Education Vs. Schooling: My Philosophy on Education
What do Mark Zuckerberg, Abraham Lincoln, Malcolm X, Quentin Tarantino, John Glenn, Bill Gates, and Ringo Starr all have in common? They all attended very little school before dropping out. However, none of these people are unsuccessful or uneducated. There is more than one way to be an educated man, and they do not all come from schooling.
There is so much wrong with the school systems nowadays. There has been very little change in classrooms, teaching styles and schools over the past century yet there has been extensive change within society and the whole world. The same schooling that lead a student to success in 1900 will not necessarily work now, in 2017, with our extensive technology advancements and completely different outlook on the world. Grades, tests, quizzes, report cards, college, GPA’s. Those are the focuses of a typical (in my school) high school student. The emphasis in school has been taken off of learning and mastering content to getting the best grades possible. Students are pit against each other in competition for the best grades and highest GPA. In order to “win” this competition students often do whatever they think it will take, cheating, plagiarism, you name it, they’ve tried it. Schools are full of half-asleep zombie students who don’t always make the most out of the opportunity given to them. Students are too busy checking powerschool for their updated GPA’s after the most recent test they took, hoping to see the green up arrow, meaning their grade increased.
Students in my public high school in a fairly well off town in Connecticut see only one path for their future. Kids grow into teens, teens into adults. Year after year, going through the motions of school, trying to get the best grades possible to get you into a prestigious college to land a great internship which will help you get a job in the field of your dream. Each level of schooling is intended to prepare for the next stage and it will cumulate to prepare students for the real world. However, “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” (John Dewey)
My cousin graduated high school and went off to college only to realize being hours away from home and living on a campus just wasn’t for him. So he dropped out after his first year and continued work in a field that he is passionate about. He took his education into his own hands, he realized that he’d learn more working with kids everyday and taking classes at a local college would teach him more than being stuck on a campus in upstate New York. This was not supported by his community because he broke the system and took an unconventional route of education. It was hard for him at first because he was getting a lot of grief for leaving a good college to come home and work at an elementary school. But it sure has paid off, he is the happiest he has ever been and is working towards his dream career.
Tony Gaskins Jr. sums it up in his quote, “If you don’t build your dream, someone will hire you to help build theirs.” My cousin is building his dream and becoming educated in a way that may be against the status quo but it is what works best for him and will help him in the long run.
I’m not saying that school is bad and that there’s nothing to gain from it. It is critical that you understand your motives and get your goals straight to get the most out of education. If you go through school blindly, just to try and follow the path that has been defined for you, you won’t get as much out of schooling. Education can definitely happen at school, many valuable lessons are taught at school like how to read, write, speak and communicate. Skills like that are vital for whatever path you take in life.
Education comes from more than just schooling and you can be educated in more things than just being smart. Malcolm X dropped out of school and did his most significant learning while in prision. David Beckham is educated in soccer. Picasso is educated in creating art. Shakespeare is educated in the art of all things written. These educated men may not have gone through schooling in the way that we know in order to become superiorly educated on these topics. They went into the “real world” and learned, experienced and chased their own dreams.
In today’s society, too much time is spent fussing over grades and standardized test scores that countless opportunities are missed in everyday life. I often find that I learn the most from experiences and opportunities I have outside of school. Students complain that nothing that is taught in school will be useful to them in the real world. First off, that is not true, many important skills are taught in school if you open your eyes to see them. If students stopped checking Powerschool and went out and experienced life I can guarantee they would learn skills that will be useful in the “real world”. We cannot blame all of the issues on the schooling system itself, society’s expectations and students mindsets have a great deal to do with it as well. Education doesn’t start when you go to kindergarten and stop when you graduate, the world is full of learning opportunities they just need to be recognized. Education never truly ends.
Schooling and education. Two words that I did not see much difference for most of my life, or did I take a moment to even think about the vast meanings each word can take on. I see in some situations, the words may in fact be synonymous, but in real life, there are worlds of differences between the two. Simply, schooling is the learning you do at school, the way you are taught the pythagorean theorem and how to solve for x. Education is not spewing facts and doing anything to pass an exam like school teaches you. Education is about inspiring the mind, not filling the head.
