I am uneducated

I passed the eleven-plus exam, have nine O-levels, four A-levels, and three degrees, but I am uneducated.

I have read thousands of books, used to be able to do calculus, have been taught (and forgotten) the arteries and nerves of the body, travelled to over 80 countries, and know every poem in the The Nation’s Favourite Poems, but I am uneducated.

I realised that I’m uneducated when I read these two sentences, attributed to a 19^th century Tahitian, in Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things: “I was not uneducated, completely. I could name one hundred and fifty kinds of fish, you see, and I could draw a map of the stars in the sand, but I was not educated in the European manner.”

I know the names of hardly any fish. I look at the sky and see stars, although rarely in polluted, cloudy, overlit London, but I could not begin to draw a map of the stars. I know the names of very few.

Recently a group of us walked through the Yorkshire Wolds. https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2023/05/21/six-walk-the-yorkshire-wolds-way/  One friend knew the name of every bird, and he recognised their songs from just a few notes. He could see them when I couldn’t. He knows the names of flowers and trees. I can tell an oak tree from a beech tree—but not even that with confidence. I marvel at flowers but know the names of few.

My ignorance began to weigh heavily on me as we walked. What is the point of knowing the difference between a mean, median, and mode if I don’t know the names of stars, flowers, trees, and fish? If abandoned on an island like Robinson Crusoe—or even love in my own garden after a pandemic had killed everybody else—could I grow anything to eat? I fear not.

As somebody who has lived my whole life in cities I am not alone. Such ignorance of nature is shameful—but more the result of how we live our lives and are schooled rather than my personal failure. We should, I have become convinced, be animists not dualists, https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2023/05/08/8489/  recognising that we are part of nature not its master, not above it. But doesn’t being part of nature mean knowing the stars, flowers, trees, and birds in a way that I don’t?