The entire population is a constantly being educated. All social interactions provide opportunities for higher level thinking. Throughout the education continuum all people experience purposive adaptation to, shaping of, and selection of real-world environments relevant to one's life. Students reach a kind of expertise at which he or she becomes a reflective practitioner who is able to consciously use a certain set of skills. But expertise occurs at many levels.
People thus cycle through many times on the way to higher levels of expertise.
The number of years of schooling is not a good measure of how much education a person has. In society we all need to adapt, select, and shape environments at various times, but we do so in different ways. There is no one set of criteria for fitting in environments that can suit everyone. For example, given the same external circumstances, what may be the right thing to do for one person may not be the same for another. Having said this, consensus is achieved as individuals acknowledge, respect, and accept these differences.