Education VS Schooling, Mark II.

I originally wrote this for a public speaking competition, but thought it might like some exposure out here. Hope you enjoy it.

Mark Twain once said that “I never let my schooling interfere with my education”, but how many of us actually make a distinction between the two? Just recently, I learned that the Spanish Armada attacked Britain in 1558. But how exactly does this knowledge aid my powers of reasoning or judgment? How does this aid in my mental preparation for my future life?

It doesn’t. As long as schools school and not educate, as long as they focus on the what and the how of things, there is a problem. Education requires us to ask ‘why’, and when the question is answered, it requires us to ask ‘in light of this, what now?’ It involves the development of human beings who will impact upon the lives of others. It involves pondering, imagination, creativity. It is a process of exploring the meaning and application of knowledge. It involves asking ‘what do we mean by that? ‘How can this be?’, and ‘Can this be right?’

It involves something that schools may never be able to provide.

What schools provide is accumulated knowledge, and a degree or ATAR score. I don’t mean to be disparaging – a degree certainly speaks of the hard work of its owner, and can lead to the development of skilled people who will better our living standards – but it is when we consider a degree an education that there is a problem. The end of four years spent in high school (or in any other educational institution, for that matter) is not the completion of an education. It is simply a point of departure. It is foolish to suggest that we can ever ‘have’ an education – the very nature of learning is that what we are exposed to in schools is only the tip of an iceberg of knowledge we will never be able to completely learn.

For us to acquire a VCE certificate, we needn’t need to learn much. Even to acquire a degree, we needn’t learn anything original. Instead, what we really learn in high school or university is how to navigate the system. We are taught how to conform. Upon completing our exams, we will have proven to our educators that we have learned to think exactly as they want us to. We will have written answers as they have wanted us to. Our formal education requires uniformity, measurability, conformity and submission. We will all have read essentially the same books, and will have drawn essentially the same conclusions. How can wisdom and insight develop in a system where knowledge is standardized? Without the gift of original thought, how can we become a force of social change?  Does our formal schooling ensure that we are just another cog in the wheel of society, promoting and living the thoughts and ideas of other people?

We must keep in mind that everything we learn from school is information we learn from other people. When we are children, we are told what things are, and what things are not. We are shown a world where this is right, but where this isn’t. The reality that other people have inflicted upon us may never be challenged. In the case of science, politics or humanities, our textbooks dictate reality. However, the expanse of our reality, the limits of who we can be, and what we can accomplish are not so clear cut. Interpretations of information should be welcome, rather than marked down. Questioning and challenging knowledge should be praised instead of languished. Many of the most gifted individuals will not do well in school – shaming them through lower grades is nothing more than a tool of conformity. It states that ‘you don’t perform well in my system, therefore I’m punishing you’.  Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4-years-old and did not read until he was 7. His parents thought he was "sub-normal," and one of his teachers described him as "mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams.". But today we regard Einstein as one of the most enlightened men who ever lived. It was his education, rather than his schooling that allowed him to succeed.

Stephen Fry said during his time at university, the learning that he really did was done while sitting with coffee in his rooms with friends talking about various topics such as the cosmos, God, Marxism, history, psychology and honesty. Education isn’t something we get from textbooks alone – we become educated through our interactions and relationships with other people. More than information, we need wisdom and discernment. More than standardized testing, we need interactions with people.  More than knowing, we must understand.

No amount of schooling will ever prevent a child from growing up to become another Hitler or Stalin. Similarly, no amount of schooling will ever develop the Mother Theresas of the world. Only education, that process that allows us to understand, to contemplate, to think, will allow us to really function and move forward as a society. The educated realize that we are common in our humanity but not our ideas. Education allows us as individuals to negotiate, to compromise, to work how the different people of the world will live together. It lets us know that we shouldn’t force people into thinking in one way, into believing that one set of ideas or values is right. It is something that schooling fails to accomplish.

If we allow ourselves to exist in a world of tin soldiers, where each individual is taught to think in the same way, to learn the same things, to ‘study hard and get a good job’ (a job, mind you, in which you work promoting the desires of another person), then schooling may be the way to go.

But for the rest of us, who long for a world of understanding and compassion, for progress and liberty, for knowledge that leads to a deeper understanding of oneself and for the bettering of the human race, then it is education rather than schooling which we seek.

Talk to people who are passionate about what they do. Criticize. Question. Ponder. Observe things. Make mistakes. Judge what is right and what is wrong. 

In the words of Margaret Mead “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

We are not cattle but men and women with minds to think and hearts to feel. Let us use the power in our minds to strive towards a bettering of our education and ultimately, to the bettering of all humanity.

