This episode is also available as a blog post: https://uncleandee.wordpress.com/2021/06/24/perception-pt-3/

Education is an enabler. It broadens perception and shapes orientation. Our education or the information we have conditions what we perceive and how we perceive it.

An accident scenario, perhaps, captures the above view more succinctly and graphically like no other. On arrival at the scene, the journalist sees the possibility of a story; the medical doctor is more concerned with the fractured bones and possibility of saving lives; the policeman is focused on who is in breach of traffic laws and the prosecution of the offender ; the auto mechanic is worried about the state of the vehicles involved and whether they can be fixed or written off, while the pastor is more inclined to imagining where the souls of the dead would be – hell or paradise and so on.

Our education gives us a profession/vocation which in turn gives us an orientation which ultimately makes us perceive things the way we do. So, education is one major angle of vision that determines our perception. The practical implication of this is that how we communicate with our various stakeholders/publics or what we reveal to them should be determined by their level of education. In other words, our effort at engineering how we wish to be perceived, our reputation, should not be a one-size-fits-all approach. Thanks for listening.

Next week, we shall be considering another important factor that informs perception. Keep a date with us. See you.

Dr. Andee Iheme, FNIPR