Everybody Is Ignorant

I was assigned to read the essay "Everybody Is Ignorant, Only on Different Subjects" by Eliot A. Butler. He addressed the definition of the educated person... And I loved it. It's interesting coming from high school, junior high, elementary school where any notion to religion is shunned. Religion is not for school. It has no relation. But coming here, religion is mixed in everything. And it just makes sense. It keeps throwing me off though, I'm not use to it yet. This essay goes into Renaissance men, to Joseph Smith correlating similarities. It's intriguing and brings a clarity of how the gospel should be in all aspects of our life. Here are some quotes that stood out to me from his essay.

An educated person is one who by his or her own initiative and discipline is consciously, vigorously, and continually learning.

If he is educated, the learning must be the result of self-discipline and not the result of demands and pressures from others.

There have been men and women who had grown out of the slave-like position of doing only what was required by pressures from parents or teachers or society, and had found that satisfaction of being free- of doing more than meeting requirements, of learning because it is good to learn.

However narrow the specialist with no rounding out may seem, even more pitable is the generalist with no substance.

The student who chooses a major because its requirements are easily met cheats himself of the opportunity to be taken through a rigorous, if short, introduction to the reasoning, thinking, study, techniques, and challenges of one subject. Having avoided the opportunity to learn discipline he is doomed to superficiality.

Ignorance of one's ignorance is the worst kind of all.

"God himself is limited when men cease to think"

There is no barrier to anyone except one's own self.

The educated person, actively, consciously, and vigorously learning through his own drive, cannot be egotistical about what he or she knows. Each step that increases understanding reveals a large area of ignorance than could be seen before.

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.