The word erudition is of Latin origin and means deep comprehensive knowledge, wide awareness. The concept of erudition is often confused with education, although these words are not synonymous. An erudite person is always educated, but not every educated person can boast of his erudition. An erudite never rests on his laurels and draws knowledge not from training courses, but from direct sources. Many of us would like to show off our erudition in front of others, but how to increase it?

Instruction

It is impossible to become an erudite person only for show. In order to become an erudite, you need to show a sincere interest in various issues. To expand their horizons, scholars first of all turn to the help of books. It is books that are the storehouse of wisdom of all mankind. However, it goes without saying that books are different books, and rubbish pulp novels or cheap detective stories won't give you much food for thought. If you really want to improve your erudition, then you need to turn to more serious literature. Read Russian and foreign classics, scientific researches and monographs, autobiographies of interesting people.

A very important point is how exactly you will read books. The increase in your erudition will not depend on the number of volumes you read, but on the quality of your reading. Read more thoughtfully, rethink what the author said. If you are interested in any quote, then do not be too lazy to write it out for the future. Over time, you will notice how your horizons will develop, new topics for conversation will appear, and your vocabulary will also expand.

Another modern way to improve erudition is cinema. Of course, not every cinematographic product can increase your intelligence. Nowadays, a huge number of high-quality documentaries are being shot about nature, physical phenomena, historical events, interesting personalities, and so on. Regular viewing of such programs will favorably affect your horizons. From the field of feature films, you can turn to art-house works. Good art-house cinema is filled with worthwhile quotes, and philosophical undertones will push you to think.

Your erudition also largely depends on the people with whom you communicate. The circle of communication leaves a huge imprint on our interests, way of thinking and even vocabulary. Try to surround yourself with smart people with whom you can talk on various topics. Reach out for erudite people, and gradually your own level will begin to rise.

Many say: "Erudition is very important!" But they do not really understand what phenomenon is behind this concept. Let's figure it out today.

Width and depth of erudition

As always, let's start with a definition. And here everything is not as simple as it seems at first glance. Because erudition can mean both broad, but shallow knowledge, and deep education, when a person understands the subject comprehensively. The meaning of the word "erudition", like any other, depends on the context. Yes, it is important to remember that the depth of any knowledge is relative.

Education and erudition: correlation of concepts

An educated person may be erudite, but education does not always imply broad and deep erudition. For example, there is a design engineer, and he knows everything about his work, but is almost not interested in anything except her, because the rest of the world has nothing to do with him. Who can say that a design engineer is a dark and uneducated person? Nobody. However, he can hardly be called an erudite.

So what is erudition? This is a wide awareness of different areas of knowledge. As we have already understood, erudition can be deep and shallow. The main feature is that it is developed by a person independently, through self-education, i.e. reading books. Erudition and erudition are almost synonymous.

If we leave aside writing people (writers, journalists and philologists), for whom book education is a necessary tool for work, then in other cases an erudite is an ascetic of non-utilitarian knowledge, which, perhaps, he does not need at all in everyday activities. Reading books and automatically gaining erudition is just a way to dilute the prose of life.

Rounding off the topic of education and erudition, it must be said: a person with education is not always an erudite, but an erudite is always an educated person.

Joseph Brodsky as an example of fantastic erudition

The Nobel Laureate in Literature certainly fits the bill in this case.

Iosif Alexandrovich did not receive any higher education, he left school in the 9th grade. Since then, he has been exclusively self-educated. But if you take the trouble and read the book "Dialogues with Joseph Brodsky" by Solomon Volkov, you can be sure that Brodsky's erudition is boundless and deep. True, it mainly concerns literature, the Russian language, philosophy - the humanities. He is not an encyclopedist, as one might think. And now there is so much knowledge that in one area you can drown in the information sea. In other words, to the question of what erudition is, one can answer metaphorically: "This is Joseph Brodsky." But each has its own heroes and examples. Now let's look at the problem from a practical point of view.

