Education Vs Schooling

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Redefining Education: A Closer Look into Schooling V.S. Education “Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important: how to live and how to die.” I love this quote from John Taylor Gatto’s book Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. It speaks for itself and stands out because of the intuitive meaning it bestows. Education should be teaching every human on this earth how to live and how to die. Is that not what we are here for? Is that not why we are born into this world? We are here to live and learn and to grow as humans. We are here to experience things, and to express ourselves. When I sit and ponder what life is and what it means to live the last thing I am thinking of is school. Yes, I want to be educated and yes, knowledge is a powerful entity, but education by schooling has never been the way I have learned successfully. Gatto states it perfectly, “we need to realize that the school institution “schools” very well, though it does not “educate” (23). Education can be anything I want it to be. I can educate myself on the entire world, about any subject, different ideas, things I want to experience, challenges I am about to face. Education is what I make of it and what I make out of it. Therefore, I am not sure where the action of schooling takes part in any of this. The very act of schooling has never been something that I wanted to take a part of. It has always been something I have to be a part of, school has been forced upon so many of us. The reason I have to be a part of
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