What is Education?

What is Education?

To really think about what education is, it is practically anything we view it to be. Whether it may be formal or informal schooling, such as learning about the way mobs are run from your uncle, Fat Tony or someone, education is all these things. Of course, growing up I tend to have had this notion that education only involved Math, English, Science, and History, and now as I reflect, I thought about how stupid I was to think that. I know now that education is, and always will be anything we view it to be. I have learned a great deal from my formal schooling, but the education I seem to treasure most are the experiences I learn in life. When I think about all the situations I have been through and having been able to learn something from it is just simply a wonderful thought. I like it best when James Spayde said that the whole world around us is like a big classroom in which we are always constantly learning. In addition, another saying that has also caught my attention was when Mike Rose said in his article, Lives on the Boundary, "Education is like one culture embracing another (107)." And through these statements, I have come to realize that though the classroom education is important, it seems that learning in your own environment, through experiences and trials, is the most priceless education of all. In the following paragraphs, I will explore the many ways in which education can be anything we view it to be in respect to bell hooks article, Keeping Close to Home: Class and Education, Mike Rose article, Lives on the Boundary, and Jon Spayde's article, Learning in the Key of Life.

In bell hooks article, she talks about an essential main point that seems to resonate through her whole article, that point being talks about assimilation. Looking through her eyes and seeing the process of assimilation through them, we can see how she views what education is. Before talking about this whole topic about assimilation, we first need to look at some facts that lead up to the topic at hand. When hooks was given the opportunity to learn at Stanford University, she took the opportunity to do so. The first problem she faced was with her parents. Hooks mother expressed to her that she did not want her to go so far away from home and that the colleges around there were just as good.