Today I came across this online book by Jeff White - The Spirit of Education

Jeff reflects on his own experience within the system and offers us many acute observations.

His own introduction reads;

What is education?

It’s a term we use every day to describe the process of putting 25 or 30 young souls into a cinder block room and filling their heads with what-all over the course of the first quarter of their lives. But is that education?

If it’s not, what is it? And what are its consequences?

The word “education” comes to us from the Latin educere, which means “to lead out” or “to draw out.” What we do in schools, when we attempt to add cumulative layers tochildren’s bank of knowledge, has little to do with this drawing out; one might go so far as to think that it is its antithesis. Education—true education—is not a process of pouring in from without, but of calling forth what is within. It’s not a process of memorization or socialization or instillation, it’s a process of nurturing, of allowing, of evoking.

It’s a process of bringing forth the person one is meant to be.

This, of course, is a lifelong project.

The Spirit of Education attempts to begin anew our conversations about this thing called education. It suggests that we start not with what students ought to know, but what humans are. It suggests that learning isn’t something that happens to children in specialized buildings at the hands of experts, but something that is hardwired into the human animal, an essential goad to our personal and collective evolution.

The Spirit of Education isn’t just about schools. Rather, it’s about learning. Deep learning. Real learning. It suggests that our primary job on the planet is learning: learning the depths of who we are, and learning how to realize (learning how to make real) the best that is within us.

To read Jeff's book online or order a copy go to http://www.spiritofeducation.com/

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