Beyond education

I have talked about education as "the new buffalo" and considered decolonialization in education.  I don't disagree that eduction is important, but the assumption that education means university is bothering me.  I signed up yesterday for the Boys and Girls club mentoring program DreamCatchers to mentor northern kids to stay in school and to learn about options open for them. 

That sounds great, but as I filled in the form I was struck that one of the things I thought I could mentor on was around understanding university.  After being married to an eternal grad student and having parents in law who are proffs I understand the university system in a totally different way than when I was an undergrad.  I saw the rules in black and white.  There are so many shades.  There was so much work in just surviving university in a new town, working in new ways, needing to develop my own discipline.

I have a child that is not a likely candidate for university.  She is smart but school is hard for her.  For me university was a place to open up above the continued focus on spelling and learning in set ways.  Maybe it would be the same for her, but how do I walk the line to leave that open as an option, but not as the only one?  How do we support our youth more broadly in entering a system that is so heavily steeped in the colonial past?  In a system that is focused on getting people to fit in and that does not appreciating their differences?

The past few years I have been mentoring new canadians coming into the job market, people who are very well educated but have a hard time finding a job.  Just eduction has not been enough. I spend time helping these people understand how the systems work and how to fit themselves into it.  This helps these individuals, but does it ultimatly just support a system that doesn't accept people as they are or recognize that difference is a good thing?