I went and read the context of the Chesterton quote: It's not something I've read before. I understand what he's getting at -- or at least I think I do. It's a difficult concept because it can so easily be misunderstood.

I see education as something that eventually needs to be honed and integrated into your life experience over time. Then it does some good. For example, I learned lots of stuff in grad school. But in the years since, I learned to apply some of what I learned, turn other stuff 90 degrees and use it, and laugh at/ignore much of the rest.

I do see a lot of people who are miseducated or over-educated -- and what makes them that way, it seems to me, is a failure to integrate their education into their lives in a productive way. By that, I mean it's like the education is this big chunk of wood, and you need to hone it down into your own personality and situation -- and to see what actually stands the reality test.

In some ways, it's almost like you need to set your education down for a while and ignore it while figuring out life ... and then in the course of living, begin drawing on that education account.

There are a lot of other pitfalls, of course, in getting an education or not getting one. Self-educated folks, it seems to me, are often the worst because they often lack a sense of proportion. That's often where you get the conspiracy theorists and the real nuts; the madman, as Chesterton put it, who've lost everything but their reason.

Lots of reading can be good for you, but also dangerous in the sense that reading isn't dialogue -- you need someone to ask you questions and test what you've read against reality, and for other people to bring up points that you haven't thought of.