Reframing Perspectives: The Convergence of Learning and Education

The dictionaries ' definition of learning and education is that learning is through experience, study, or by being taught, but education is through the systematic receiving of instruction. Over time, I have come to see that education sometimes is the same as learning. This, however, is a view I have always taken. I haven 't always viewed them as the same thing. For many years, I would stubbornly fight education, even though I love and have always loved learning, when told to do something I would become stubborn and make assignments ten times harder than it should have been. This struggle in my life greatly influenced not only how I view education and learning but also my assumptions and expectations with them.

My stubbornness started during

I would do my required schoolwork, memorizing only the required elements so I could do well on the exams. Once done with my school for the day, and often when I was not done, I would research my interests to my heart 's content. The reading required of me always took me far longer than any I did for pleasure because I wasn 't looking to make it interesting. This might have gone on for a long time and I would have continued separating my education and not making it my own if I hadn 't had teachers who required me to start owning my education. They required me to choose my own topics, within their guidance, for research or writing. This was something I had never done, but it caused me to suddenly go from separating my education to embracing it wholeheartedly. This change came more out of necessity than out of real enjoyment, at first, because the only things I understood enough to talk about, were topics I had researched or read about outside school. There is a saying that if a student comes into class and only does the required work by listening and doing homework, then he will not keep any knowledge because he was never engaged in participating in the