What's the Difference Between "Schooling" and Education?

Essays on the Teaching of English
Raymond Stopper
Based on the Book, Teaching English, How To….

What’s the Difference between “Schooling” and Education?

Lloyd Alexander, the noted author of children’s books, once made the distinction between education and schooling. You spend a lifetime educating yourself, he said. Schooling is designed to help you learn to educate yourself.

We spend a lifetime becoming educated. We continually learn how to achieve our goals in different circumstances. We never finish learning how to learn, learning how to think, learning how to communicate and learning how to solve problems. And we never stop learning about people and life through our reading of literature.

“Schooling,” therefore, is a means to an end. Schooling helps us learn how to learn for a lifetime. Look at your own schooling. Did it prepare you for a lifetime of learning? Did your schooling teach you how to learn on your own? Was that the goal of your teachers' classes?