EDUCATION VERSUS SCHOOLING

  According to history, there has been this unending controversy for years between these two close relatives, "education and schooling" ever since the times communities started developing. Education is really what everyone needs. It is compulsorily important and should be an indispensable part of the life of anyone who wants to continue on the path of learning even after we might have left the walls of the institution.

Webster defines education as "knowledge and development resulting from an instructive process" but Webster’s dictionary defines schooling as "the process of being taught, such as in a school."

Education improved as the communities developed but no one knows when schooling began. Education is the process of facilitating learning or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits. Educational methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training and directed research. Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators but learners may also educate themselves.

Education could be both formal or informal. It helps one to be focused and also maximize those inherent abilities by looking and going beyond those walls where you might have been placed. So permit me to ask us this question. "Has your schooling gotten in the way of Education?" as posed by Mark Twain. The aim of this discussion is actually for us to start a movement that would totally transform our view about learning and also to turn people into empowered, self-motivated learners!

Even though schooling is frequently misidentified as education, there is much difference between education and schooling. The term "education" encompasses basically two meanings. They are formal and informal ways of gaining knowledge while schooling stands for the initial and secondary stage of the formal education system that takes place in school. The most striking thing concerning education which I think we should be most concerned about is the knowledge gained. It develops in us a perspective of looking at life. It helps us build opinions and have points of view on things in life, thereby making us to be so creative and innovative in our different areas of expertise.

People often debate over the subject of whether education is the only thing that gives knowledge. Some say education is the process of gaining information about the surrounding world while knowledge is something very different. They are right but then, information cannot be converted into knowledge without education. Education makes us capable of interpreting things, among other things. It is not just about lessons in textbooks. It is about the lessons of life. A great book is only useful if it can be interpreted into our own realities or those of others.How then can we interpret when we have not really acquired the skill of interpretation through this means called "education."

Let's look at the future of education. Many countries are now drastically changing the way they educate their citizens. The world is changing at an ever quickening rate, which means that a lot of knowledge become obsolete and inaccurate more quickly. The emphasis is therefore shifting to teaching the skills of learning: to picking up new knowledge quickly and in as agile a way as possible. Certain schools have even begun to move away from the regular subject-focused curricula, introducing instead, developments like phenomenon-based learning, where students study concepts like climate change instead. Francis Schaeffer said, "I had been to school. In fact, I had more schooling than most people in the world and more than many of my peers in the United States. I had put in my time in class. But I had not been educated." While “school” denotes a building, “education” means the formation of a life.

Note that education is comprehensive. It deals with both the gaining of knowledge and the development of character – virtue. And the combination of virtue and knowledge leads to wisdom. To be successful in life, there has to be a balance between schooling and education. Education matters. Whatever you do after graduation, wherever you live, you will never be far removed from this cornerstone of our society. By denotation, a lot of persons and sources would assert that schooling equals education. But they have different connotations for each of us, and it’s a healthy exercise to explore those.

Finally, from my own part, I would say that schooling stands for the formal education system that take place in school while the term "education" includes a number of different sources of knowledge, both formal and informal. So what is your take on this? Thanks for reading through to the end. Please share your thoughts.


Taught by EDOBOR Faith