As educators, so much of our time in theory and practice is spent in the arena of “information”

Data and dates, content and curriculum, facts and figures, metrics and measurables

We are told we now live in the “Information Age” where we can access these things in the half blink of an eye (and AI can process information faster than that)

This information is quantifiable

But look closer at “information’s” Latin bones: informare — “to give form to, to shape, to fashion”—and you come to realize a deeper truth. The truth that information was never just data. It was never just metrics or figures.

It was always, at its root, about formation.

There is a vast difference between “schooling” and “education”

The one is awash in “information” while the other is about something else entirely

Somewhere along the way, we allowed “schooling” to be less and less about education

We came to believe the idea that knowledge exists "out there" and it’s the teacher's job is to transfer it "in here" — into the student's mind. The better the transfer, the better the education.

This is an efficient story. It fits spreadsheets. It generates data.

It's also, I'd argue, a story about something other than education.

It's a story about logistics, about what we do to students and not with them (or for them).

The problem, of course, is that real, genuine, transformative education is not about filling up minds

It's about forming persons

It's about who the student is becoming in the process.

The truth of this exists in the word itself as it comes to us from the Latin educare, “to lead out, to draw forth”

Which means the most important question in education isn't what are we teaching?

It's

Who are we forming?

The business of forming in human beings traits, dispositions, habits, and loves that lead them not to more answers, but to the deeper questions that give rise to the human experience

Because here is the truth:

Formation is not optional.

Formation is what schooling does, whether you intend it or not.

My doctoral mentor used to say it this way:

“Schooling always works. The question is: what work is it doing?”

When students sit in rows and are told to be quiet, they are being formed — toward compliance, toward passivity, toward the belief that knowledge belongs to authority figures and their job is to receive it.

When students are invited into genuine inquiry, given agency over their questions, and treated as thinkers rather than receptacles — they are being formed differently. Toward curiosity. Toward confidence. Toward the belief that their mind is a tool for engagement with the world, not storage for someone else's conclusions.

The question is never will our schools form students? The question is always into what?

If we take seriously the idea that education is formation — in-formation — then I think we have to work in at least three dimensions simultaneously.

1. Formation of the mind. Yes, this includes knowledge — but knowledge in service of thinking. The difference between a student who has memorized the causes of World War I and a student who can reason about the relationship between nationalism, fear, and conflict is not a difference in information. It's a difference in formation. One has data. The other has a mind that moves.

2. Formation of the heart. This one makes some folks nervous, as though the heart were only an organ in one’s body or something soft and mushy best left for Valentine’s Day and Nicholas Sparks’ novels. However, abundant research suggests that long before we are rational brains on sticks, we are emotional creatures feeling our way through life. That most of what we process intellectually happens first at the kardia or “gut” level. That our body actually communicates with our brains from our “feelings” or emotions first and then our brains translate that information into something we might call “data”. In other words, human beings are creatures whose minds are shaped not so much by our cognitive practices as by the practices of our hearts

3. Formation of identity. Perhaps the most profound work of education is helping young people answer the question: Who am I, and what am I for? This is not a task that can be outsourced to a career assessment tool or a college application essay prompt. It requires adults who know the students in their care, who ask good questions, who create the conditions for genuine self-discovery. It requires a school culture where the inner life of a student is treated as educationally relevant.

We spend an enormous amount of time in consideration of information but what I am inviting us to consider is that we have a responsibility to the human beings in our care to also expend an enormous amount of time in consideration of the in-formation of these authentic human beings

I'm not suggesting by any means that knowledge doesn't matter. It does. Literacy matters. Mathematical reasoning matters. Scientific thinking matters. History matters — perhaps now more than ever.

But these things matter because they are instruments of formation — because a literate person can encounter the full breadth of human experience, because a mathematical mind can hold complexity without collapsing it, because knowing history might — might — make us less likely to repeat it.

You see, the educative goal was never the information.

The goal was always the human being on the other side of it.

That's the work. That's always been the work.

We just let “information” subsume in-formation

My invitation to those of us who are educators first is to reclaim that work

The next time someone asks what your school is for — what it's really for — you don't have to reach for the mission statement.

You can say something simpler, and truer: We are in the business of forming human beings.

Not merely producing test scores nor delivering content or manufacturing college-ready outputs.

You are in the forming people work

People who know who they are, who care about the world they're entering, who have the courage to think and the character to act.

That is the truest work in the world.

Blessings on the journey

Scott

Real leadership doesn't happen in isolation

It happens in relationship

You became a school leader to make a difference—to create environments where students thrive, teachers grow, and communities flourish.

But the daily reality of leadership can feel overwhelming, isolating, and far from the vision that called you to this work.

What you don’t need is another strategy, seminar, or workshop

What you need is a rooted community of peers and expert guidance to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and joy

In April, we are going to do a deep dive on how to help school leaders avoid burnout and pursue flourishing