Christopher Hitchens on Education

"The measure of an education is that you acquire some idea of the extent of your ignorance."

Truer words, I'm sure, have never been spoken. It's a bit disturbing to think that I'm halfway through earning a degree in philosophy, and yet I'm not exactly the authority the subject that I thought I'd be. Rather far from it as a matter of fact. It seems that for every concept that I grasp, there are a thousand more that I can barely get my head around; for every thinker that I become acquainted with, there are countless more that I become aware of, yet know virtually nothing about. It seems that most of us are under the impression that upon entering the university, we are embarking on a four year process that will somehow download into our brain all the relevant information from our chosen area of study. Sure, we might not be quite as advanced in our understanding of the minutia of the more specialized areas of our field as someone with a PhD, but we're still sort of "mini-experts" right? Unless something drastic occurs in my next to years of study, I'm afraid I'll have to say that this is a radically mistaken impression of the undergraduate experience. The idea that there is some checklist of raw data that we will be able to spout off in the context of a conversation or debate by the time that we receive our diploma is not exactly the reality.

Mr. Hitchens' (who, by the way, is the subject of a great article in the most recent World magazine) statement may seem a little pessimistic to some. One generally thinks that any sort of an education should work towards doing away with ignorance. Undoubtedly, this would be true if a real education did in fact consist of the acquisition of a specified amount of information. But as I've said, this is not true to experience. Far from pessimism, Hitchens' observation has helped me to redefine what I hope to get out of my time as an undergrad. I am not as worried as I once was that might not be able to pontificate at length about each of the major stages in the development of philosophical thought, thus doing away with all ignorance on the subject. Given that this would be an impossible task, it appears that Mr. Hitchens is right. A real education does not consist of the eradication of ignorance (as if that were possible) but rather of an exposure to knowledge that opens our eyes to a vast realm of information and ideas that we didn't know existed. Seen from this perspective, and education is not something that is achieved in the duration of the four years following high school. Rather, it seems that a formal education is something that should equip us with the tools and desire to explore the vast, unsearched reaches of our own ignorance. Hopefully our formal education will provide us with a basis from which to continue the ongoing process of a true education as we continue to find out what else it is that we are ignorant of.

One final thought on Christopher Hitchens himself: I find Mr. Hitchens to be one of the most interesting and stimulating public figures I can think of. His ability to comment in an insightful and clearheaded way on widely varying subjects, such as literature, politics, history, foreign policy, and much else, is extremely enjoyable. I would only note that I wish he would display the same sort of insight when discussing the subject of God and religion. As a self proclaimed "anti-theist" Hitchens believes, as he comments in the World article, that the concept of God "was completely invented by very underdeveloped human beings." It seems that Hitch might want to heed some of his own advice and be a little bit more aware of the extent of his own ignorance when it comes to the subject of religion.