BEYOND THE SCHOLAR DIVIDE
Non-Scholars vs Scholars: A Manufactured Myth
There is a quiet lie we have learned to live with — that some people are “scholars” and others are not. That knowledge belongs to a select few, while the rest must sit, listen, and accept. But when you strip away the titles, the institutions, and the language of power, something simple remains: people are people. Knowledge is knowledge. Experience is experience.
So where does this division come from?
It begins in the way society has chosen to measure intelligence. Formal education — degrees, certificates, academic language — has been elevated as the ultimate marker of worth. Those who pass through lecture halls and graduate ceremonies are crowned as thinkers, while those who learn through life, labour, struggle, and survival are often dismissed as lacking. Yet this logic is deeply flawed.
A farmer who understands the rhythm of the soil, a street vendor who reads human behaviour better than any textbook, a grandmother who carries generations of oral history — are these not scholars in their own right? Their classrooms are not confined by walls, their examinations are not written in ink, but their knowledge is no less real. In fact, it is often more grounded, more lived, and more urgently relevant.
The problem is not the existence of scholars. The problem is the hierarchy we have built around knowledge.
We have created a system that decides whose knowledge counts and whose does not. A system that rewards those who can articulate ideas in a certain language, in a certain format, within a certain institution. And in doing so, we have quietly erased entire worlds of wisdom that exist outside of it.
This is where the metaphor of an “animal farm state” begins to make sense. Not in the literal sense, but as a reflection of control. We have accepted a structure that classifies, ranks, and limits us — convincing some that they are superior because they hold credentials, and others that they are inferior because they do not. Yet both groups are trapped within the same system, playing roles that were defined long before them.
The tragedy is that this division benefits very few, while disconnecting many from their own power.
Because knowledge is not owned. It is discovered, shared, lived, and transformed. It exists in books, yes — but also in conversations, in mistakes, in culture, in memory. When we reduce it to academic validation alone, we shrink its meaning and restrict its reach.
The real question, then, is not who is a scholar and who is not.
The real question is: who gets to decide?
Until we challenge that authority, the myth will continue. We will continue to separate ourselves into categories that do not truly exist, measuring worth through systems that were never designed to reflect the fullness of human intelligence.
Perhaps it is time to unlearn this division.
To recognise that the scholar and the so-called non-scholar are not opposites, but reflections of different journeys. That education does not begin or end in institutions. That wisdom cannot be certified into existence.
People are people. Knowledge is knowledge. Experience is experience.
Everything else is a story we have been taught to believe.
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