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Schooling _`pD`7:aI^
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Education `2PLWo
It is commonly believed in United States that school is where people go to get an education. f0BdXsV# g
Nevertheless, it has been said that today children interrupt their education to go to school. The tx PIG
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distinction between schooling and education implied by this remark is important. &JtV'@>v
Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling. Education knows no bounds. It hjQ~uqbg
can take place anywhere, whether in the shower or in the job, whether in a kitchen or on a tractor. It = hN
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includes both the formal learning that takes place in schools and the whole universe of informal S*,rGCt'T
learning. The agents of education can range from a revered grandparent to the people debating wW/7F;54
politics on the radio, from a child to a distinguished scientist. Whereas schooling has a certain A4]s~Ur
predictability, education quite often produces surprises. A chance conversation with a stranger may Bdu&V*0g
lead a person to discover how little is known of other religions. People are engaged in education from RJ$7XCY%`*
infancy on. Education, then, is a very broad, inclusive term. It is a lifelong process, a process thatstarts long before the start of school, and one that should be an integral part of one’s entire life. E{n:J3_X^d
Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process, whose general pattern varies little from p+Y>F\r&w
one setting to the next. Throughout a country, children arrive at school at approximately the same j8sH#b7Z
time, take assigned seats, are taught by an adult, use similar textbooks, do homework, take exams, P(K>=O
and so on. The slices of reality that are to be learned, whether they are the alphabet or an wW%4
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understanding of the working of government, have usually been limited by the boundaries of the v%RP0 %%{s
subject being taught. For example, high school students know that there not likely to find out in their ? mhs$g>
classes the truth about political problems in their communities or what the newest filmmakers are P ClMQL#
experimenting with. There are definite conditions surrounding the formalized process of schooling.
