A lot of education is what we might call preprofessional. It prepares you for a profession, accounting or computer science. But those are not the only aspects of education. A serious education also has a component of trying tothink about where we want to go. And i think when you mention flourishing and a life well lived, there is a component of education involved with both values.
What do crossing rivers and investing in stocks have in common? Real education is seeing the connection between things that seem very different. EconTalk's host Russ Roberts talks about education with Alex Aragona of the podcast, The Curious Task. Roberts argues that the ability to apply insights from one area to another with which we're unfamiliar is one of the ways that real education differs from the mere accumulation of knowledge. And when we combine insights from two areas into something completely new, we can not only navigate rivers and stock markets, but also scale the heights of the human experience.