Concept
Definitions of education
Overview
Definitions of education aim to describe the essential features of education. A great variety of definitions has been proposed. There is wide agreement that education involves, among other things, the transmission of knowledge. But there are deep disagreements about its exact nature and characteristics. Some definitions see education as a process exemplified in events like schooling, teaching, and learning. Others understand it not as a process but as the product of such processes, i.e. as what characterizes educated persons. Various attempts have been made to give precise definitions listing its necessary and sufficient conditions. The failure of such attempts, often in the form of being unable to account for various counter examples, has led many theorists to adopt less precise conceptions based on family resemblance. On this view, different forms of education are similar by having overlapping features but there is no set of features shared by all forms. Clarity about the nature of education is central for various issues, for example, to coherently talk about the subject and to determine how to achieve and measure it.
An important discussion in the academic literature is about whether evaluative aspects are already part of the definition of education and, if so, what roles they play. Thin definitions are value-neutral while thick definitions include evaluative and normative components, for example, by holding that education implies that the person educated has changed for the better. Descriptive conceptions try to capture how the term "education" is actually used by competent speakers. Prescriptive conceptions, on the other hand, stipulate what education should be like or what constitutes good education.
Thick and prescriptive conceptions often characterize education in relation to the goals it aims to realize. These goals are sometimes divided into epistemic goods, like knowledge and understanding, skills, like rationality and critical thinking, and character traits, like kindness and honesty. Some theorists define education in relation to an overarching purpose, like socialization or helping the learner lead a good life. The more specific aims can then be understood as means to achieve this overarching purpose. Various researchers emphasize the role of critical thinking to distinguish education from indoctrination.
Traditional accounts of education characterize it mainly from the teacher's perspective, usually by describing it as a process in which they transmit knowledge and skills to their students. Student-centered definitions, on the other hand, emphasize the student's experience, for example, based on how education transforms and enriches their subsequent experience. Some conceptions take both the teacher's and the student's point of view into account by focusing on their shared experience of a common world.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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(1) An educational aim must be founded upon the intrinsic activities and needs (including original instincts and acquired habits) of the given individual to be educated. The tendency of such an aim as preparation is, as we have seen, to omit existing powers, and find the aim in some remote accomplishment or responsibility. In general, there is a disposition to take considerations which are dear to the hearts of…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
The author is tied to Definitions of education in the knowledge graph.
The end is remote, and education is getting ready, is a preliminary to something more important to happen later on. Childhood is only a preparation for adult life, and adult life for another life. Always the future, not the present, has been the significant thing in education: Acquisition of knowledge and skill for future use and enjoyment; formation of habits required later in life in business, good citizenship and…
John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy
The author is tied to Definitions of education in the knowledge graph.
Closely connected with this moral end is the more purely intellectual aim of education, the endeavour to make us see and imagine the world in an objective manner, as far as possible as it is in itself, and not merely through the distorting medium of personal desire. The complete attainment of such an objective view is no doubt an ideal, indefinitely approachable, but not actually and fully realisable. Education…
Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
Close in meaning to Definitions of education; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Definitions of education
Related ideas
- Belief
- Metacognition
- John Dewey
- Justice
- Necessity and sufficiency
- Paradigm
- Desire
- Mind
- Evidence
- Mental state
- Psychology
- Knowledge
- Critical thinking
- Experience
- Honesty
- Value theory
- Family resemblance
- Thought
- Society
- Normativity
- Moral character
- Reason
- Reality
- Curriculum
Place in the tradition
Part of Pragmatism.