How to increase erudition?

It is impossible to become well-read on purpose, but the main thing here is to start. Cultivate at least one fiery passion in your soul. Everyone can have their own. It is pointless to give examples here. The main thing is to be interested in something with all your heart. Impatient readers will ask: “Is it possible to increase erudition?” Answer: Yes. But only if a person loves knowledge disinterestedly, and not in order to achieve extraneous goals.

For example, a teenager wants to please girls, so with nauseating scrupulousness he studies the immortal creations of Paulo Coelho in order to talk about something with the young ladies, or rather, to start a conversation, of course, at ease. It is unlikely that anything will come of such erudition. Because a person is not obsessed with a passion for knowledge.

So, erudition stands on three pillars:

1. Love for development.
2. Love for reading.
3. Love for knowledge without any purpose.

The last point needs clarification. If knowledge has a specific goal, then sooner or later it will exhaust itself, and an erudite is a person who absorbs knowledge for the sake of pleasure. Erudition is a kind of intellectual hedonism. The last fact is important to remember.

Erudition is a concept that reflects the breadth of knowledge and multilateral education. Developed erudition is manifested by a deep understanding of many things and finding relationships between different areas of life. Scholars (those who have this quality developed at a fairly high level) are constantly expanding the range of their knowledge and deepening their existing ideas about the world. Thus, it is not only a superficial awareness of the events taking place in the world and discoveries in the past and present, but also a deep understanding of these processes. We can say that an erudite is a specialist in several fields at once.

Erudition is not innate, and the level of its development depends solely on the efforts made by a person regarding the constant acquisition of new knowledge. This quality is directly related to education and is practically not related to the level of intellectual development.

But the concepts of education and erudition are not identical, because in relation to erudition, there is an internal need for a person to constantly develop and overcome his rudeness or lack of knowledge, while education alone does not give this internal motivation. Knowledge can be obtained without, and with further choices, development stops, then erudition forces one to look for sources and opportunities to increase one's level, regardless of one's baggage. Erudition is an independent direction, forcing a person to engage in self-education, read books on topics of interest and go beyond training courses.

What it is

It cannot be said that someone has erudition and someone does not. In this case, it is appropriate to consider the level of its development and implementation in various areas. There is an opportunity to increase the level of erudition, but the level can also decrease if no additional efforts are made. This does not mean that one day the knowledge gained will be forgotten or become irrelevant, but over time, their relevance may be lost or some theory will be refuted - erudition is the ability to track dynamic changes. In addition, the level of erudition, which is considered quite high for a fifth-grader, will already be insufficient for the head of a company. Such examples are quite common when, after a lot of praise, a person ceases to engage in his own development and remains at the same level without development.

Developed erudition arises only with the constant absorption of new information, and it should concern not only a narrow professional sphere, but take into account the moments of many world life topics. Of course, this is a process of education, but not fixed by educational institutions and additional courses, but a more independent contribution to what is happening. This can be expressed in reading not one, but various sources, and optimally opposing opinions. This also includes an active creative interest in other areas. So a person can study to be an architect, go to language courses, read historical literature and get carried away with plumbing. His level of erudition will be significantly higher than that of an architect who is deeply versed in his field, but does not go beyond it.

How to develop it

The development of erudition is becoming an urgent problem in modern society, since the emphasis was previously placed on highly specialized education, as a result of which an individual person is often unable to solve, and sometimes even understand, any everyday tasks that are not within his circle of competence. In addition to the global trend, the development of erudition is relevant at the individual personal level, since such a person can support almost any communication, quickly finds ways out of various life situations, and is also more creatively productive, since he can synthesize many aspects at once.

The first assistant in the development of erudition is the reading of the most diverse literature in large quantities. This does not include the same type of novels that are forgotten a day after reading, we are talking about works and popular science literature that requires analysis.

