“You don’t know what you don’t know.” That sentence is not just logically true. It is true always in all of life. Experience will teach you that it is true in such worlds as diverse as law, medicine and engine repair.
This was brought home to me as I recently sought a diagnosis for a painfully swollen foot. Four doctors with different specialties and the best testing could not tell me (diagnose) what the problem was. They don’t know what they don’t know.
The role of education is to teach, providing knowledge. But teach what? One assumes it is truth. Teachers and curriculums that teach what is not true would fail. Both students and the larger community that rely on the institutions to cultivate a product that can successfully navigate life would fail. Poorly taught students may encounter personal and vocational failure.
The current flap over the Ten Commandments in Hamilton County digs into this very reality. Laws fix behavior by regulating certain behavior. Laws require definitions of terms. Murder is not killing. Stealing is not begging. Murder and stealing require intent, which is a product of the mind and heart or conscience.
Why is this true? It is true because humans must have both the inward sphere of mind and heart and the outward behavior to be guilty before the law of such things as murder and theft. The inward sphere is one’s conscience.