What do you mean by the term education?

Education is one of the basic activities of people in all human societies. The continued existence of society depends upon the transmission of culture to the young. It is essential that every new generation must be given training in the ways of the group so that the same tradition will continue. Every society has its own ways and means of fulfilling this need. Education has come to be one of the ways fulfilling this need.

The term ‘education’ is derived from the Latin work ‘educare’ which literally means to ‘bring up’ and is connected with the word ‘educere’ which means to “bring forth’. The idea of education is not merely to impart knowledge to the pupil in some subjects but to develop in him those habits and attitudes with which he may successfully ‘face the future.

The Latin author Varro wrote —”The midwife brings forth, the nurse brings up, the tutor trains and the master teaches. “Plato was of the opinion that the end of education was to develop in the body and in the soul (of the pupil) all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are capable. It means, in short, a sound mind in sound body (mens sana incorporate sano).

According to the Aristotelian conception, the aim of education is “to develop man’s faculties, especially, his mind, so that he may be able to enjoy the contemplation of the supreme truth, goodness and beauty in which perfect happiness, essentially consists.

As Peter Worsety says, “A large part of our social and technical skills are acquired through deliberate instruction which we call education. It is the main working activity of children from the ages of five to fifteen and often beyond.” A large part of the budget of many developed and developing countries is set apart for education. Education employs a large army of people.

Sociologists are becoming more and more aware of the importance and role of educational institutions in the modern industrialized societies. In recent years, education has become the major interest of some sociologists. As a result, a new branch of sociology called sociology of education has become established.

Definition of Education

Durkheim conceives of education as “the socialization of the younger generation.” He further states that it is “a continuous effort to impose on the child ways of seeing, feeling and acting which he could not have arrived at spontaneously.”

Summer defined education as “the attempt, to transmit the child the modes of the group. So that he can learn what conduct, is approved and what disapproved how he ought to behave in all kinds of cases: What he ought to believe and reject,”

F,J. Brown and J.S. Roucek say that education is “the sum total of the experience which moulds the attitudes and determines the conduct of both the child and the adult.”

James Welton in Encyclopedia Britannica (11th Edition) writes that education consist in an attempt on the part of the adult members of human society to shape the development of the coming generation with its own ideals of life.

A.W.Green, “Historically it has meant the conscious training of the young for the later adoption of adult roles. By modern convention, however, education has come to mean formal training by specialists within the formal organization of the school,

Samuel Koening says “Education may also be defined as the process whereby the social heritage of the group is passed on from one generation to another as well as the process whereby” the child “becomes socialized, learns the, roles of behavior of the group into which he is born.”

Education as a social process:

Education stands for deliberate instruction or training. Man does not behave in society impulsively or instinctively. He behaves in a way according to which he is trained. Some thinkers have equated it with socialization. A few other regard education as an attempt to transmit the cultural norms of the group to its younger members. It is also understood more knowledge. All these three interpretations of education as a process or a continuous entity the word process stressed continuity.

Firstly, education, viewed as socialization, is continuous. Socialization is social learning. This social learning is not intermittent but continuous. Perfection in social learning is rarely achieved the more we try to learn our own society and fellow beings the more remains to be learned.

Social learning begins at birth and ends only at death. It continues through out our life. There is no point or state in our life at which we have learn everything about one group or society and beyond that nothing remains to be studied. We belong to different groups at different stages of our life. As these groups change, we must learn new rules and new patterns of behavior.

Furthermore, we do not always remain within the same role. We being as children, pass through adolescence into adulthood, marry, become parents, enter middle age, retire, grow old and finally die. With each role comes pattern of behavior that we must learn and thus through out our life, we are involved in the socialization process.

Secondly, education viewed as an agent of cultural transmission is also continuous. Culture is growing while there can be break in the continuity of culture. If at all there is a break, it only indicates the end of a particular human group. The cultural elements are passed on from generation act as the agents of cultural transmission. Education in its formal or informal pattern has been performing this role since time immemorial. Education can be looked upon as process from this point of view also.

Thirdly, education implies, as an attempt to acquire knowledge, is also continuous. Knowledge is like an ocean, boundless, limitless. No one has mastered it or exhausted it. No one can claim to do so. There is a limit to the human genius or the human grasp of the things. The moral man can hardy know anything and everything about nature, which is immoral.

The universe is a miraculous entity. The more one tries to know of it, the more it becomes mysterious. Not any the natural universe but also the social universe is complex. The human experiences limited to have a thorough knowledge of acquiring more and more knowledge about the universe with all its complexity. Education thus is a continuous endeavor, a process.