Gurbbalubba!

“Stop bragging about your education.”

I just saw a girl on my dashboard write a post about how she hates when people use “big words” all the time, as it’s just indicative of you “showing off your diploma” and it’s unnecessary to prove that you’re educated.

Am I the only person who read that and said, “um, what?”

Granted, she is right about one thing, you don’t need an extensive vocabulary in order to be intelligent. But, having a wide vocabulary does indeed show that you read a lot, and that you have some form of intelligence or education whether it be self-education or collegiate/school education.

Now I’m not advocating for bagging of any kind. It’s a very arrogant thing to do, but, we live in a society where everyone loves to show off their money, clothes, jewelry, etc,. And so, I guess what I don’t understand is,

when did it become bad to brag about being educated?

Of all the things I mentioned above it just seems like the best thing to be proud and boastful about. I would much rather hear two teens bragging about who read a longer book, or who studied more SAT vocab than who has the more expensive [insert material item here.]

This isn’t to ay that there aren’t those douche-baggy people who try to insert so-called “big words” into a context that doesn’t make sense to make themselves seem more intelligent, which can be annoying, and pretentious, however, at least they’re trying to expand their vocabulary, which is more than I can say for a lot of people who find reading completely and entirely obsolete.

I think little statements like this, whether it be “stop bragging about your education” or “stop wearing your diploma on your sleeve” totally contradict some of the priorities that we often try to instill in our youth such as reading, learning, paying attention in school and obtaining and valuing a good education above other things.

We want them to obtain all of this knowledge but then attack them for using what they have learned in school, in the real world, claiming them to be show-offy or anything els of the nature. And this is the same confounding expectation that many minority or low-income students face. They’re told to go to school and obtain all of the knowledge they can but when they retreat back to their neighborhoods they have to turn all of that off because it is seen as stupid, or “bragging.”

How can we expect our youth, or anyone for that matter, to value education, if we ourselves see its functional use as a negative thing?

Just some food for thought.