What is Education?

What is Education?

What is the meaning of education?  Why are you a teacher?  What is education any way? What does it mean to educate another human being especially a child?  All these are important questions.  The word “educate” comes from the Latin ‘educere’, meaning “to lead out”, “to bring out”  To educate means to bring out of the child, the student, that sprit of learning and wonder, the desire to know, that thirsts for knowledge.

True education is the harmonious development of the physical, mental, moral and social faculties, the four dimensions of life.  The illiterate of 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.  The world may not be dividing into the weak and the strong or the successes and failures.  But it may be dividing into learners and non-learners.  Education is the cheapest, most read and most reliable path to economic advancement under present conditions.  If education is the door to economic, social, and personal advancement, then literacy-the ability to read-may very well be the key to that door and teachers stand as the gatekeepers to the doors.

Definitions of Education:

Webster defines education as the process of education or teaching to develop the knowledge, skill, or character of the student

1. Education is the process of bringing desirable change into the behavior of human beings.

2. It can also be defined as the process of imparting or acquiring knowledge and habits through instruction or study.

3. Sociologist Rodney Stark declares that, “education is the cheapest, most rapid, and most reliable path to economic advancement under present conditions.”

4. Education is the harmonious development of the physical, mental, moral (spiritual), and social faculties, the four dimensions of life, for a life of dedicated service.