school vs. education

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."- Mark Twain

Now i believe in school, that children should be taught to read and write and things of that nature. These are necessities for children, in order for them to have the skills necessary to thrive in society and keep up w/ the world as it progresses. However, once children are older, lets say around the teens ( particularly those in their final years of high school and college) school has the ability to hinder education rather than aid it. The structure of classrooms, the rules, and the standards can all contribute to the loss of unique and individual thought.

Let me explain this idea a little. Lets take english for example, we learn to read when we're quite young. We learn the alphabet, write our name, form sentences, and eventually to read and write our thoughts down on paper. then we get a little older, we learn to write in a structured format, read books that are assigned to us ( at this age more for the sake of reading). The we get even older, ( lets say high school now) and we're forced to become even more structured with our writing, to follow strict formats and read books that are not only assigned to be read, but to dissect it and analyze it and write essays on it and to beat it to a pulp until a book we normally would have enjoyed makes us cringe.Personally, i can prove this. I used to love to read, i used to read all the time, and i honestly i could not read enough. Then i went to high school were i was required to read certain books. Now don't get me wrong, i'm learning to appreciate all the books i've read so far in high school, they were all required for a reason. But the point is all these assignments and standards made me not want to read as much as before, especially since my time was consumed by doing the assignments and not enjoying the book. They give us the assignments to help us understand and absorb the book, but really it just makes us lose interest in it at all.

I think europe has it right. children should be going to university/college much earlier than the age they do in the US. but sadly i live in the US. i do understand the necessity of school, but it does get in the way of education sometimes. i used to love to learn. but now i don't learn, i go to school. But this is just a build up for the days of late college (after the first two years) and the rest of my life, where you truly start to learn.