It is important not to swallow books, trying to put the maximum number of checkmarks, but to read them with high quality. There is no point in reading a hundred that cannot be remembered in a year, but one book, fully analyzed on several levels, can be more useful. The information received can be systematized, recorded, discussed with friends - the more a person interacts with new knowledge, the better and deeper they are absorbed.

Literature should be selected from different industries - this helps to expand the range of topics that are available for understanding. For example, books on psychology will help you understand people, and various works on physics will increase your understanding of the structure of the world.

Many books help self-study, for which you can get a separate notebook or find suitable trainings where you can deepen your research. Faced with new information, the perception of the world changes, so the important point is to constantly correlate what you read with what your personal life is like at the moment. Not from memory to know that some things were pleasant, while others were uninteresting, but every new time to analyze your inner world for changes. Choose scientific literature, because reading, even in large volumes of social media feeds, does not always have the desired effect. In order for Facebook and Telegram to be useful, you should carefully filter your subscriptions and monitor not only the variety of topics, but also the quality of the content.

Cinematography perfectly develops erudition, provided that films are selected on a variety of topics and interesting directions. Comedies with crude humor and action films without any plot are more likely to evoke various emotions, but historical films can open up new horizons. Biopics based on real events are great. There are many short films and arthouse films designed to show the unusual side of life, to reveal new facets and understandings.

How to Raise Broad Awareness

The circle of contacts directly influences the general level of awareness. The more time a person spends in contact with others, the more information he learns, and its assimilation is much easier than with forced reading of the same facts. However, if you surround yourself only with artists, you get a set of approximately the same themes and events. Therefore, it is necessary to strive to be surrounded by various people with multifaceted interests, and of course their level of knowledge in any topic should be higher than your own.

An important point in any development is interest, and regarding erudition, it plays a paramount role. It is impossible to memorize information that is both not needed at work and not interesting personally. Therefore, even choosing a topic that is not entirely clear and interesting for study, it is worthwhile to organize the whole process in advance in such a way as to periodically tone up the enthusiasm. An interesting company is perfect for this, which will not allow you to abandon training or a system of self-reward for reaching certain levels.

Choose your hobby instead of evening TV. In order for classes in your free time to be beneficial, you need to draw up a certain approach. For example, learning a language will have a greater impact on the development of general erudition if you communicate directly with people from different countries, via Skype or other programs, than just learning a dictionary. Collecting, which involves recognizing the history of each thing or the culture of the country of its manufacture, turns the accumulation of things into a developing personal process.

The facts that a person learns must be shared, discussed with friends, especially if there are disagreements and a controversy arises. The brain is arranged in such a way that the more we explain to others the structure of something, the more we ourselves begin to understand what we share.

It is also useful to consider any new information from different angles - this is what develops ample opportunities for knowledge possession. For example, having learned about the design of a technical device, one can fill in the gaps regarding who invented it and when, and then study the biography of this person. Any new information brings along new opportunities for study - the main thing is to notice and criticize them.

The more critical your thinking is, the wider your horizons become. Not to take it on faith, but to look for why it is so, not to learn the theorem, but to watch its proof - expands awareness and makes life more interesting.

About methods that do not just transfer knowledge, but do it in a lively game form

All parents want to be proud of their child, to see him as a successful and interesting person. In the modern world, this is impossible without developed erudition: you need to have a large amount of knowledge in various fields. But how to raise a child to be really smart and at the same time sociable, comprehensively developed, without sitting him down for textbooks around the clock? With this question, we turned to the head of the school for the development of erudition in children "Eureka" Rustam Nazipov.

Nazipov Rustam Salavatovich - head of the School for the development of erudition in children "Eureka"

"MAGIC" WAYS TO REMEMBER 30 COUNTRIES IN ONE LESSON

— Rustam Salavatovich, what does erudition give to modern children?

