Learning is a natural state; a continuous and lifelong process. Learning can be intentional or unintentional, conscious or unconscious. To live is to learn.

In comparison, education is a system structure that seeks to frame learning in a manner that can assist the development of abilities, attitudes and behaviors that society deems valuable and necessary. Schooling is the educational system structure that we are most accustomed to. Schooling is an industrial-era system structure that operates with time as the constant and quality of learning as the variable.

The need for a sustainable world that we can rely upon for our continued existence requires education systems that can support learning as a natural state; that optimize human potential by helping people to learn what, when, why, and where they learn with whom. We need education systems that can operate with learning as the constant and time as the variable.

Schooling is the education system most familiar to our world. With schooling comes a range of embedded interpretations about what educations is, instead of what education could be. These interpretations have been formulated across many generations.

Our current education system of schools was developed as an organized response to industrial-era economics. Now, we need education system structures that can work in a new era. It is the meta interpetation of education, not the micro intepretation of schooling, that must be engaged to support learning for everyone.