For years, one of the first conversations I had with students had nothing to do with the syllabus. Eventually we would discuss assignments, grading policies, classroom expectations, and course goals. But before any of that, I would ask a different question: What is the difference between schooling and education? The question usually produced silence. Students could explain school. They understood grades, attendance policies, credits, transcripts, and graduation requirements. Many had spent years becoming highly skilled at navigating those systems. Education, however, was much harder for them to define. At first, I found that surprising. I no longer do.
Many students arrive at school already viewing it as a series of boxes to check. Complete the assignment. Pass the test. Earn the credit. Graduate. Move on. What strikes me is that many of them are responding rationally to the educational experiences they have had. After teaching in public schools for more than a decade, teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and facilitating professional development with educators across the country, I have heard a version of the same observation countless times. “I got an A, but I didn’t really learn anything.”
I have heard it from ninth graders slumped over desks in June waiting for summer vacation. I have heard it from high-achieving seniors carrying transcripts full of honors courses. I have heard it from adults reflecting on graduate school experiences years after they occurred. The details change. The observation remains remarkably consistent.
You Can Do Well in School and Not Get Educated
People are often successful at school while remaining uncertain about whether they have been educated. That tension matters because schooling and education are not the same thing. Schooling is a socialization process. It teaches people how institutions operate. It teaches them how to navigate systems, follow procedures, manage deadlines, and respond to authority. It communicates expectations and values. Every society does this in some form.
The problem emerges when we begin confusing that process with education itself. In too many classrooms, students learn that success is primarily about compliance. They learn how to identify what the teacher wants, produce the expected response, and move efficiently through the system. They learn how to accumulate points, satisfy requirements, and avoid mistakes. Over time, this shapes more than academic behavior. It shapes a way of relating to knowledge.
The Commodification of Learning
Instead of asking what something means, students learn to ask what something is worth. How many points is this assignment? Will this be on the test? Do I need to know this? Can I get extra credit? These questions are not evidence of laziness. They are evidence of socialization. Students are learning the lessons the system is teaching. The more I reflected on this pattern, the more I realized that it extends beyond schools. We live in a society that increasingly encourages people to understand the world through transactions. Education is discussed in terms of earning potential. Relationships are evaluated according to utility. Success is measured through productivity. Human beings are encouraged to think of themselves as investments, assets, consumers, and units of economic value.
Schools often mirror these assumptions. Knowledge becomes valuable because it produces grades. Grades become valuable because they produce credentials. Credentials become valuable because they produce employment. Everything acquires exchange value. Something important gets lost in the process. Questions of meaning. Questions of responsibility. Questions of purpose. Questions of truth. This is where Black Studies offers an important intervention.
One of the most important lessons I learned through Africana Studies was that education is not simply about acquiring information. It is about developing consciousness. It is about learning how to interpret the world and our relationship to it. Carter G. Woodson understood that education shapes how people understand themselves and their communities. W.E.B. Du Bois challenged historical narratives that distorted reality in service of power. Asa Hilliard pushed educators to distinguish between performance and genuine understanding. Jacob Carruthers asked us to think more deeply about knowledge, culture, and human development.
What unites these thinkers is a recognition that education is fundamentally concerned with interpretation.
How do we know what we know? Whose perspectives shape what is taught? What assumptions are hidden beneath common sense? What responsibilities emerge from knowledge?
These questions move us beyond compliance and toward consciousness. They also reveal the limitations of a system that often rewards performance over understanding. A student can comply without thinking. A student can perform without understanding. A student can earn high grades without developing historical consciousness. A student can become highly successful within institutions without ever examining the assumptions those institutions rest upon.
This reality becomes particularly important when we consider what Dr. Bettina Love describes as spirit murder. Many students encounter environments that narrow curiosity before they are ever given meaningful opportunities to engage in inquiry. They learn to manage expectations rather than explore ideas. They learn to survive schooling rather than experience education. What often appears as disengagement may be something else entirely. It may be students recognizing a disconnect between learning and meaning. A disconnect between compliance and understanding. A disconnect between schooling and education.
Education should do more than prepare students for employment. It should do more than produce credentials. It should do more than help people navigate existing systems. Education should help people understand themselves, understand others, and understand the forces shaping the world around them. It should cultivate historical consciousness, critical thinking, discernment, and responsibility. Most importantly, it should help people develop the capacity to ask questions that cannot be reduced to transactions.
What is true? What is just? What do I owe others? What kind of society am I helping to create? Those are educational questions. And if students can move through twelve years of schooling without regularly encountering them, then perhaps the problem is not that students have lost interest in learning. Perhaps the problem is that we have spent too much time confusing schooling with education.
