Education versus Learning

"Learning is when you discover what you don't know; education is the process of getting there."

I made that one up all by myself. Aren't you proud of me? On the serious side, learning is a key factor in you reaching where you would like to be. However, what most of us Americans have overly stressed is the education part. Here is an excerpt from a report I recently read:

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"Our nation's workforce is in jeopardy. Too many Americans have a constricted vision of what it means to be successful in school, in careers and in adult life. Educators, policy-makers and the public are TOO [emphasis mine] willing to define "success" as a four-year college degree and tend to concentrate most of our economic and social resources on that single goal." - from Lost in Transition: Building a Better Path from School to College and Career, Southern Regional Education Board, 2008. Click here for full report.

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What resonated with me was the comment of defining success as a four-year college degree. How many of us (yes I include myself) has done this? We automatically assume that everyone must go to college immediately after high school. We stress, "you need to get a good education to get a good job nowadays." Well, hold the phone. Just because one has a "good" education does not mean that anything has been learned.

When learning occurs along side education, now we got something to work with. Back to my opening quotation, learning is when you discover what you don't know. I wonder how many of you reading this post went through the process of education to discover that you did not learn anything - well, anything that prepared you for the "real world." Unfortunately that's an education that far too many individuals receive.

We've all heard about the low graduation rates, high drop-out rates and our (U.S.) declining position globally as far as education is concerned. Something needs to be done and done quickly or we will continue towards becoming a Second World education system. That's left for another discussion.

As an educator (or more appropriate, learning specialist), it is my duty and responsibility to insure that students that I work with are learning what they need to prepare for post-education whether that is from high school or college. For those of you who are true learning specialists - not in the titular sense - it is your responsibility as well. That means focusing on the whole needs of the student and not just those that will get them into college or to graduate from high school. Those are important but don't get me wrong. However, Steve may be a 4.0 student but he has no social skills to interact with potential co-workers; Janet is a favorite among her teachers but her problem solving skills are lacking.

What am I getting at here? For those of us who are in the profession of "learning" our students, make sure that we are equipping them when we have them in font of us. When they move on to the next learning experience, the seeds have been planted for them to continue learning.

Sound too simple I know. But I ask, how well have the complex answers worked? Let me leave you with another quotation, "its not what is poured into the student but that which is planted that matters."