When students like myself think “education”, what usually comes to mind is a vague impression of a college campus, maybe a classroom where a lecture is being given or studying textbooks in the library. Furthermore, we assume that being “smart” or “educated” is doing well on tests or getting a college degree, you know, like getting that gold star in school–studying academics in order to receive a rewarding result.
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Yet despite these stereotypes that we possess about education, learning continues to happen outside of school. How to ride a bike, or how to be a nice person (or how to get over your school-induced anxiety) are things that a person learns through life experience rather than lectures. The personal growth that we come experience can also be regarded as this “rewarding result”.
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The question is then, what is a modern day education?
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Is it the traditional image that individuals in mainstream society, like the current First Lady Michelle Obama, put forth? The image that many of us conjure up when we think of education? If so, then education seems to be a “college degree” track that marks education as solely synonymous with formal schooling (Obama).
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Or is it something entirely different? Is modern education more focused on the informal learning that writer Gerald Graff promotes? Do “street smarts [really] beat out book smarts…because they satisfy an intellectual thirst more thoroughly than school culture?” (Graff 267-8)? That is, has traditional education become less important in the face of interest based learning as Graff suggests?
“Neither,” I would like to say.
Education in modern world is not so black and white, nor it is not so one-sided.
While school is important and the lessons learned there are valuable, the view that education is solely academic neglects to acknowledge the impact and importance of informal life lessons. Likewise, although the learning done outside of school has gained recognition and are now commonly considered important emotional/social lessons for a person, there exists different forms of education, not better.
Instead, today’s education is a mixture of these two views, in essence, a reflection of the lives that real people have lived and continued to live. Formal schooling and informal life lessons, after all, are intertwined, one cannot be talked about without referencing the other.
“A reflection of whose lives?” You might ask. “And how are these two types of education intertwined?”
To answer these questions, examine the lives of students, who experience formal schooling during their attendance of either high school or college while undergoing a period of personal growth in the face of becoming independent, dealing with various relationships, and learning about themselves. The informal lessons that these students learn greatly impact the way that they approach their formal education, whether this be performance wise or how they think about/view the topics that are taught in a classroom environment.
The Lives of Students
Take for example how high school girls are affected by societal lessons about gender, because society teaches that girls are less intelligent and less capable than boys, their performance suffers. As author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead Sheryl Sandberg notes, “[w]hen girls are reminded of their gender before a math or science test…they perform worse” (653-4). Informal lessons, though in this case negative, impact how students function and how they think of themselves, in turn reflecting on their academic work.
Or, if we talk about viewpoints, the materials that are read outside of class (and therefore are not technically considered ‘educational’) often influence the opinions of students. From personal experience, reading and bringing in news about current events and then applying that newfound knowledge to discussions or lessons often helped with my understanding of the ‘textbook’ lessons.
But perhaps the most relevant example for college students like myself, would be the personal statement. An essay that young hopeful high school seniors have to write if they want to attend college. The essay itself about 500 words give or take that is supposed summarize all of a person’ s life lessons and personal growth while also demonstrating their academic ability to summarize/critically reflect on their experiences.
Hello, does that sound like an example of how informal life lessons and formal education can be intertwined or what?
Modern Education
Education equates to experience, and there are many different types of experiences that human persons undergo, thus it becomes coherent that different types of education must also exist. Furthermore, because human lives are defined by these experiences and how we as individuals react to them, ours lives are a collection of lessons and the reflection on those lessons.
The point is, modern education is giant mash-up of all the types of learning that a person experiences throughout their life, and it is important that we continue to see education this way. If we don’t, then we fail to see the full spectrum of our lives, the time that is spent in school and the time that’s not, which all combines to form who we are as individuals.