There's a quiet radicalism in this distinction that most people miss. We live in a world that treats credentials like they're synonymous with wisdom—where a degree somehow proves you understand how to live well or think clearly. But Angelou's mother was pointing at something we all recognize if we pay attention: some of the sharpest people we know never finished formal schooling, while plenty of educated people are remarkably dense about how the world actually works.
The real knife's edge here is between ignorance and illiteracy. Ignorance isn't stupidity—it's just not knowing something yet. You can be ignorant about quantum physics and still be brilliant. But willful ignorance, the refusal to learn or think? That deserves no tolerance. The person who won't listen, won't question, won't grow—that's the real problem, whether they have a PhD or not.
This matters because we're constantly sorting people into hierarchies based on the wrong metrics. We dismiss someone's insight because they didn't go to college, or we assume someone's competent because they did. Real intelligence shows up in curiosity, in the willingness to learn from anyone willing to teach. A person working three jobs who reads constantly might have absorbed more genuine knowledge than someone coasting through an elite university. Education and intelligence aren't the same thing—and knowing the difference changes how you actually listen to people.