ed·u·ca·tion
/ˌejəˈkāSHən/
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Noun
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Synonyms
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For
most of us, education means going to a place called school where teachers
enrich us with their wisdom. Well, let’s consider what the real world has to do
with all of that. Do we really need to memorize stories of ancient cities and
dead political leaders? Do these things really enrich us? Or is it the lessons
we learn independently that compromise the greatest growing experience? I find
it interesting to see a famous person, who spent all his professional life
holding top level positions at major corporations, summarize the greatest of
his life’s experiences in a book detailing what he had learned at summer camps.
Does this not suggest that the realizations we come to while exploring our
world together with other people are the most meaningful?
According to
some learned people, the word "Education" has been derived from the
Latin term "Educatum" which means the act of teaching or training. A
group of educationists say that it has come from another Latin word "Educare"
which means "to bring up" or "to raise".
According
to a few others, the word "Education" has originated from another
Latin term "Educere" which means "to lead forth" or
"to come out". All these meanings indicate that education seeks to
nourish the good qualities in man and draw out the best in every individual.
Education seeks to develop the innate inner capacities of man.
By
educating an individual we attempt to give him some desirable knowledge,
understanding, skills, interests, attitudes and critical 'thinking. That is, he
acquires knowledge of history, geography, arithmetic, languages and sciences.
He
develops some understanding about the deeper things in life, the complex human
relations, and the cause and effect relationship and so on. He gets some skills
in writing, speaking, calculating, drawing, operating some equipment etc. He
develops some interests in and attitudes towards social work, democratic
living, co-operative management and so on.
As
an individual in the society, he has to think critically about various issues
in life and take decisions about them being free from bias and prejudices,
superstitions and blind beliefs. Thus, he has to learn all these qualities of
head, hand and heart through the process of education.
Definitions of Education:
The
Concepts of Education as given by prominent Indian educationists are as
follows.
Principles
of Education and School Organization;
1.
Rigved: "Education is something which makes man self-reliant and
selfless".
2.
Upanishad: "Education is for liberation".
3.
Bhagavad Gita: "Nothing is more purifying on earth than wisdom."
4.
Shankaracharya: "Education is the realization of self'.
5.
Gunrunner: "Education is self realization and service to people".
6.
Kautilya: "Education means training of the country and love of the
nation".
7.
Panini: "Human education means the training which one gets from
nature".
8.
Vivekanand: “Education is the manifestation of the divine perfection, already
existing in man."
9.
Gandhi: "By education, I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in the
Child and man body, mind and spirit."
10.
Tagore: "The widest road leading to the solution of all our problems is
education."
11.
Sri Aurobindo: "Education which will offer the tools whereby one can live
for the divine, for the country, for oneself and for others and this must be
the ideal of every school which calls itself national".
Concepts of Education as
defined by Western philosophers.
1.
Socrates: "Education means the bringing out of the ideas of universal
validity which are latent in the mind of every man".
2.
Plato: "Education is the capacity to feel pleasure and pain at the right
moment. It develops in the body and in the soul of the pupil all the beauty and
all the perfection which he is capable of."
3.
Aristotle: "Education is the creation of a sound mind in a sound body. It
develops man's faculty, especially his mind so that he may be able to enjoy the
contemplation of supreme truth, goodness and beauty of which perfect happiness
essentially consists.
4.
Rousseau: "Education of man commences at his birth; before he can speak,
before he can understand he is already instructed. Experience is the forerunner
of the perfect".
5.
Herbert Spencer: "Education is complete living".
6.
Heinrich Pestalozzi: "Education is natural harmonious and progressive
development of man's innate powers".
7.
Friedrich Willian Froebel: "Education is unfoldment of what is already
enfolded in the germ. It is the process through which the child makes internal
external".
True Meaning of Education
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