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The "educated - uneducated"

It is seemingly contradictory to characterize "educated-uneducated”, as someone who is educated cannot be uneducated at the same time. In the beginning, what we can all agree on is that knowledge acquires value when it is put into action. Today we are in an age where knowledge is freely given. Anyone can access almost any information. The use of the Internet has skyrocketed this possibility. This ease of possessing knowledge, in relation to the bombardment of information we receive, has slowly brought us to a deification of knowledge (intellect).

Knowledge is a necessary element in everyone's development. It is as necessary as water in the human body. Just as water to help us must enter the body, i.e. we must drink it, so knowledge to help us must be applied.

Once Hegesias persistently asked Diogenes to lend him some of his writings, in order to better understand a subject that concerned him and to enrich his knowledge. Diogenes generally resisted, but at some point the time came for them to discuss the matter. Then Diogenes told Hegesias what was the reason for not giving him the writings. "You are a fool, Leadership. You don't want the painted figs, you prefer the real ones, but you neglect the real exercise and turn to the one that is written."

Illiteracy, as the word suggests, denotes the complete ignorance of writing and reading, as far as this may be in our times, while functional illiteracy denotes a lack of greater or lesser ability to use the knowledge that social life provides. and treat them. In other words, to make use of the knowledge he acquires through the written and oral recording of speech and through the information he possesses.

Based on the definition of UNESCO (1978) accepted by the European Commission (1987) o "functional illiteracy is defined as the loss of the ability of a person, who has attended compulsory education, to adequately understand spoken and written language, to articulate clearly his thinking, to make deductive associations, to develop critical thinking, to take advantage of opportunities to improve his cognitive skills.

In recent centuries we have divided man into two parts. We have separated man's knowledge from his essence, from his values, from his transcendental interests. Knowledge was isolated, confined to a special container called the brain. This container came to be seen as a toolbox: we take from it this or that tool to do a certain job. The unity of man and his knowledge no longer exists. There are only specialized tools for specialized jobs. At this point knowledge becomes mere information. Especially at a time when knowledge seems to be completely divorced from life.

If proper knowledge is necessary for the coherence of a person's life, it follows that depriving people of such knowledge can become a source of confusion and disorganization in their lives. One does not need to be a keen observer to realize that this is exactly what is happening today. Young people (and not only them) are lost, confused and alienated, because they don't have the right knowledge to guide them, they don't have a compass, they don't have the feeling that there is a center that would give meaning to the world around them. Instead they are supplied with standardized information and dry facts, with a know-how that they often find to be useless knowledge.

Sensory knowledge and logical knowledge are qualitatively different, yet they are not separated from each other, but are united at the basis of action.

What we have perceived with our senses, we cannot understand directly, and only what we have understood, we can perceive in a deeper way. Sensory perception can only solve the problem of the external aspects of phenomena; the problem of substance can only be solved by theory. The solution of these problems cannot be achieved in any way outside of practice. No phenomenon can be known by man if he does not come into contact with it, that is, without living (surrendering himself to the practice) in the very space in which this phenomenon manifests itself.

If we want to gain knowledge, we must take part in the act that transforms reality. Anyone who wants to know what a banana tastes like just has to eat a banana. The source of all knowledge is found in the stimuli received from the objective external world by the sensory organs of man, through the senses, direct experiences and experiences. The Chinese have an old saying: "If we don't go into the tiger's nest how can we catch her cubs?". This maxim applies to human practice and, to the same extent, to the theory of knowledge.

Knowledge divorced from action is unthinkable.

Alexios Vandoros

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The article was published on the blog of AfafsiZO > https://goo.gl/MFD9aQ

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