many pieces of material to use. It also means having the knowledge to say *I only have $50 for groceries what can I buy* then using your math to figure that out. Underestimating the usefulness of mathematics is a big mistake that will cost people in their futures.

Dealing with Science that unfortunately is a tricky one just like Art and Music. I truly believe that science itself is a necessity so that people can bring questions to the table to advance society but others would disagree with this. Without science we wouldn't have some things we take for granted like toasters, computers (Mac or PC not starting a war), our space stations, or even simple chemistry to cook with. Through science we've also learned how to cure much of the diseases out there that we thought were plagues that would destroy us all. Sadly I will have to leave things at that since I don't want this backfiring on the OP with it becoming a Science vs Religion debate saying science is useless.

Going from grades 1 through to 12 you learn what is needed to survive in this world. Even now 95 to 98% of jobs out there will require a Highschool Diploma with very few jobs saying they'll take a General Education Degree (GED). Some will drop out of HS due to the abilities they've already learned on the job encompassing what they learn in school. I think it was mentioned that Rick Harrison on Pawn Stars who owns/works at the Gold and Silver pawn shop dropped out of school cause he was making $2k a week. Though his case isn't for everyone since there are some that drop out an don't make it.


Ultimately the "necessity" for education may end there as some people will be sufficient with a HS diploma having learned what they needed. A person who works in the retail section of Best Buy doesn't need to know how to calculate the trajectory heading of a missile when launched from X degree at Y height. They just need to know this item is X price and have some knowledge behind that item to sell it to the consumer.

Sadly one thing i've learned too late right now is that a degree of any kind does not always equal a job. With America's current situation you could have a person with 150 IQ being Mensa material having 2 PH.D's and their only recourse for a job might be working at Target as a checkout clerk or as a greeter at Walmart. In that kind of situation their knowledge is garbage and they have to just know simple math counting change then punching in a number. However they go for that high end job their Degree will help out with experience counting for something.


In a nutshell you need simple math and grammer/english to get through society getting a regular job. Experience will help to pave the way for you with a Degree backing you up. Going beyond that simple job you need a higher education with the Degree saying "I did this" but your experience saying "i've worked in the field I know what i'm doing" as the experience will help to land that job.

Quantum physics changed everything. Obviously it's been a big deal for over a century, but you have to get this to get half of science now. It's the number one conceptual revolution of the last 150 years.

Systems theory has been moving ahead in leaps and bounds in the last few decades, and has also revolutionized all kinds of areas from biology to economics. Complexity theory, chaos theory, catastrophe theory, game theory, etc. fall under this heading.

I think this is a key point. I've known people who in theory are very intelligent but in practice don't realise anything near their potential because they won't listen, dismiss others' views and consider that they already know it all: which is, of course, the antithesis of education. Conversely, I've seen less gifted people who "keep their ears open and their mouths shut", to coin a phrase, who are far more capable.

Being able to Facebook and drive

In this age I would actually have to say that understanding technology is more important that ever before. While there is still a need of basic everyday knowledge, how to start a fire without matches or a lighter is not as important as it once was. Its sad to say but its better to understand software than it is to understand nature.

I'm reminded of my other half shopping at the local supermarket and having to point out to the checkout assistant that the mysterious, exotic fruit he couldn't identify was a pear. I think he was a student studying at the university; hopefully his grasp of all things technical is a little better...

Education is quite important, and I'm saying that as someone who just got to know he won't be going to college next semester because he failed the last semester. (I normally do pretty well in school averaging 8 out of 10 on most all tests, had specific problems that got in my way this last year, 2011 hasn't been that good for me) People say "you just need common sense" but that is what a good educational course should teach you. Taking math for example you're not taught that 3+5 equals to 8. You are taught a basic set of numbers and you're shown what they represent, from 0 to 10. Then you're taught how to make up your own set of numbers by adding numbers together and you start to be able to count to needlessly large numbers as you're taught larger concepts of numbers. Like you teach someone the numbers from one to ten, then you teach them the numbers from eleven to twenty, then you teach them the multiples of ten from one to nine and not only that but you're taught the concept of an even greater set of numbers, the hundreds. By now the kid will count up to 999 until it hits a roadblock and asks "what now ? ten one hundred ?" but all you need is to introduce to them the concept of the thousand (and I guess that you can also say something like "fifteen hundred...") and again the kid will be able to use its own reasoning and "common sense" to realize next should be two thousands, then three thousands, and eventually nine hundred ninety nine thousands. And you know what happens next. A simple word "million" and the kid will exercise its own common sense yet again.

And my initial example I started with saying "you're not taught that 3+5 equals to 8" and I went on to explain how we teach common sense through our numbering system. But how we get that 8 is still a mystery at this point unless the kid manages to deduct on its own how that thing called a "plus" works, that it's about taking two numbers, and counting from one through the other as many times as the other number represents adding one more every time you count. 5...6(1)...7(2)...8(3). 5 + 3 is 8! At this point if you taught the kid not simply that 5 + 3 is eight but the numbers they represent and the concept of plus using common sense it should already be able to add together numbers like 5642 and 2233. But at this point the kid has been taught to count once more to the first number as many times as the 2nd number tells it to add another number. But again here you have another opportunity to teach the kid the concept of numbers and how you can work with them. You take out a pen and a blank sheet of paper and you draw this.