Education vs Schooling

" I have never let my schooling get in the way of my education" - Mark Twain

It seems to me that sometimes, when a majority of us are placed in a highly academic, highly successful schooling environment such as selective schooling environment like Melbourne High School, we may end up overly focused on our schooling to the detriment of our education. Especially with the Secondary Education system which is currently in place, there seems to exist a vast discrepancy between the schooling we get from our formal educational institutions, and the education - the knowledge, skills, wisdom, philosophy, customs, values, etc. - that serve us for the rest of our lives. How many times have you heard someone complain (or it may have been yourself complaining) that the application of the information that they were studying in school would likely have absolutely no relevance to their future lives? That the only applicable use for this knowledge would be on the forthcoming test? There's a difference between the knowledge that is meaningful to us, that will serve us, and that will develop us as human beings, and the knowledge that we are obliged to learn as a part of an educational curriculum, and of which its only function is to demonstrate an individual's performance on an arbitrary test.

We obtain one form of education - a schooling - from our educational institutions. It would be safe to assume that the primary function (not by any means the only function) of a secondary school is to provide an environment in which students can assimilate a certain amount of certain information that they will later be tested on, and that eventually contribute an arbitrary measure of a student's intelligence 'ranking'. In plainer English, our schools are there to teach us information so that we can essentially regurgitate it on our VCE examinations. It is on the basis of a student's ability and performance on a test that the formal educational system seems to believe is a measure of an individual's level of education, but I would argue that our education extends far beyond a simple ATAR ranking.

Whilst many people may consider the idea of education to be synonymous to our schooling, I'd like to suggest that they are distinctly different entities. The majority of the coursework that we learn, whilst it may have some application in our non-schooling lives, is essentially just that - coursework. Somebody, or a group of people, high up in a particular facet of the government's education sector, wrote up a study design dictating the content that students would be tested on, and this is the information that schools will be teaching. An individual's education isn't simply the learning of 'facts', and then mindlessly presenting them on a test. Our education isn't simply the passive acceptance of a secondary schooling system that spoon-feeds us topics before expecting us to write out the 'right' answers - answers which are dictated as 'right' by writers of examinations/ textbooks.

The way I personally (and currently) would define education - and I by no means am any authority on the subject - is "the accumulated meaningful information and knowledge that an individual can employ to enhance their experience of, ability to deal with, understanding and appreciation of life and everything within it." Obtaining an education, to me, isn't about memorizing 'facts' - it's about challenging yourself to increase your knowledge of the world and about struggling to obtain the tools that will deepen our experience of the human condition and of society. Does that mean that our schooling and education don't overlap? Absolutely not - an individual's schooling can often be one of the most important things they ever have, but your schooling is only a part of your education. Education is about holistically building your mind, building your life, and building yourself. It's about learning to think for oneself, to contemplate ideas critically and to be able to come to meaningful conclusions about the issues we face in life, and to be able to have the knowledge to do so.

The elements which constitutes a person's education will be personal and individual, because each of our lives are personal and individual. I would suggest that there is no 'one-size-fits-all education', because the things that will enhance and better our existence will differ from person to person. Despite this, however, there may be some guidelines towards obtaining a fuller education which many may find of use.

Firstly, it is important to take one's life, and one's education seriously. Is knowledge and the development of your mind/ body/ self something that is a major part of your life? And secondly, are you willing to put in the work to obtain an education? If you interested and committed to something, then you will achieve it.
Education is self-development - the knowledge, ideas, concepts, etc. that we can learn and apply to situations (whether real or hypothetical) all aid in developing and improving us as human beings. My suggestion would be to learn as much as we can from the sources around us, with a focus on the things that the schooling system mightn't necessarily focus on - finance, sociology, literature, politics, philosophy, arts. Perhaps we can read about the lives of remarkable people - their biographies and autobiographies, and learn about them. Perhaps we can learn about global issues in a manner that allows us to make our own informed opinion on them, rather than us simply accepting the opinions that the media expresses to us. Maybe we can experience literature and arts, and allow ourselves to digest and think what we may about the works. We could read books on how other people have made their fortunes, we could learn about why politicians are really acting in certain ways, we could learn about philosophies and new ways of appreciating the world - the list is endless, and we are only limited by ourselves and what we want.

Schooling is undoubtedly an important aspect of our lives, but it is conceivable that for each student, there is an education that is out there which may ultimately be more valuable than the schooling we get. Lets expand ourselves and learn the things that will allow us to make the best decisions in life. In many cases, the 'facts' learnt in secondary schooling remain valuable up until that last test or exam, but an education will remain valuable until the day we die.

Living by Design

"...For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow only a vision
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope..." - 'Salutation to the Dawn', Kalidasa


I heard someone saying once that 'most people walk though life in a walking daze', and upon thinking about it, that particular idea struck me as very interesting. How much control do we actually exhibit over our own lives? Are we doing the things that we really want to do? Or are we just walking about conforming to the rules, regulations and standards which society places upon us?


There are two ways that we learn in this world - through first hand experience, and socially. In other words, we learn from observing the effects of the things we do ourselves or we learn from other people, and from what they tell us about their own experiences. First hand experience is, well, first hand. Maybe you're trying out something new for the first time, and after observing the effects of one of your actions, you've realized that something horrible has happened. For example, this child will have learnt first hand that it would probably be a good idea to read the manual before building your new IKEA furniture. (Image from here)

First-hand knowledge is how all of us first learn about the world. When you were young, you might have looked at the flame on the stove, decided it'd be fun to touch, and then somehow or other, burn yourself. Thus, from the conclusions you've made about your own experiences in life, you would have (hopefully) learnt that flames can burn. Obviously our ability to learn from our own experiences can extend a great deal further in complexity than learning about fire; this is a nice example.

