What is a Student?

Dictionaries state the same thing for the words, pupil & student: “a learner who is enrolled in an educational institution.”  When I looked up “learner” the dictionary said “someone who learns”.  If you look up “learns”, it says, “…Gain knowledge or skills and commit to memory”. 

Okay, so a student/pupil is a person who learns and gains knowledge through memorization.  This left me feeling a little empty. While repetition and memorization are an obvious part of education, this definition does not sound encompassing enough. On further investigation I discovered that the word student used to be defined as one who studies something.  Study?  Well, “study” means to be a student.  This round robin episode did help me recall the definition of other words, like pedantic, meaning narrow focus on trivial aspects, and the word glib, a lack of intellectual depth.

USA Today reports that fourteen urban school districts have on-time graduation rates lower than 50%. The worst Detroit (21.7%), Baltimore (38.5%), New York (38.9%), Milwaukee (43.1%), Cleveland (43.8%). These cities have some of the strongest teachers unions. For those of us in suburbia, with good schools, this is amazing. Is this a form of discrimination?

What are you seeing?