School gives you the freedom to explore different philosophies, religions, aspects of yourself, and subjects.

Steinberg frames schooling not primarily as vocational training but as a protected interval for intellectual and personal experimentation. The “freedom” he emphasizes is the permission—socially sanctioned time, access to mentors and peers, and exposure to ideas—to test worldviews (philosophies, religions) alongside academic subjects, and to discover one’s values and identity (“aspects of yourself”). Implicitly, the quote argues that education’s deepest payoff is breadth: learning how to think, compare frameworks, and form a self-directed life. It also suggests that this exploratory latitude can narrow after school, when economic and professional pressures make such wide-ranging inquiry harder to sustain.