Shallow Education Is Not Enough

On the subject of acquiring competence an eminent surgeon said: “At a given instant, everything the surgeon knows suddenly becomes important to the solution of the problem. You can’t do it an hour later, or tomorrow. When a man’s life is suddenly at stake, there may not be time to go to the library to look it up.” In other words, shallow education is not enough. School is not a time simply for acquiring credits or surviving certain subjects, but is a time for acquiring knowledge and character and competence that can be counted on and called upon needed.

In many ways we put our lives, our health, our solvency, our safety in the hands of other people, and we have to be assured that they have the character, and the competence. A name on a desk, a title on a door, or a signature on a certificate mean only as much as what is behind them, and no more. This is one reason why cheating is so hazardous, and why shallow, shoddy learning⎯just getting by⎯is so altogether unacceptable.

This is a world of causes and consequences, and we pay people for knowing, for doing, for producing; for experience, for results, for the ability to run the business, to solve the problem, to show a profit, to accomplish the purpose; and in order to succeed, men must sincerely give themselves and their services, with dedicated seriousness, for at a given instance everything we know may suddenly become important to the solving of the problem.

Oliver Wendell Holmes gave this summarizing sentence: “We are competent or not, honest or not, truthful or not, able or not, willing or not.” To this Winston Churchill added: “It is no use saying ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”