The thing is, although we all have an amazing ability to learn from our own experiences, one of the major strengths of us as human beings is our ability to learn from each other's experiences -e.g. socially. Have you ever shot yourself in the face? I'll go out on a limb and say that if you're reading this right now, the chances are that you haven't. But despite never having shot yourself in the face, I'd imagine that if I asked you what would happen if you theoretically did, then you would respond suggesting that shooting oneself in the face would very likely lead to death, or permanent tissue damage to your face, among other things. But how do you know this? Most of us personally haven't pulled the trigger on ourselves (on a serious note, if you are thinking about doing it and need help, call 13 11 14) but we know that if we did, it would likely hurt us. I'd make the assumption that we probably learnt this fact from other people - the newspaper report on how a gangland shooting leaves 15 dead/ your teachers telling you never to touch a gun, for it could hurt you, etc. 

How do we know what will happen to us when we drop off a 15-storey building? Have you personally tried it? If I were to tell you that I jumped off a 15-storey building this morning in order to get to the train on time, and I survived just fine, would you believe me? The answer would most likely be no. Even though you mightn't have had the first-hand experience of jumping off a building, you've almost certainly learnt from society and the people around you that it would most likely be against your best interests to do so. We might have attended a physics class, where the teacher tells you that if you were to jump off a building, the gravitational pull of the earth will cause you to accelerate towards the ground, etc., and that depending on how you land, you would most likely damage your body in different ways. And how would your physics teacher know that? Maybe he or she learnt that from their science teacher back in high school, where they themselves got that knowledge off someone else. Nearly all of us 'know' things that we haven't actually gone and tested or proved ourselves. This sort of knowledge is knowledge that we get socially.

So after reading my block of text, you may likely be wondering where this is going. Well, it's not only the information about the world that we get socially/first hand, but also the information about ourselves, and how we are supposed to act. We learn socially about how we are expected to carry ourselves, what we are expected to do, what norms we are expected to follow, and so on and so forth from other people. Think of the last time you did something slightly awkward or out of place around other people? Did you see their looks of disgust on their face? On an even more general scale, think about the clothes you wear, the types of food you eat, the bands that you think are 'cool'. How do you know what is in style? How do you know what is considered trendy? A great deal of our concept of how we think we should live our lives is influenced by social conditioning.

In this day and age we are constantly bombarded by external influences which give us another person's (or group of people's) idea of how we should behave and act. The radio bombards us with music whose content is about anything ranging from ballads on how true love is the only thing that matters, to hit singles about having one-night-stands in the middle of a nightclub. We turn on the television, and many Hollywood films reinforce the idea that the 'good guys' always win and turn out alright, whilst the 'bad guys' always get thrown in jail or end up dying. Disney films often paint an idyllic picture of true love, and express the idea of 'living happily ever after'. We see billboards telling us which brand of beer or model of car will give you the most success with women, our magazines tell us what colour scheme of design of our clothes are 'in', and the advertisements during TV shows tell us what we should buy in order to look cool or please our friends. Think about fashion, and how fashion always changes - my idea of why fashion changes (and I may likely be wrong) is that designers/people want to be different, and try things that haven't been done before. There's nothing wrong with that - and how maybe we've bought a piece of clothing or an accessory just because it was the 'style' right now. How did we know what was in style? Other people. 

We are often conditioned by society to act in certain ways, and believe certain things. iPods are cool. Slurping soup is bad. We shouldn't put our arms on the table. We should get a decent job. Marry. Have children. Buy a new house. Save up for retirement. Buy a new phone. Get life insurance. Get health insurance, and so on and so on.

Am I saying that social conditioning, and learning from other people is bad? Not at all. One of the main reasons that we as human beings are able to achieve all the things that we can is because of our ability to learn socially. If a caveman tells his fellow tribesmen that one type of berry is poisonous to eat, then the rest of his tribe learns that from him, and they are more likely to survive and live longer. We would not be able to function effectively in our society today without learning socially and from other people. But have you heard the old adage that you can't believe everything you hear? Although the world has a lot of knowledge to tell us, and other people's knowledge and opinions can strongly influence us, are we always going to look to other people to tell us what to do and how to think?

I offer the suggestion that it may be an idea to not look to other people to tell us what to think and do. Look at the world though your own set of eyes. Decide for yourself how you want to act, what you think, and what you do. Trust in your ability to judge life's challenges. When you make a decision, do you decide on something because you want it for you, and because the choice will make you happy, or do you do it to please someone else, or because someone else told you it was a good idea? Why assume that absolutely everything that the media/Hollywood/people around you tell you is absolutely correct? We do not have to go through life in a walking daze. I encourage all of us to make decisions and act for ourselves, and for all of us to trust in our own judgement.

Take care,

Eric.

PS: This video offers a beautifully cynical view on marriage and relationships.