"Students are Learners in Search for Education"
Jos Eussen (2008)
Following the Dimensions of ESD and the key-positioning of youth, pupils and students should not be seen as objects in the process of schooling but as learners in search for education. Consequently, their learning enhanced by education is facilitated but not commanded by a system of schooling in place, the learning process projected as perpetually future oriented and ongoing.
Thereto it wsa proposed to envision ongoing learning pathways as a tread throughout the formal educational system embedded in society and underlined the importance to consequently differ between learning, education, schooling and the system (J. Eussen, 2004).
As the formal educational system is an assembly of formats of schooling, it is incoherent and disjointed, both during the various stages as well as in relation to future (working-)life, a structure throughout which the individual can stumble and get stuck, even fall out in between. Moreover, the stacked and pre-defined level, tempo and sequence of schooling, meant to accommodate an amorph mass, per definition does not match (the differing phases of) a youngsters’ personal development.