Is schooling the same as education?
When we talk about education we first must distinguish between education in general and schooling. The terms education and schooling are often used interchangeably. This causes difficulty in understanding the role, aim and purpose of education and places the wrong emphasis on schooling.
Our view of education extends beyond the confines of formal education in its current practiced form and embraces a far more expansive vision of the young learner as a whole human being which includes the richness and diversity of human talent and interests in a continuous and evolving process of discovery and understanding of oneself, the surrounding, the wider culture and of the natural world. Literacy, numeracy and various subject domains taught in schools are vital but constitute only part of the education process.
Clearly education of a child or young person does not start and end with formal education in school but schools definitely play a major role in the education of the learner considering that the majority of children today attend some sort of structured school for a substantial part of their formative life. There is also a multitude of cultural and societal constructs, influences and exchanges that contribute to how children think, feel, learn, socialize, acquire knowledge, draw meaning and develop their own values. To adequately address any subject or issue in the education domain we need to be aware of the strong links between social, emotional and cognitive aspects that determine how teaching is done and how learning occurs.