Education
While we don’t engage with the idea much as a society, one of the ways cultivars differentiate the most is the way they relate to education and the role education plays in the lives of its adherents.
To understand what we mean by this, consider a few cultures’ varying approaches:
- Many Islamic cultivars view education as a method for getting closer to God. This is why they were education rockstars until science started to run into conflict with Islamic theology. Islamic educational prowess was so renowned that European scientists of the Middle Ages would use Islamic-sounding pseudonyms so people would take them seriously. (To explore a scholarly analysis of this subject, check out Greek Thought, Arabic Culture by Dimitri Gutas.[[79]](#_ftn79))
- Most Quaker cultivars contextualize education as a means of nurturing a person’s spirit and self. In addition to framing the act of being educated as a means of spiritual development, Quakers also find spiritual development in teaching—hence it focuses on making education itself more effective and fun while generally avoiding the pedantics of higher education. (We have never met a Quaker who hasn’t taught—either professionally or recreationally—at some point in their lives.)
- In many Catholic cultivars, education is one of a number of pathways to advancement up an internal hierarchy, making it mostly instrumental rather than an aim in and of itself. (Secular educational attainment is not the same prerequisite for respect in Catholic cultivars as it is in many others.)
- Similar to the Catholic cultivar, the dominant Chinese cultivar, with a several-thousand-year long tradition of Confucianism and civil service exams, deeply values formal education as a means of social advancement. Unlike the Catholic cultivar, it attaches dramatically less respect to achievement “in spite of” low education. To achieve high status, a person must not only receive a high level of education, but secure a prestige position as a result of that education (what specifically is learned is not as important in the Chinese cultivar so long as it is useful in achieving secular prestige).[[80]](#_ftn80)
- Higher education in Orthodox Jewish culture is pursued both for status and skills—and particularly skills tied to communication and debate. Jewish cultivars typically place a high level of value on every level of the educational system. (Note: Both Reform and Haredi cultivars have a very different relationship with education.)
- Most Calvinist cultivars are obsessed with getting the “technically correct” answer to morality, human nature, and the metaphysical nature of reality while living life as efficaciously as possible. While investigation / research of these topics is sacred, education is just one of many tools one might use in this pursuit and doesn’t have intrinsic value.
Both Jewish and Calvinist cultures are known for being highly educated and putting a unique emphasis on learning in their child-rearing, so exploring their differences may elucidate how a culture’s relation to education is more nuanced than a spectrum ranging from “obsessed” to “indifferent.”
One can think of a cultivar’s relationship to education as the extent to which:
- Their worldview drives individuals to become highly educated.
- They respect education (i.e., a breadth of knowledge on many topics).
- They respect the type of formalized and systematic education our current society defines as “education.”
Jewish culture is at the high end within all three metrics. This, in addition to other factors investigated earlier, likely contributes to uniquely favorable social and economic outcomes for members, particularly at the extreme ends of the “long-tail distribution.” For example, Nobel Prize winners and Supreme Court Justices are both well over 100 times more likely to be Jewish when controlling for Jewish representation in the general population.[[81]](#_ftn81)
The risk to Jewish culture from this stance is that if the certifying institutions for academic excellence become infected by the cultural supervirus (or any cultural virus) then the Jewish cultivars that respect those degrees as much or more than their internal cultural certification systems are also at risk. Fortunately, many of the more conservative Jewish cultivars have maintained robust ancestral systems of internal formalized debate and certification, which act as something of a “blood-brain barrier” for their cultivars.
Contrast this with Calvinist culture, which places a lot of respect on learning and investigation but maintains an intense distrust toward bureaucracies—especially certifying bureaucracies. To Calvinists, education is important, but mostly as a tool for changing the world and understanding the metaphysical nature of reality. Education in the absence of utility is sinful. It is considered dramatically more respectable to be an uneducated person who performs manual labor for a living than to be a highly educated person who has not applied that education to make an actionable change in the world.
This contrast manifests in stereotypes around Jews disproportionately pursuing careers as doctors and lawyers—careers which require high amounts of education and certification—as well as stereotypes around Calvinists disproportionately becoming inventors, industrialists, and entrepreneurs (e.g., Andrew Carnegie)—professions also that require high amounts of education but no certification. Ironically, Calvinist distaste for certification also explains in part their reputation for founding schools (something both we and family members have done) and writing copious strange polemics and treaties on purpose, morality, and the nature of reality (guilty as charged).[[82]](#_ftn82)
Our culturally inherited perspectives on education feel so hardwired we won’t try to deviate from them. That said, when it comes to views on education, there are many equally viable and desirable answers. When deciding what stance on education is best for your culture, give extra consideration to the manner in which you trust external institutions, the skills your adherents need most in order to thrive, and any “objective function” your culture’s core morality promotes, as different approaches to education tend to maximize different values.