#5642
+2233
=

At this point the kid may notice how the numbers line up. How it can instead count the thousands it learned about, the hundreds, the tens and finally the single units. Or you can point it out to the kid, you show it how it makes more sense to work with the numbers by counting them as aforementioned rather than by counting up 2233 times from 5642. You show it how it can count from five thousand, to seven thousand by counting a thousand twice, and you show it that it can do the same with the other numbers. Before long the kid has found out that the answer is 7875. And with practice the child can toss away the paper and can start doing this in its head. First perhaps just with numbers of that size, then with larger ones, and then with numbers of increasing difficulty that don't line up so perfectly like 9888 + 1123, where it has to take into account that the eight units and the three units make an extra ten that needs to be accounted for, and that the number becomes a 5 digit number as it breaks into the ten of thousands and eventually eleven thousand when all the smaller numbers have been added together too.

And even then there are methods to explain how it can be solved with even more ease. In more practical manners, which is really all that math is about. Math teaches you to work with numbers in a practical manner, and when you're teaching someone practicality you are teaching that someone common sense. To take the easier route over the harder one. And this is why I still think higher levels of math should still be taught in school despite most fields of work only requiring you to know the very basics. Because you're working the mind teaching it how to process information better when you're teaching someone math. You're making them smarter, teaching them to look for ways to ease their own workload, you're teaching them the kind of ingenuity that is required to handle tasks of increasing difficulty.

Math is not only about the numbers too, far from it. Math is also about patterns and algorithms, such as the ones used to program the very computers we use to ease our lives even more. But then, if we've already had great minds that worked hard to make machines that make live for us easy today, do we even need to challenge ourselves by educating ourselves as much ? Can't we just rely on the technology already presented to us and continue the way we are today ? Well the answer to that would be no, we still need to challenge ourselves. As long as the world is not without problems we need to better ourselves so that as a collective we can work towards fixing those problems, and as we fix those problems new ones arise from the very comforts we've made for ourselves and we end up having to solve those problems too by reaching even greater levels of intelligence and ingenuity until we can start fixing problems without creating new ones. For example once a problem would have been "how do we power some of the inventions we've made ?" and someone would go on to discover we could use a finite resource in the ground to fuel our largest mobile machines, and then arises another problem "the fuel is finite, what now ?" and we go on to push ourselves to handle that challenge, to find a better answer to our initial question "how do we power some of the inventions we've made" and many different answers pop up with varying results. But only because of those who would seek to gain the knowledge to be able to handle those questions better than those before them did.

And I'm not saying it's only some great scientists and engineers that need to educate themselves to extreme levels to handle their tasks in the world. Even the smallest jobs have pretty large requirements these days because we don't desire the standards of the last age but rather the standards of the present one and we desire to have even higher standards for things in the future. Just look at the games we play. Today a single person could make the kind of game that would have passed as GOTY when the gaming industry first kicked off, but that is only because we've had people getting even better than their predecessors at creating languages by which to make programs to make games by, and also only because we have better access to information, to learning, and we have better education pushing ourselves to understand games and how they are made better and better year by year, and then we have the professionals who by now need huge teams and we've started to expect so much from games that it's impossible for one person to do it all. We need a team of people, and most of them don't share the same skill sets. We have someone who educated himself in making one thing, another for a different aspect of a game and so on and so on and the education for each and every individual has been narrowed down to that one particular field of expertise more and more and continues to do so. And it is needed, and we need to go out and learn those advanced ways to work, to learn how to do something better than those before us, in more efficient ways and with higher quality.

So on an individual level you may still think "but those people aren't getting paid any more than those before them, so why bother ?" but the thing is with higher expectations we start to value those who can only match the skills of those before them less and less. And eventually they start getting paid less than those before them even if they can produce the same results. So we need to educate ourselves to produce even better results. Because that's what modern society demands of individuals these days. Higher education, more efficiency at work and better output in terms of quality from our work.

So by all means, don't look down on education. You ask what someone needs to be educated in to qualify as "educated" these days but I can't say I honestly know because with our focus on expertise in smaller ranges of work rather than mediocre skills at a wide range of work two people can go on two different paths and be equally educated, and only be considered "educated" in the field they're pursuing by the time they become experts at what they do. One way to look at it is that you can never really feel educated enough to stop, the only benchmark is when you become educated enough to get a decent job in the field you educated yourself in, by then you can puff up your chest and let out a heartfelt sigh thinking Ive finally learned "enough" to get by, I'm finally "educated".

The extermination of the bamboo menace. Seriously, if I have to sweep through my yard with my step brother's katana again, I will declare war. I'd use my gladius, but its not sharp enough

But seriously, common sense...and the force. Gotta' have the force.

Schooling on the other hand, is very debatable. It really depends on what you want your society to look like in the future. I for one think we put far too much importance on math, and not enough importance on social sciences or history. I just don't like the way we manage things in general. I realize we all need to have a certain aptitude in the most basic schools of learning, but by highschool you should at least know whether or not you want your career to include math, and really shouldn't have to take it if you don't want to. All the more time you could spend studying things you're actually interested in. If you're not interested in anything, then by all means, become a burger flipper. No need to educate people who don't want to be educated. I also feel like the public school system teaches us to memorize, rather to learn, understand, and comprehend. Regrading math, I'm not saying its useless, but when is a psychologist, anthropologist, or anything of the sort ever going to use advanced algebra? Science is the same way. Once you are in highschool, you're learning should be entirely up to your choosing. If you make bad or careless decisions; well, too bad. McDonalds for you.

I think if you need to seek the meaning of life (YOUR life).

http://www.edepot.com/life.html

I really love what have been laid on the table, and I get a feeling that the general consensus is that learning to learn or the passion for learning is the most important factor in reaching good judgment. But then there is the side that says that learning is more or less a social thing. That the only way to reach success is by being defined as such by others or to have abilities that helps society. And the other that believes that learning is an individual approach based on interest and to widen your horizon.

In what way should success be measured? In my own set goals excluded from what society could need? (If it is even possible to talk about success and learning without a social influence) Or on what is going to get me a good job and seen as good skills by others?