In my final reflection for the semester of my doctoral studies (don’t ask me how it’s going), I considered what it meant to get an education. Over and again in this space, I’ve considered how there’s a big difference between schooling and education. Schooling is a set of processes characterized by the desire to show students a given set of ideas and materials. Education is the learning that this process is supposed to produce. But, as is the axiom, just because someone is teaching doesn’t mean another person is learning and, what’s more, just because someone is learning doesn’t mean they’re in a place where schooling is happening.
But it also begs the more onerous question: where did education fail us?
As human beings, we’re naturally curious. From birth, we soak in a plethora of sensory information about ourselves, other people, and our surroundings. For many of us, schooling serves as a deterrent to that rendition of education because we’re introduced to what society means by education: a set of explicit and implied knowledges this society wishes to impart through multiple methods to its youngest children. But, if education starts as a process of discovery and curiosity and constricts to an ever-narrowing list of items so the student can participate on multiple levels of society, then what did this schooling do to get this country – and the world – like this?
Specifically, where did education fail us?
Anti-intellectualism may not be enough to fully describe the breadth of our world’s problems. In this country, the line of thinking asks us to believe in systems – public, private, charter, whatever – that ultimately calcify the inequity our country professes to want to CONTINUE READING: Where Did Education Fail Us? | The Jose Vilson
