As soon as I began reading Ken Osborne’s chapter on education and schooling, the third paragraph caught my attention. He asks, “to what extent, if at all, does our schooling contribute to our education?” because he is saying that education is pushed aside to make room for other “mandates” (p. 21). And I thought of an example for this right away because in our EDST 401 class we just read an article this past week about policy making for schools. I believe policies is one of those “mandates” that pushes aside education because policies are most often developed by individuals distant from education. Because of this distance, these individuals do not necessarily always prioritize education in policy making which means the contribution schooling makes to our education can be cutback.

While I read on in the article, a thought kept popping up in my head: “life-long learner.” For example, the article says, “almost anything we experience in life can be educational … serious misfortune or undiluted triumph,” (p. 22) to me this means anything we go through in life can become a part of our education. That said, I believe our education does not just result from our schooling and like Osborne explains, personal experiences mean much more to us than school experiences. Therefore I think these experiences outside of school can be much more powerful for our education. In my opinion, this could be really advantageous for some people, especially those who do not enjoy schooling or do not do very well in school. In other words, these individuals, in a sense, still have hope to gain what they did not in school from other arenas in life.

I think what really struck me was the reason why children were initially sent to school: “public schooling was designed more as a tool of social policy than as an instrument of universal education” (p. 27). Being a teacher candidate, this actually really troubles me, as what motivates me to become a teacher is the goal of instilling the value of education in my students. As I have mentioned in other reflections, I was inspired to become a teacher because of my own teacher’s drive to instill the value of education in her students. Although the article says we have moved forward in the twentieth century, I feel there is a long way to still go in terms of the “educational potential of schooling in the twentieth century” (p. 31). I believe a lot of this depends on individual teachers and how they instruct their students. In other words, like the article explains, we need to value what knowledge students bring into the classroom and then expand it, more student reflection, content that students can connect to, and so on. This is definitely not something easy; however, I truly believe with the education future teachers (like us) are receiving, it is not an impossible feat. For example, assignments like our social studies project plan allow us to actively involve students and build on their interests. It is such projects that get us closer to actually contributing to a student’s ‘education.’