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.