Another fascinating IT Conversations podcast on the way in today, this time featuring Bunker Roy, the founder of India’s “Barefoot College.”

“Barefoot College” cares not a whit for “paper credentials,” as Bunker Roy emphasizes repeatedly throughout the presentation. (And a very moving presentation it is.) Credentials, that is, demonstrations of trustworthiness, come from skills learned in the villages themselves, skills that are of much greater importance than any number of consultations from diploma’d suits. Bunker Roy’s work is inclusive, tireless, and prodigious, but he does reserve the right to be contemptuous of “paper credentials,” one of the few objects of scorn in his fiercely optimistic worldview.

In the Q&A that follows the presentation, two of Bunker Roy’s co-presenters remonstrate with him a bit, trying to argue a less dismissive line toward formal education and the credentials it grants. Bunker Roy will have none of it. Despite my admiration for Roy’s work and his passionate devotion to his people, I too grew a little restive at his dismissiveness. As the conversation went on, however, I heard Roy name what I believe to be the foundation of his antipathy: he won’t allow folks with “paper credentials” into the Barefoot College because they are not humble. Furthermore, he believes the very process of granting credentials through a system of formal education leads to a loss of humility, and thus to a loss of real effectiveness in situations of acute, systemic need.

Roy’s co-panelists argued that formal education has real value. I agree with them, of course, but I’m also haunted by the way the co-panelists did not speak to Roy’s point about the lack of humility that an education can generate.

My own view is that true education, real school, demands humility and should strengthen it as well. It’s humbling, and occasionally humiliating, to work to learn. Perhaps the memory of that awkwardness motivates educated folks to put the experience behind them. I wonder how often I’ve recoiled from my own humbling memories of just-not-yet-getting-it. (And that experience of not-yet-getting-it is where real education occurs, of course.) I think most of all of the great Clifford D. Simak short story called “Immigrant,” the most powerful parable of education I know, in which humility becomes an acquisition so painful–but I can’t say more without spoiling the story, which I urge you to read right away.

I think too of how hard it is to peel back some students’ bravado and bluffing, to help them find the humility they need, not before the mighty teacher, but before the weary, mighty civilization that they are now preparing to help build (and repair). Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s humility before the task, more than anything, that qualifies one for the task. Confident, determined, but humbled to be afforded the opportunity to help build a better world, one course of study at a time.

And also, perhaps, grateful.

School’s in session. Welcome back, everyone.