When I was a boy, a teacher whom I revered introduced me to a simple idea—the difference between schooling and education. In the former, the purpose is to have the student do what the school wants and, in particular, hit all the notes in the curriculum. In the latter, the purpose is to teach the student how to think independently, ready to defend, or change, his or her opinion based on criticism and feedback. This difference between schooling and education became, over time, a bedrock of my view about my life and life as a whole.

Now I am a middle-aged man with adolescent kids and every responsibility I am supposed to have at this stage of my life, and accountable for the successes and failures I have lived thus far. And I look at the world we have run, the one we will pass on to our children, and I wonder aloud if we have been schooled or have been educated in our leadership of the world in which we live. Have we just followed the curriculum and labeled it "Life," rather than processed learning into meaning and engaged in living deeply and consciously? More succinctly, have we surrendered our independence of thought about life and living to an archetype, a false absolute, of what our lives should look like?

As I say, I am middle-aged. Yet I am also a homeowner and I represent a huge swathe of homeowners. And there, in my home, I find I take the time, create the time, to think about my life and its purpose. It is in my home that I am proactive about my identity, whereas outside of it, the pressures ask of me to be more reactive and driven toward outcome and performance.

And so my home is a place of education, not schooling. It is a place I have created that allows me to be the father to my children, where we can discuss and talk with a goal being that decisions will come from that free exchange somewhere down the road. It is a place to process and engage with the reality of my life, surrounded by an environment that sustains and supports that, and without it, every day would be just more "do" without any more "be." My home is a place of independent thought and deed: a place of life education, a container of my truth and where, if anywhere, I find peace of mind.

So I will say it: Home is not school. Home is education.

[Image: Andrew Olney | Digitalvision | Thinkstock]