Learning from Birth to Death
"The great aim of education is not knowledge but action."
(Herbert Spencer, English philosopher) For centuries, people have followed and looked up to those who are wise, who are knowledgeable. In many ways, owning great breadth of knowledge equates to owning a lot of wealth. “To know” is a fascinating concept that people have surrounded themselves with, but what exactly is “knowledge”? According to MacMillan Study Dictionary, “knowledge” is “what you know, or what is known about a particular subject” (2010). However, good knowledge does not only come from books we read or lectures we listen to, but it also requires us to apply to real life and transform them into action. Many students merely study textbooks without really understanding or making what they learn practical. The best way to learn is to act and to practice, which is a reason why education is valued so highly in society, for that it focuses on not just “to know” but “to act with what you know”. Education does not just take place in schools and institutions, but anywhere and anytime, from anyone. It is such an important part of mankind, that in every country, a lot amount of budget is left aside for planning and designing its own system. Interestingly, the teaching and learning system is different in every nation. In this paper, how learning is closely linked to social life, the history of education, opposite types of family education and schooling systems in different countries will be discussed. First, even though the concept of learning and knowing is universal, the methods and approaches taken differ depending on every culture. Even knowing how to behave among a group of people in a particular culture requires careful observation and practice. This type of knowledge cannot be grasped from books, but from day-to-day life from those around us. Getting to know about other cultures allow us to have wider range of knowledge, because they are different sets of “social rules,” and helps us to befriend people from dissimilar backgrounds. This is a type of education that affects our life greatly. Author Stephen Billet of Learning Throughout Working Life, for example, talks about how education affects our personal life and the social world. A social world is created by the way people act, and when new knowledge is learnt every day, creating various sparks between two people, the society evolves. According to Billet, "learning throughout working life, as in professional development, can be understood in terms of participation in work activities and conceptualized as a negotiated interdependence between the social and personal factors." We have different understandings of everything with the past, so what we learn will affect how we act. How we act will then influence the direction the community shifts towards. Knowledge, again, is not just what we read or learn from school; meanwhile, education can originate from everywhere. For examples, places like museums, libraries, and today, the World Wide Web, are all locations where knowledge can be exchanged and gained. One is therefore educated. Knowing what education means involves understanding ourselves and how it makes a difference in our social lives. Secondly, education systems in every country exist with different histories. Take Europe for example, their education has been greatly affected by their religious reasons. Education was made important through Fathers and religious thinkers who see the importance of teaching and passing on knowledge to the public. Hence, many schools in Europe are Catholic or Christian, where bible study is also part of their daily lessons. Schools in Japan also started due to religious reasons, although they built their institutions around temples and not churches. Nevertheless, the similarity can be seen between the European and Japanese education origins. In China, however, schools started differently. China started their education with their old