— You have to understand that erudition is not just the amount of knowledge in memory. It is the foundation for communication, leadership and strategic thinking. Firstly, it is easier for an erudite child to find friends: it is always nice to communicate with an interesting person who can keep up the conversation on any topic. It is easier for an erudite child to study at school and university: he positively stands out from other children, he is noticed by teachers. In the future, it is easier for him to work and conduct business: knowing more, you can significantly outperform competitors. Imagine that your child knows the countries, capitals, flags of all states, guesses the works of the classics by the first notes, is familiar with the works of famous artists, understands how various interesting things work - from a hoverboard to a spaceship - and also knows all the historical figures of different countries world, major events, dates and so on. Do you think this will help the child in the future?

— WITHWhat difficulties can be encountered in increasing the level of erudition in a child?

- The most important thing is not to turn a child into a nerd and a botanist. To do this, you need to use methods that do not just transfer knowledge, but do it in a lively game form. It was this task that I set for the staff of my research institute when developing programs for the School for the Development of Erudition. And we succeeded: children don’t get bored with the classes – on the contrary, they really like them. The guys are maximally involved in the process, they don’t get tired at all and periodically notice that in some “magical” way, without straining, they remembered, for example, the capitals of 30 countries in one lesson. And all this thanks to effective teaching techniques.

COMPLETE SCHOOL FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF ERUDITION

- You said that the research institute was engaged in the development. What is this institution?

— Among other things, I am the head of the Evrika Research Institute, which has been developing effective teaching methods for almost two years. Initially, we created methods for developing memory, attention, logic and other skills, prepared and published more than 30 books for independent work. A little later, based on readers' requests, we decided to open a full-fledged school for the development of erudition, which works exactly according to these methods.

- Tell us more about how classes are held at school.

- Before signing up for a lesson, the child, along with mom or dad, grandma or grandpa, is interviewed. The methodologist determines the current level of the child, motivation, goals. Based on this information, the teacher decides whether our teaching is really suitable for the child. If yes, then we select a group for him by age and level, as well as a convenient schedule. Classes are held twice a week, each devoted to a specific topic. In addition to the main activities, we periodically hold intellectual games between groups. This allows children to gain self-confidence and make new friends.

The word erudition means wide awareness and comprehensive knowledge, it has Latin roots. This concept is often confused with the concept of education, however, these words cannot be called synonyms. An erudite person is always educated, but not every educated person can boast of a high level of erudition. A true erudite will never rest on his laurels, he will draw knowledge not from textbooks, but from a wide variety of sources. Many people would like to show off their erudition, but how can it be improved?

Useful tips to increase the level of erudition

It is simply impossible to become an erudite person just to demonstrate versatile knowledge. In order to become a real scholar, you must show a sincere interest in various issues. To increase their horizons, first of all, erudite people turn to the information they receive from books. After all, books are the sources of wisdom for all mankind. But, it should be noted that the book is a strife, so cheap detective stories or dime novels will not be useful, and also will not provide valuable food for thought. If you really want to improve your erudition, then you need to resort to more serious literature. Read foreign and Russian classics, monographs and scientific studies, as well as autobiographies of people of interest to you.

The moment in which you will read these very books is extremely important, because. increasing your level of erudition will largely depend not on the number of books you read, but on the quality of your reading. Try to read more thoughtfully, while rethinking everything said by the author. And if you are interested in some kind of quote, then do not be lazy and write it down for the future. And over time, you will notice how your horizons develop, you will have new topics for conversation, and also your vocabulary will expand significantly.

Films are another innovative method of increasing the level of erudition. Naturally, not every product, and especially modern cinematography, is able to increase your intelligence even a little. In our time, a lot of high-quality films are being shot about physical phenomena, nature, history, outstanding personalities, etc. Regular viewing of programs of this nature will have a beneficial effect on your horizons. And in the field of art cinema, you can turn to art-house films for knowledge. A high-quality art-house film is filled with valuable quotes, and the philosophical meaning will push you to think.