What is An Educated Man?

Ramsay MacDonald joined a group of "old students" of a workingmen's college at supper in London a few nights ago, and discussed with his sometime comrades the real meaning of education and the definition of the "educated man." Certainly, said this man who has sat in the seat of Gladstone, the educated man is not a "learned man." By this is meant that he is not necessarily educated because he is learned. Nor is he an educated man simply because he is a university man, added this son of a farm laborer who was thrilled last July when the University of Glasgow gave him its degree, the greatest of prizes in the eyes of a Scotchman. A man may be educated for a that and a that.

Here is the educated man, according to the former Prime Minister:

The educated man is a man with certain subtle spiritual qualities which make him calm in adversity, happy when alone, just in his dealings, rational and sane in the fullest meaning of that word in all the affairs of his life."

Such a man may be as learned as Aristotle, or he may, as Mr. MacDonald said, have difficulty in signing his own name. He may be back in the country somewhere, singing the old folksongs, or talking about his sheep and his dogs, or quoting Burns. This is defining education not in terms of "counts" and "credit" courses, of "majors" and "minors," nor in professional or other vocational achievements, but in simple spiritual and intellectual values. . . . . New York Times