When we go to school our teachers or professors hand us so-called facts and figures to absorb and memorize...

Often hand-picked to substantiate their biased view of the world...

It takes common sense to recognize that what can be learned in text can be applied, and it takes common sense to actually apply it in a beneficial way, so I'd give common sense higher rating than autonomous "Book Learning".

I know plenty of lofty minded and highly educated folks who would have to struggle in circumstances that are outside of their normal parameters. In other words, they may be quite adept at figuring the exact orbit of a stellar object, yet quite inept at boiling an egg.

And ... ? Is there an unspoken problem here I'm missing? Some things - like multiplication tables - have to be learnt by rote. I don't see a problem here. Ever watch one of our 'modern' kids who HAVEN'T been forced to learn to do math in their heads try to calculate change at McD's ... ? They're lucky they recognize the difference between numbers and letters on the screen.

Academia versus life....?


Experiential wisdom versus once-removed theory?


a no brainer for me.

Common sense is an old term. It is most often associated with old adages that were created to be used as a ‘rule of thumb” – which is itself an adage which referred to a general consensus of measurement. There was a general consensus that the length of most thumbs (from tip to the first joint) was about 1 inch, so when you were without a ruler you used “the rule of thumb”.

Many such adages were used to refer to ‘common sense’.
Some of the earliest forms of “common sense” that are still in use today were taken from Proverbs. The Bible was often used to defer to ‘common sense’.

Theatre was good for creating new adages that substituted for ‘common sense’, Shakespeare, for example provided many.

As more people became educated and could actually read, cheap reading material became more available.

Like Almanacks such as:
Poor Richard’s Almanack and news - The Pennsylvania Gazette ( ala Benjamin Franklin)
“Many hands make light work,” “A penny saved is two-pence clear,” Honesty is the best policy,” and “Kill two birds with one stone.”

Here are a few others Prases:

He is rich that is satisfied.
He who gambles picks his own pocket.
Plough deep while sluggards sleep and you shall have corn to sell and to keep.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
A man is known by the company he keeps.
A stitch in time, saves nine.
Red skies at night, sailors delight. Red skies in morning, sailors take warning!
Mind your P’s and Q’s. (actually refers to pints and quarts – from a time when the milk was delivered and the milk-man metered out the product)

But ‘common sense’ is often handed down through culture and thus is a kind of ‘tribal’ knowledge. I leaned a lot of ‘common sense’ things from my family – and they were all about learning how to sucessfully maneuver and survive (in Chicago).

There is certainly value in many of these legacies. I have often survived (or at least faired better) by remembering some of that ‘common sense’ that I was taught.

However, does that kind of ‘common sense’ prepare us for what we need to know in today’s world?

The term, ‘common sense' as used today, takes its meaning from more recent philosophical thought. When we invoke ‘common sense’ today we are most often making some kind of assumptions that will guide our thought processes more critically. Now we replace those old adages with facts that come from knowledge instead of the experience of generations long since past. What could they have known about maneuvering though this high tech, fast-paced, urban life-style?



This statement may be true in some elementary school settings however, professors at the college level do not hand us books to absorb and memorize. They lecture, we read, and then we are expected to be able to reformulate all that data into original abstract thought.

What many elementary schools do today is stifle the ability of students to process information into more meaningful data that can be used in original thought and ideas. In other words they seem to ignore abstract conceptualization and learning how to evaluate and process information more critically.

However, that is not a reason to think that ‘common sense’ is not dependent on knowledge. It only takes ‘common sense’ to realize that the facts we learn from books and other readings, and through the educational processes, are entirely necessary in order to utilize ‘common sense’ to its fullest.

It takes a wide range of skills to be able to cope effectively with life. This is where "common sense" comes in as far as I am concerned....I have to keep pushing myself to "think outside the box" when life hands me challenges that I wasn't prepared for and never expected...I know that a lot of people are .facing unexpected challenges and hardships today due to all of the lay-offs and shrinking job market and foreclosures etc....Nothing in their background prepared them for what they are facing today and their college degrees can start to feel like worthless sheets of paper at times...They have to develop "survival skills" and rely on common sense to get by.....They have to be creative and find a way to reinvent themselves.....People in these type of situations could be called the "new pioneers" because they are facing "uncharted territory"...at least for our generation anyway. How do you feel about all of it? Have you faced unexpected challenges in your life lately too?

Every time I clock in for work. Will I be able to have help with my job even though the work schedule says that I will have another aide to help me? Even though the work schedule says that I am assigned to a certain floor will that affect which floor I work on if the aide that was supposed to be there calls in? Which new rule will contradict the last rule I was just given? How many contradictions does it take to fill up a universe and do they contradict each other, too? Who can straighten up what God has made crooked? If God has made it crooked does that mean that it should stay crooked or should I try to straighten it up? How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?

most schools are for 3-4 reasons
1. to learn
2. to get the future work schedule down...to get it done no matter your personal views.
3. an expanded day care.
4. to find out that someone will control you your whole life.(bosses, government, police)

Common sense says that it is important that our children learn, our teachers teach, our schools produce results, etc. Somewhere along the line, this lesson was lost to many leaving us with many schools, teachers, and students that under perform in a carefully constructed system with exceptions to success the norm.

Where did we learn this trick? We weren't born with it.

"These are the times that try men's souls." Common Sense by Thomas Paine

Published in 1776, Common Sense challenged the authority of the British government and the royal monarchy. The plain language that Paine used spoke to the common people of America and was the first work to openly ask for independence from Great Britain.

Common Sense ... is neither so very often.

you may think it common and makes sense to you
but to many other
it isn't and doesn't.

A good education teaches you how to learn.

A good dose of common sense tells you what to do with what you have learned.

Why not both?! Why does it have to be an either or thing?

You took the words right out of my mouth.

A passion for discovery will take you all kinds of places, books are just a place to keep notes.

I think the answer depends on what you think "common sense" is.

Are we born with common sense?

Does it require common sense to come up with a hypothesis that can be tested in accordence with scientic method?

Can common sense be taught? - for example:
If an individual acts or reacts in any given situation using 'common sense' does that mean that the actions should be exactly the same no matter who might be in that specific situation?

If the answer is no - why don't people make the same 'common sense' associations?

If the answer is yes - clearly people are not being TAUGHT common sense.

Which brings us back to 'common sense' must be learned. As we accumulate data (knowledge) we must be 'taught' how to critically assess (or analyze) that data, and how to combine bits of data into new thought.

We can learn some common sense tips (tribal knowledge)about how to survive and possibly even proper within a very specific demography, and we develope an individualistic kind of common sense survival technique (hueristics). However, both tribal and individually developed common sense, while it may be communal (specific to a smaller community, it is not 'common'to the broad range of humanity.

So the statements:
"that's only common sence" or
"It only takes common sense to know..."
cannot really be made unless the common sense refers to 'facts' that can be taught, AND only if we are aware of the other's background or experience that should have included these facts.

Otherwise the expressions are made in ignorance - either because the individual did not learn to think critically, or does not understand (through lack of knowledge) that what is believed to be 'common sense' is not so common and is not applicable to a broad range of individuals.

Does it take 'common sense' to know & understand all that, or does it take learning 'facts', education to develop abstract thought, and direction for critical analysis of the facts?

I know, here in the states we learned the great white Christian way.

History was really skewed and in Texas and some other places they voted to continue this "history" in the school books.

As to the OP, without common sense, the book learning will do no good.