Education or Common Sense?

When I was a little girl, having a baccalaureate degree meant something. Although literate, most people were not college educated. Graduating from a professional high school that actually taught a trade was highly respected. Attending and graduating from a two-year technical school was an achievement. Few people attended college in spite of the fact that it was free. There was no shortage of people wanting to go, just a shortage of colleges, professors, and resources.

The competition to attend a university was so fierce, there were at least 10 students viying for one seat. You really had to be the creme de la creme - perfect grades, perfect scores on high school exit exams, and stellar scores on college entrance exams.

Socialism promised equality and free education for the masses, but resources were limited and thus rationing had to be instituted through very tough entrance criteria - only a select few could attend. Often, those select few were children of the ruling elite and thus automatically admitted in spite of their mediocre scores.

People were proud and content to have an eighth, tenth, or twelfth grade education. Each represented a different ability level and professional track. I say twelfth grade because many students were unable to get their high school diploma as they could not pass the baccalaureate exams.

When mom was young, under the monarchy, education was not free and most college students were children whose parents could afford, managed to borrow, or saved to pay the tuition. Most families were large and could ill afford to send so many children to college. Perhaps one of out six siblings attended college, the rest chose professions or trades with less education.

Villagers had large families - their children cared for their younger siblings and raised and harvested the crops that provided the family's survival. There was no birth control and religious beliefs forbade abortion.

Children skipped school a lot to help on the farm; their education was not up to par and many dropped out of school completely by the seventh or eighth grade. Most of my mom and dad's siblings had to complete their education as adults in night school during the communist regime.

People tend to confuse education with intelligence by assuming that anybody who is college educated must be very intelligent and those who are school drop-outs must be unintelligent. That is certainly not true.

Common sense and intelligence are also misunderstood - one can be intelligent and have no common sense or conversely, have common sense but not be particularly bright. Stereotypes and human values are assigned to all people based on their educational level, perceived intelligence, and common sense or lack thereof.

The wisest sage in my grandpa's village was the shephard who walked around half-enabriated most of the time, with a happy smile and an infectiously positive life view that astonished everybody. He never completed fifth grade and had difficulty signging his name, it was painful to watch him scrawl his name for five minutes. He had a lot of common sense and innate intelligence.

I've met my share of educated people from prestigious universities who had no common sense, a warped and shallow world view, and superficial knowledge in general. Their only claim to wisdom was the diploma that stated the potential to learn.