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Schooling T}'*Gry
and K9RRY,JB
Education sw(|EZ7F
It is commonly believed in United States that school is where people go to get an education. V1,4M _Z
Nevertheless, it has been said that today children interrupt their education to go to school. The a8y*Jz-E
distinction between schooling and education implied by this remark is important. IV`+B<3
Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling. Education knows no bounds. It 9PR?'X;4
can take place anywhere, whether in the shower or in the job, whether in a kitchen or on a tractor. It ,F|49i.K
includes both the formal learning that takes place in schools and the whole universe of informal 6I5LZ^/ G9
learning. The agents of education can range from a revered grandparent to the people debating .T~Oc'wGo
politics on the radio, from a child to a distinguished scientist. Whereas schooling has a certain :{#w-oC>6P
predictability, education quite often produces surprises. A chance conversation with a stranger may 7x$VH5jie#
lead a person to discover how little is known of other religions. People are engaged in education from .Jc<Gg
infancy on. Education, then, is a very broad, inclusive term. It is a lifelong process, a process thatstarts long before the start of school, and one that should be an integral part of one’s entire life. R36A_
Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process, whose general pattern varies little from O
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one setting to the next. Throughout a country, children arrive at school at approximately the same |s !7U
time, take assigned seats, are taught by an adult, use similar textbooks, do homework, take exams, 7t %
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and so on. The slices of reality that are to be learned, whether they are the alphabet or an Y) C!N$=@Q
understanding of the working of government, have usually been limited by the boundaries of the ~5~Cpu2v7
subject being taught. For example, high school students know that there not likely to find out in their ~2 J!I
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classes the truth about political problems in their communities or what the newest filmmakers are K@!Gs'Op
experimenting with. There are definite conditions surrounding the formalized process of schooling.
