"In life there are numerous opportunities to learn, whether it comes from an experience shared on TV or a classmate talking about the mountains of homework his/her teacher is assigning to get the students familiar with the material. The difference between an educated person and a normal person is the will to learn more than what is expected of him/her. Eliot A Butler says, 'An educated person is one who by his or her own initiative and discipline is consciously, vigorously, and continuingly learning.' According to Eliot, the person with a mountain of homework would quickly get on top of the pile and get ahead of it maybe by reading into the next section the teacher is planning on talking about the following day to be prepared with any questions or to give insight for what the teacher is talking about for the other students.
"Alexander Calandra told a story about a student who didn't want to be held back by procedures of how to do stuff. This student thought 'outside the box' and had no end to his ideas. It is important for an educated person to constantly apply what has been learned in different situations to figure out what direction to head would be best for a given predicament.
"The more a person learns in the right spirit the more he/she is humbled. The reason behind this is that the more a person knows about a particular topic the more a person can do with what has been learned. For instance, a person may know only how to do basic math problems consisting of dividing, multiplying, adding, and subtracting but all they may use it for is for is dividing up 12 apples between 4 people while if they had learned a littler geometry they can now figure out how to build buildings with support beams that will allow the structure to stay standing longer in addition to what could be done before. This continues to happen until a deeper insight of the subject causes a realm of ideas of what can be accomplished to be flowing toward it's pursuer. Eliot quoted Will Durant who said, 'Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.' The more we learn the more we realize we haven't learned.
"Many may wonder why they ought to be as educated as they can, Eliot has pointed out that in D&C 88:80 it reads 'That ye may be prepared...'. Our wisdom and knowledge are two of few things that we get to keep after death, so building ourselves an abundance of knowledge and wisdom would help us be prepared for whatever waits for us after we return to live with God. Besides, God has commanded us to be educated, isn't that a good enough reason in itself?
"Some advice given by Thomas G. Plummer of how we can be more educated is as follows: We should keep a journal to 'find [our] own voice, [our] own thoughts'; We should take a second opinion on an important matter and 'study it out in your own heart' (D&C Section 9); We should take a break once in a while to idle our thoughts. If we are always under pressure it would be hard for us to not make a mistake, getting back to work after taking a break from all the pressure is like getting a jumpstart in your own heard.
"Unfortunately many of the outspoken criticizers in the world today are the people that know the least about the matter (Eliot Butler). If a person were truly educated they would to tell the world that they are because they'd aso have a considerable amount of realization of the stuff that he/she doesn't know. An true educated person would be open to all ideas and suggestions on a topic and not just rely on his/her own wisdom/knowledge because they would know that there are more things that they do not know than they do know."
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