Educational success is much broader than academic achievement. The concept covers instruction (integration of academic knowledge), socialization (acquisition of knowledge, values, attitudes and behaviors useful for functioning in society) and qualification (preparation for professional integration). The realization of one’s full potential and the achievement of personal goals set by the student are also important dimensions of this concept.
Source: CREPAS (Centre régional de prévention de l’abandon scolaire, Canada).
We also need to break with the simplistic distinction between instruction that is essentially cognitive and education that is essentially affective, social or relational. All fundamental learning combines, on the one hand, concepts and knowledge and, on the other, a relationship with the world, a project, attitudes and values. It’s hard to say, for example, whether working on a relationship with knowledge, curiosity, the right to make mistakes or the ability to formulate hypotheses is part of instruction or education. Education is not only physical, musical, artistic, civic, moral and religious; it is also mathematical, linguistic, scientific, historical, geographical and epistemological. The double meaning of the concept of discipline should remind us that knowledge cannot be dissociated from a relationship with the world, with oneself and with others.
We would therefore do well not to revive a simplistic and outdated opposition between education and instruction, and to recognize that, if we persist in making a distinction, it does not correspond, and never has corresponded, to a strict division of tasks between school and family. From the outset, the school has defined itself as an educational enterprise, whether in the religious or civic sphere. From the outset, it has intervened in the same field as families, partly to prolong or redress their educational action. To limit schools to the transmission of knowledge is to ignore their mission of civilization, with all the ambiguity of this program: to liberate and normalize. In short, education and schooling are not mutually exclusive, and there’s no reason to limit academic success to the learning processes most traditionally associated with the idea of instruction.
Philippe Perrenoud, Professor, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, in Réussir à l’école : tout le curriculum, rien que le curriculum, 2002.