Confession of A Miseducated Man

Confession of A Miseducated Man
These notes are in the nature of a confession. It is the confession of

a miseducated man.
I have become most aware of my lack of a proper education
whenever I have had the chance to put it to the test. The test is a
simple one: am I prepared to live in and comprehend a world in
which there are 3 billion people? Not the world as it was in 1850 or
1900, for which my education might have been adequate; but the
world today. And the best place to apply that test is outside the
country - especially Asia or Africa.
Not that my education was a complete failure. It prepared me
superbly for a bird's-eye view of the world. It taught me how to
recognize easily and instantly the things that differentiate one place
or one people from another. Geography had instructed me in
differences of terrain, resources, and productivity. Comparative
culture had instructed me in the differences of background and
group interests. Anthropology had instructed me in the differences
of facial bone structure, skin pigmentation, and general physical
aspect. In short, my education protected me against surprise. I was
not surprised at the fact that some people lived in mud huts and
others in bamboo cottages on stilts; or that some used peat for fuel
and others dung; or that some enjoyed music with a five-note scale
and others with twelve; or that some people were vegetarian by
religion and others by preference.
In those respects my education had been more than adequate. But
what my education failed to do was to teach me that the principal
significance of such differences was that they were largely without
significance. The differences were all but obliterated by the
similarity. My education had by-passed the similarities. It had failed
to grasp and define the fact that beyond the differences are realities
scarcely comprehended because of their shattering simplicity. And
the simplest reality of all was that the human community was one
greater than any of its parts, greater than the separateness imposed
by the nations, greater than the divergent faiths and allegiances or
the depth and color of varying cultures. This larger unity was the
most important central fact of our time - something on which people
could build at a time when hope seemed misty, almost unreal.
As I write this, I have the feeling that my words fail to give vitality to
the idea they seek to express. Indeed, the idea itself is a truism
which all peoples readily acknowledge even if they do not act on it.
Let me put it differently, then. In order to be at home anywhere in
the world, I had to forget the things I had been taught to remember.
It turned out that my ability to get along with other peoples
depended not so much upon my comprehension of the uniqueness
of their way of life as upon my comprehension of the things we had

in common. It was important to respect these differences, certainly,
but to stop there was like clearing the ground without any idea of
what was to be built on it. When you got through comparing notes,
you discovered that you were both talking about the same
neighborhood, i.e. this planet, and the conditions that made it
congenial or hostile to human habitation.
Only a few years ago an education in differences fulfilled a specific if
limited need. That was at a time when we thought of other places
and peoples largely out of curiosity or in terms of exotic vacations. It
was the mark of a rounded man to be well traveled and to know
about the fabulous variations of human culture and behavior. But it
wasn't the type of knowledge you had to live by and build on.
Then overnight came the great compression. Far-flung areas which
had been secure in their remoteness suddenly became jammed
together in a single arena. And all at once a new type of education
became necessary, an education in liberation from tribalism. For
tribalism had persisted from earliest times, though it had taken
refined forms. The new education had to teach man the most
difficult lesson of all: to look at someone anywhere in the world and
be able to recognize the image of himself. It had to be an education
in self recognition. The old emphasis upon superficial differences
had to give way to education for mutuality and for citizenship in the
human community.
In such an education we begin with the fact that the universe itself
does not hold life cheaply. Life is a rare occurrence among the
millions of galaxies and solar systems that occupy space. And in this
particular solar system life occurs on only one planet. And on that
one planet life takes millions of forms, Of all these countless forms
of life, only one, the human species, possesses certain faculties in
combination that give it supreme' advantages over all the others.
Among those faculties or gifts is a creative intelligence that enables
man to reflect and anticipate, to encompass past experience, and
also to visualize future needs. There are endless other wondrous
faculties the mechanisms of which are not yet within the
understanding of their beneficiaries - the faculties of hope,
conscience, appreciation of beauty, kinship, love, faith.
Viewed in planetary perspective, what counts is not that the
thoughts of men lead them in different directions but that all men
possess the capacity to think; not that they pursue different faiths
but that they are capable of spiritual belief; not that they write and
read, different books but that they are capable of creating print and
communicating in it across time and space; not that they enjoy
different art and music but that something in them enables them to
respond deeply to forms and colors and ordered vibrations of
sounds.
These basic lessons, then, would seek to provide a proper respect
for man in the universe. Next in order would be instruction in the
unity of man's needs. However friendly the universe may be to man,
it has left the conditions of human existence precariously balanced.
All men need oxygen, water, land, warmth, food. Remove anyone of
these and the unity of human needs is attacked and man with it.
The next lesson would concern the human situation itself - how to
use self-understanding in the cause of human welfare; how to
control the engines created by man that threaten to alter the
precarious balance on which life depends; how to create a peaceful
society of the whole.
With such an education, it is possible that some nation or people
may come forward not only with vital understanding but with the
vital inspiration that men need no less than food. Leadership on this
higher level does not require mountains of gold, or thundering
propaganda. It is concerned with human destiny; human destiny is
the issue; people will respond.

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Confession of A Miseducated Man

These notes are in the nature of a confession. It is the confession of

of their way of life as upon my comprehension of the things we had

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