on becoming edGe-ucated
Fox draws upon an impressive storehouse of professional experience, both as a teacher and a researcher (at one point,
he conducted studies on the reform of higher education in Iceland). The book is eclectically structured-the author
combines a personal memoir with an educational textbook, an amalgam that places his revelations within the context they
occurred and adds to their clarity. Fox's essential insight is an egalitarian one-he doesn't deny the differences between
experts and non-experts, but he blurs them, suggesting that more collaboration between the two is both possible and
mutually beneficial. He convincingly argues that both are united by the salutary experience of intellectual uncertainty;
looking at a continuum that runs from expertise to non-expertise, ignorance is not bundled at only one end. ("Rather,
ignorance is located at both ends - as is expertise.") Furthermore, the author asserts, one's encounter with uncertainty,
and the aplomb with which one negotiates that encounter, is an important hallmark of all thought, not just for those with
academic credentials. "What I am proposing is that all scientific and other inquiry fields recognize that most human beings,
of all ages and backgrounds, have strengths in working at the edges of the known, of dealing with uncertainty. Although
many may not have been prepared to apply these talents through their education, they have had to do so in a variety of
other aspects of their lives, some more than others." This is a thoroughly provocative study, as thoughtful as it is
persuasive.
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