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Education as Life Itself, review

Brie Stark's picture

I thought that the draft of the article "Education as Life Itself," co-written by Paul Grobstein and Alice Lesnick, was a surprisingly easy read for such a dense--and what seems to me to virtually have endless facets of view--concept.  I really enjoyed reading the concepts presented in the paper: they were clear and thorough.  They do stress the importance of biology in one section, and there I found myself wanting more information regarding scientific evidence encouraging this movement of education as life itself.  I would've loved to read a few more concrete, biological examples in order to expand my viewpoint on the subject.

Overall, the concept of education as life itself seems like one of those things that should've been common sense, but that has been driven into another realm by 'historical' methods of education created by society.  The education as life itself model seems to be incredibly successful because of the realism that it boasts: there really is no end to learning.  School is not the be-all end-all of education.  Every day is full of learning, and this is what the paper suggests.  However, I do see where this is held back: 'traditional' education stems back thousands of years, when the facilities and capabilities of the brain where not as well understood as they are today.  I believe, however, that even though these concepts of the brain were illusory to the ancient people, that their belief that school is the be-all end-all of education was still flawed.  I'm not entirely sure where this idea spawned from, so many years ago--it would interest me greatly to discover it.