What It Means To Be Educated

What does it mean to be educated? Who decides what it means? Who should decide?

In my opinion, being educated involves many different things. There is the standard aspect of school, which is the typical vision of education. We start off in grade school, working on memorizing dates and formulas and events that will quickly be replaced with the next year's new information. Senior year, for example, you most likely do not remember the exact lectures you learned about American History and the Revolutionary War in fourth grade. If someone brings up a name or an even, you may have a vague memory and a general notion of who they are and what happened. But in general, you won't remember everything. So education in this sense, while it helps us prepare for newer, harder, and more "intellectual" subjects, sort of seems to fade with time.
Then there is the "live and learn" aspect. I believe that, while we learn many a great and helpful thing from books and lectures, we learn the most from our own personal experiences. These don't have to exclusively fall among travels, relationships, mistakes, and friendships, although these are definitely a major component. They can also fall within the actual school system. Think about it, so far you've spent most of your life in school. That's where you meet people, have your first experiences of all sorts, and learn about all the things in the world you can experience and be educated from. In a sense, the typical "school system" education prepares you for the "live and learn" part of life.
As of now, our elders officially decide what it means to be educated. They structure our school system and decide what we learn, when, and how in depth we go. But they only decide the school aspect. They can't decide the "live and learn" part, because they live their own lives, and you decide your own education in that aspect. Who should decide our education? I think the system works as it is. We follow the structure of the school system and use that to decide what we do and do not want to learn on our own. There will always be disagreement between the generations of what works, because the younger generation wants to decide for themselves while the older generation knows what works. In reality though, it is a healthy balance between the two. The older generation supports our education until we ourselves can make our own educated decisions.