FORMAL EDUCATION: JUST THE BEGINING

Formal schooling may give us a good basis of knowledge, but true learning is

something that is aquired by simply living life. This type of learning is something that

school can simply not give you. In her essay Looking Inward: The Impact Of Race,

Ethnicity, Gender, And Social Class Background On Teaching Sociocultural Theory In

Eduction, Allison Skerrett observes a similar concept. Using her own experiences she

states that her high school "had insufficient resources to provide the intensive

interventions needed to help students develop their academic skills" (189). As Skerrett

points out, schools do not have proper resources to teach us about reality. But according

to Jon Spayde in his essay Learning In The Key of Life, "School helps, but it's just the

beginning of the engagement between ideas and reality" (68). Jon Spayde wrote his

essay to illustrate the fact that life experience based learning is required in life. He also

says that personal attitude is just as important. Both authors agree that formal schooling,

although necessary, is not all that is required to have a good education, yet each have a

different slightly perspective on this idea.

Alisson Skerrett and Jon Spayde are two people from very different backgrounds.

Skerrett is a black woman of Afro-Caribbean descent who grew up in a urban community

in the Caribbean inhabited by a mostly black and Hispanic population. As stated earlier,

Skerrett believed that her formal education growing up as a minority in the urban

community didn't provide her with enough academic tools to be well rounded

intellectually. This meant that she was forced to take education into her own hands and

learn by her life experiences. She would eventually come to American to expand her

knowledge and use her personal experiences as a minority to her benefit when it came to
her teaching practices. She used more of the "in the streets" methods in the classroom

using conversation about "race, ethnic, gender and social glass discrimination" (Skerrett,

189) as the focal point of discussion, along with some texts that focused on those topics.

I believe she wanted to educate her students they way she would have liked to have been

educated.

Jon Spayde, on the other hand, grew up as a white male in the midwest. He

focused his essay on the way we learn every day by just experiencing life. Spayde

explains that in order to have a well balanced education, we need to gain knowledge from

not only from formal schooling but from self learning as well. "The whole world is a

classroom" (69), he states and goes on to say, "An education [is] carpentered out of the

best combinations we can make of school, salon, reading, online exploration, walking in

the streets, walking in the woods, museums, poetry classes at the Y, and friendship" (69).

All these things together can give a person a grasp on real world ideas. Spayde also

believes that a person needs to open themselves up to these experiences and take

something from them to learn.

Spayde also says that a persons attitude can contribute to a person's success. He

gives us an antedote in his essay to illustrate this by comparing two people, one a college

grad drop-out who pulls in about $14,000 a year and a single mom high school drop-out

bringing in about $18,000. It's all about an individual's attitude and motivation and the

effort they put into it. You can go to school for twenty years, and take endless classes,

but if you don't motivate yourself to do anything with that education, you're not going to

get anything out of it.

Skerrett shows us a good example this when she states that she "experienced
considerable amount of anxiety that being a female, young, and of a working-class

background would negatively influence students' perceptions of [her] ability to teach the

course" (Skerrett, 193). I think she let her racial and even phsycial identity allow her to

become paranoid when she was in front of the class. If she got unfavorable evaluations

from students, it would affect her negatively and make her more uncomfortable as a

teacher. This changed, though as the class went on and she explains that she had become

more comfortable as her role as teacher. She became aware that she needed to overcome

this struggle and used her previous teaching experiences to do this.

In conclusion, no matter what your background is, formal education can be an

important step in gaining knowledge, but personal experience is just as important in this

ever changing society. Formal schools don't have all the sufficient resources to teach us

everything needed. In additions one's attitutude is just as important role in the success of

an individual. In my opinion, in our current times more than ever, success of a person

depends on the individual more than what can be taught in schools. Spayde closes his

essay saying that "There are as many ways to become an educated American as there are

Americans." I believe this is true especially in our country, where the oportunities are

endless.