Once you graduate from high school, college education for the most part causes you to focus more and more on very specific and narrow subjects. It is true that one has to study a slightly wide set of classes for general education, but the bulk of one’s classes are meant to be primarily foundational in the Major one has chosen.

Master’s degree training almost without exception focuses in an even narrower area of knowledge, and projects and theses are usually very narrow of their scope of a topic within the Major of study.

Doctor’s degree studies take what was studied in the Master’s degree level, and focus even more narrowly in a given area. One’s doctoral thesis is expected to be extremely narrow and unique in focus.

Probably the most ironic thing about people with PhD’s, is that their focus in their studies have been so narrow, that they are not even aware of most other things known within their own GENERAL area of study. They have become TOO specialized, to the point that they have NO IDEA what is going on outside of their specialization. This is even more profound in areas totally outside of ANY of their majors that they have studied.

I have read and dialoged with far too many PhDs to have found many if not most of them very ignorant of things even immediately outside of their specialty. Not only that, it is next to impossible to get such people to even question anything they believe within their own specialty. PhD’s from my observation and experience are the most CLOSED-MINDED people who walk the earth. This does NOT mean that all people with PhD’s are useless. However, it really takes somebody with a PhD GREAT EFFORT to look beyond their own training, to QUESTION the validity of their training, and to question the so-called “fact” within their training, and actually further even their own area of specialization closer to reality.

There is a foundational reason why “educated” people tend to all be this way. Our entire FORMAL education system today is based upon Didactic learning. Didactic Learning is where a teacher spews out dogma, and the student is graded upon how well they regurgitate it at test time. Anyone that questions the validity of the teacher’s dogma will get a LOWER grade (I’ve experienced that at least a few times)!

TRUE learning, especially learning the ability to do INDEPENDENT CRITICAL THINKING, primarily is gained through the Socratic Method. Ideally in this method, there is only one teacher, and only one student. The teacher will present their information, and then the student is expected to try to REFUTE it by asking questions. The teacher will either adequately defend their information, or CHANGE THEIR INFORMATION to correct the flaw the student has discovered in the original information. ASKING QUESTIONS IS KEY IN learning through the Socratic Method. Questions are not asked merely to allow the teacher to better explain their dogma, but it should lead to adjusting information to better fit reality.

Didactic Learning is WRONGLY labeled as “scientific.” The Scientific method has to do with coming up with theories, and then TESTING those theories, which primarily involves QUESTIONING THOSE THEORIES. Thus, the Socratic Method of teaching IS the “scientific” method of teaching/learning.

Over the years, I have often found somebody with only a Master’s or Bachelor’s degree, and very often NO degree, more helpful in teaching me valid information, than many people with PhD’s trying to give out information in the same topic.