Detracking, heterogeneous grouping, weighted grades – there are so many disputed topics in today’s education about how best to prepare our youth for the world. Should we allow students more freedom in their education to foster creativity, or keep them on a rigid schedule that will teach them order and responsibility? It may seem as though there couldn’t be more disagreement over education in modern society, but in reality, almost everyone in the United States share a common general idea as to the basic definition of education. Just as how no news network in America is truly liberal when compared with the media of Europe, our definition of education here in the United States has fallen into a deeply-grooved track that no one dares stray far from. But wherever in the world you are, it cannot be denied that the purpose of education is to prepare one to live a full and productive life.

Only last century, the values and work experience a child learned in their home was considered far more valuable than anything they could be taught in a classroom. This is because, in those days, these general “life experiences” were essential to one’s performance on the family farm, for example. The idea of a “Renaissance Education” in which children learned about literature and art and languages seemed (and in truth, was) unnecessary for a child living in 1900. The conflict arose when Western society moved from an agriculturally-based economy to an industrial one. The education of old no longer served its purpose – and thus had to change.

Yet even jumping forward to the modern education system, the general purpose of education has remained fairly similar. The government, now in strict control of education in the United States, uses it to prepare people to better function in today’s economy. While not completely true to the definition of education given above, it is the same destination that was given in 1900 – learning the skills of farming and how to deal with life on your own taught children in those days how to function in yesterday’s economy.

Unfortunately, the pendulum of popular demand has been swinging towards a rigid, structured education system for so long, we are now at the point where education has become almost as consumed by bureaucratic tendencies as the government that regulates it. Similarly, the addendum of “in today’s economy” to my definition of education has begun to overshadow the original definition itself, to the point where schools are focused more on keeping America’s workers competitive in the global market than giving them a “full and productive” life. Although this gives the United States the richest economy in the world, there is no telling the social and mental impacts this has on the general population. There is now an important aspect of education that is being ignored in the America – the lessons learned and experiences gained outside of the air-conditioned, fluorescently-lit, terribly-tiled classrooms.

It was just recently that I’ve begun to learn the importance of this extracurricular, non-“educational” education. We see those who have missed out on it all the time, stereotyped in movies: the nerd, obsessed with learning and studying, unable to function in the social environment that is life after school. This vital segment of our education has been stripped out because of the government’s obsession with economics and politics, instead of our general health and well-being.

The 1985 film The Breakfast Club shows us an example of this alternative form of “life”-education. Each of the five main characters typifies a different form of personal philosophy that’s been taken too far – recklessness, studiousness, introvertedness, and so on. The experience that ensued was one that never could have occurred in the straight-edged, homogeneously-grouped classrooms so common in the Western world today. Although the slightly reckless, studious, and extroverted occurrence was something none of the characters may ever repeat again (indeed, they will likely never admit they had fun with the jock, the geek, or the ditz to anyone else), they all learned an incredible amount about acceptance and understanding in those few short hours of detention.

Similarly, the character of Tom Foster in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, had an eye-opening experience that he certainly never would have been taught in a school. The ordinarily law-abiding boy decides to get drunk one night, and for a few hours experiences a part of himself he’s never known. Indeed, he begins to understand the side of everyone else that he’d never appreciated. Whether or not Tom will ever get drunk again, or if he goes back to being the honest and obedient boy he’d always been, doesn’t matter. What’s important is that, on that one night, he learned more about life and acceptance than most schools could teach him in a year. Just a few weeks ago, I could never have accepted the validity or necessity of such an experience. But, as I now know, lessons such as this are the most important ones a person can learn.