I entered first grade with the strange, for a seven-year old person, yet distinct notion that formal education would somehow fail to show me and my classmates how to live and how to fend for ourselves outside of set cultural parameters. “How could knowing how to spell serve me if I am lost in the woods?” I thought.

Thirty-eight years later, and over twenty-five of those fending for myself, have revealed both the truth and error of my original notions about education. This was confirmed, more recently, when I encountered a parent who expressed great concerns for two young sons and a daughter.

The children currently live with one parent, who insists on becoming the sole guardian and elected to home school, yet can barely meet the requirements of such an endeavor. The other parent fears not so much for their future acquired knowledge as for their ability to relate to peers in a healthy manner and exercise proper judgment in designing their own path. They are isolated and fear other children. They should read by now, but can barely spell their own names.

I used to know another family that had embraced a diligent home schooling regimen. A room in their house was designed to be the classroom and all four children spent a normal school day there, with one or the other parent providing a full day of lessons and discussions. These children were encouraged to participate in extra-curricular activities and free to choose to go to a conventional school instead, which they did at some point.

These different perspectives and circumstances provide much to consider. One type of learning experience is not better than the other. Both require balance and it appears that both require diligent focus on one central goal: the development of a well-rounded person who is curious about the world, interested in others and able to live with respect and dignity toward self and others. This is the true requirement of education.

I am certain that many schools provide a setting where this goal is the central mission. I have often heard myself and others blame the school system for not providing complete education, but now I believe that education is never complete. The only thing that can be complete is our willingness to continue learning and how readily we accept that what we learn is to be placed at the service of society as well as our own.

A diploma is not necessarily required in order to fulfill this goal. Perhaps our belief that good grades and diplomas are the goal is the most detrimental belief of all. It robs education of its wonder and it robs many of the desire to learn for the sake of learning. In truth, we need not learn so we can become someone with a specific career or title; we learn so that we may feed our minds with such diversity of knowledge and such passion for specific topics that we naturally develop the skills we will bring into the world and share with neighbors and colleagues. For we participate in the making and success and joy of a culture in truly great ways when we effortlessly do what we are good at doing.

Education teaches us more about the endless possibilities of the self than it teaches theories or processes. Education is a gift. It can be acquired in the classroom, as an apprentice, online, in books, at free public lectures, at seminars and workshops, at retreats and conferences. It does not necessarily require a diploma; it only requires for one to show up and for those who are able to encourage and support them to do so in the same way and with the same fervor they might apply to encouraging a career path.

In fact, education is the beginning of the career path. It is the threshold, the gate to the knowledge and wonder that open yet other doors and lead to new, irresistible thresholds or, at the very least, the conviction that there is something worthwhile for us to do.

Slainte!