Every woman man has two educations, one they’re taught by others and the other they teach themselves. Sadly, most folks don't teach themselves that much. They go through the structured schooling system and then stop at some point and that’s the end of their learning once they slot into a role in their soul-crushing desk slave job. So they end up not knowing that much about the wonders of this magic world but instead their role in a tiny sliver of commerce. Even if one has a Ph.D., they may not be educated because schooling is vocational instruction for employment via hive mind, groupthink, and established way of doing things while a real education is real authentic life practical and truthful knowledge learned. Hence education and schooling are two very different things. School is solely for employment and real-life education is about the ascendant course of life betterment and discovery. So, if an elder teaches you a practical trade that’s education, if an authority figure schools you a mainstream version of American history, that's schooling, if an elder teaches you how to be responsible with your finances and what they used to call balancing your checkbook, that's education, if an authority figure schools you in short-term memorization in whatever subject to pass a rubbish test which you’ll later forget all the answers about a week later, that's schooling. If an elder teaches you how to catch a fish or ride a horse, that’s education. If an authority figure schools you in sitting in a desk with some other robots in training and the more you conform the more stars you get up on the board, that’s schooling, if an elder teaches you the esoteric occult inner mysteries of the mind and how to practically use them, that’s education.
Even though there are some great teachers out there who deserve, praise, recognition, acknowledgment, and salaries 10x more than what they are, most schooling in modernity is rubbish. If you’re going through metal detectors and fearing for your well being every day, that’s tragic and adds to a destructive path breeding and environment where you end up in a minimum wage slave job, or barely able to read, or headed toward a life of crime, or destined for prison. However, even if you’re in a nice school district, it’s still latent path paint by numbers handed down from the board of education of the day. So many insightful young people are bored out of their minds in school because unless you have a very special teacher who transforms the material into something tangible, relevant, and practical, it’s dreadfully bland. And that’s with decent budgets into the arts and extracurriculars, let alone starving budgets. And to throw a wrench into the mainstream reality tunnel gears, one could say this has been intentional because corporate consumer capitalism doesn't need intelligent free thinking lucid conscious powerful individuals who are truly educated, they need obedient wage-slave consumers who have been schooled to a certain level.
In the old one-room schoolhouse days of the 1700s and 1800s hundreds they would teach children the 7 liberal arts of grammar logic and rhetoric. More on that in a future essay but the beauty of that system, which if followed, is that it would build a foundation to allow the child critical thinking, to then give them a toolset to them be able to continue teaching themselves. Give someone a fish is a single gift vs teaching them how to fish is a gift for a life. So there can be a beauty in something like homeschools if your parent does it out of a conscious knowing of some of these things I’ve briefly mentioned, not because they’re a dogmatic nut. More personal one on one schooling methods allow the new fresh mind inquisitive little person room + if given a healthy balance of extracurricular activities which allow for a social life, you are actually getting education mixed in amounts schooling. The process of unschooling is a beautiful example of this. Which is essentially allowing a child to learn practically, out in the world, not in classrooms, what they want to learn at their own pace. For the mind to develop and unfold on its own terms, instead of standardized testing terms. I know some excellent folks who homeschool and unschool with a proper balance of being non-nutters themselves and as a result, their children are much more vibrant and alive because they’ve gotten a mixture of enjoyable “unschooling” with practical real-world education so they are motivated strong readers studied in the arts, sciences, mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc…
If you are today an adult and eager to learn cool and interesting shit but didn’t really like high school, you already subconsciously know all these things. Mark Twain understood this as well and once said, “I never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Because he was an educated man who could see through the distractions and illusions of the machine. The machine that sends young minds into its gears and turns out square head hats holding minds inside boxes thinking that their trainers have been responsible, being taught to perfect activities, and master routines. That instead of growing up educated through practical experiences where you have been responsible for your actions, imposed your own disciplines, become well rounded for many outcomes, and learned to critically think.
And this is not even getting into the public vs private debate of social class let alone the grossness of student debt caused by getting a formal higher education thus making you more susceptible to needing to go work for the man to pay off your debts rather than pursue a more creative path. A real education doesn’t need to cost anything more than your time, your travel, and your ability to access the good aspects of the internet, the modern day library card.