A childhood friend of mine's blog (The Acorn Underfoot) got me thinking the other day. She was posting in response to a new term "tralier park intellectuals" which has since been changed to "mountain intellectuals." The definition given by the author is as follows: "people who are intelligent yet didn’t get a higher education, who often have jobs that don’t require–or perhaps even value–their innate smartness and problem-solving abilities." Said blogger explored the connotations (positive or negative) dealing with this term and seemed to have a hand in it changing to "mountain intellectuals" (which I prefer).
This is the link to the actual post so you can get all of the details of the terms origin and do your own research to make your own conclusion: http://acornunderfoot.blogspot.com/2012/02/new-term-to-explore.html
After reading this post my mind was running absolutely wild. So many people crossed my mind. But one so much stronger than the others for some reason, my dad's brother. My dad is one of 3 boys and the only one of the three that graduated from college. I consider him a brilliant man and value his opinion. However, I know my dad would agree with me, his older brothers knowledge (in some ways) goes so far beyond anything my dad or I learned in the classroom.
My uncle is a single dad who works in construction, and as far as I know he always has. But it makes me grin to hear him give some of our "educated" relatives a run for their money when discussing current events. I feel as though he is a walking Farmer's Almanac and newspaper. And I just laugh to myself as he gets a response of "How did you know that?" from said relatives.
I can't help but think, what could he have accomplished had he earned a degree? But then I have to stop and remind myself, not everyone wants the same things out of life and I firmly believe he is far more of an intellectual than me and he doesn't need a degree to prove that. I want to end my little praise session by saying I would be MORTIFIED if my uncle read this because he is, more than an intellectual, a hard ass. So I will stop talking about him.
I have had people say to me about others "Well that just shows her lack of education," and I cringe. It doesn't take an education to be intelligent. My husband can tell horror stories of professors and engineering students alike who can barely form a sentence in a social setting. Don't get me wrong I am proud of my degree and I intend to further it, however I am also proud of those without degrees in my family because I still think they all know a lot more than me.
Yay! I'm glad I'm not the only one whose mind was "runing absolutely wild" after heraing this term. I think because you and I have such close connection to both sides it's hard not to. And I liked your comment about people saying, "Well that just shows her lack of education." I think people assume if you say someone's 'acting' or being ignorant, you're saying they're not 'educated,' but there's such a big difference between those two things (although when you look it up the definition often says 'uneducated') - ignorance is actually 'ignoring'the issues and almost choosing to be unaware, or not taking into account all the sides. I bring up this definition of 'ignorance' because I recently got into an argument with someone (from back home in VA) and I just had to come to terms that they were just being 'ignorant,' but I by no means was making fun of their education. I agree that not everyone wants/should/or needs to attend college - the world needs lots of different people to go around, and we're all trying to make a difference in the world in our own unique way; whether that's by building houses or writing books. Anyway...Thanks for the shout out :) Enjoyed the post!
ReplyDeleteBe sure to tell said "brother" about this. He will blow it off, but he'll be so proud. :-)
ReplyDelete