How do you describe an "educated" person?

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary gives several definitions for the word educate, including "to train by formal instruction and supervised practice especially in a skill, trade, or profession" and "to develop mentally, morally, or aesthetically especially by instruction."

For most people today, education means training for a particular career. More specifically, many think of acquiring an education as synonymous with acquiring a four year college degree. More education means another degree. Conversely, to be uneducated means not having attended college and therefore not having a degree.

I have referred to this topic in the past and I ask, "Does it necessarily follow that a person without a college degree is uneducated, even inferior, as some seem to believe?"

If one believes that to be educated is to have a four-year degree, I would ask, "Do we suddenly arrive at a point in our lives when we are educated?" My answer, "Doubtful!" Education is a lifelong process, and I do not believe we go to school expecting to be fully educated. An education is not simply something you can purchase for a price like a product, and then expect to “be educated.”

I am not arguing for or against formal education in any way. I have 11 years of formal education, myself, post high school. One might consider me educated. Yes, I have been trained, but my education has never ceased. I believe it is important to remain curious about the world around me. This curiosity can be satisfied in many ways: books, by living itself, by travel, by social interaction, even by work.

I want you to consider the act of reading. Have you read a book lately? I want to share some statistics with you:

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.

42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.

80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.

70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

70 percent of books published do not earn back their advance.

70 percent of the books published do not make a profit.

Are you educated? Have any books made an impact on you? Louis L’Amour states in his biography, Education Of A Wandering Man, "Books are the building blocks of civilization, for without the written word, a man knows nothing beyond what occurs during his own brief years and, perhaps, in a few tales his parents tell him."