What Is Education

What is Education? Answers from 5th Century BC to the 21st Century
The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done. -- Jean Piaget, 1896-1980, Swiss developmental psychologist, philosopher
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't.-- Anatole France, 1844-1924, French poet, novelist
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. -- Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013, South African President, philanthropist
The object of education is to teach us to love beauty. -- Plato, 424 – 348 BC, philosopher mathematician
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education -- Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968, pastor, activist, humanitarian
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, physicist
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle, 384-322 BC, Greek philosopher, scientist
Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world’s work, and the power to appreciate life. -- Brigham Young, 1801-1877, religious leader
Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer – into a selflessness which links us with all humanity. -- Nancy Astor, 1879-1964, American-born English politician and socialite
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. -- William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, Irish poet
Education is freedom. – Paulo Freire, 1921-1997, Brazilian educator, philosopher
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. -- John Dewey, 1859-1952, philosopher, psychologist, education reformer
Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.-- George Washington Carver, 1864-1943, scientist, botanist, educator
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. – Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer, poet
The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. -- Sydney J. Harris, 1917-1986, journalist
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. -- Malcolm Forbes, 1919-1990, publisher, politician
No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure. – Emma Goldman, 1869 – 1940, political activist, writer
Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants. -- John W. Gardner, 1912-2002, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.-- Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, English writer, theologian, poet, philosopher
Education is the movement from darkness to light. -- Allan Bloom, 1930-1992, philosopher, classicist, and academician
Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know. -- Daniel J. Boorstin, 1914-2004, historian, professor, attorney
The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. -- William S. Burroughs, 1914-1997, novelist, essayist, painter
The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. -- Robert M. Hutchins, 1899-1977, educational philosopher
Education is all a matter of building bridges. -- Ralph Ellison, 1914-1994, novelist, literary critic, scholar
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul. -- Joseph Addison, 1672-1719, English essayist, poet, playwright, politician
Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. -- Malcolm X, 1925-1965, minister and human rights activist
Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students. -- Solomon Ortiz, 1937-, former U.S. Representative-TX
The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education. -- Plutarch, 46-120AD, Greek historian, biographer, essayist
Education is a shared commitment between dedicated teachers, motivated students and enthusiastic parents with high expectations. Bob Beauprez, 1948-, former member of U.S. House of Representatives-CO
The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home. – William Temple, 1881-1944, English bishop, teacher
Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them. -- John Ruskin, 1819-1900, English writer, art critic, philanthropist
Education levels the playing field, allowing everyone to compete. -- Joyce Meyer, 1943-, Christian author and speaker
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. – B.F. Skinner, 1904-1990, psychologist, behaviorist, social philosopher
The great end of education is to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers rather than to fill it with the accumulation of others. – Tyron Edwards, 1809-1894, theologian
Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength of the nation. -- John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, 35th President of the United States
Education is like a lantern which lights your way in a dark alley. – Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, 1918-2004, President of the United Arab Emirates for 33 years
When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts. -- Dalai Lama, spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence. -- Robert Frost, 1874-1963, poet
The secret in education lies in respecting the student. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, essayist, lecturer, and poet
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance, but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors. -- Maya Angelou, 1928-, author, poet

Essay on the role of education in society
Ashish Agarwal
Education, has a great social importance specially in the modern, complex industrialised societies. Philosophers of all periods, beginning with ancient stages, devoted to it a great deal of attention.
Accordingly, various theories regarding its nature and objective have come into being. Let us now examine some of the significant functions of education.
1. To complete the socialization process.
The main social objective of education is to complete the socialization process. The family gets the child, but the modern family tends to leave much undone in the socialisation process. The school and other institutions have come into being in place of family to complete the socialization process.
Now, the people fell that it is “the school’s business to train the whole child even to the extent of teaching him honesty, fair play, consideration for others and a sense of right and wrong”.
The school devotes much of its time and energy to the matter such as co-operation, good citizenship, doing one's duty and upholding the law.
Directly through text books and indirectly through celebration of programmes patriotic sentiments are intimates and instilled. The nation's past is glorified, its legendary heroes respected, and its military ventures justified.
(2) To transmit the central heritage :
All societies maintain themselves, by exploitation of a culture. Culture here refers to a set of beliefs and skills, art, literature, philosophy, religion, music etc., that are not carried through the mechanism of heredity. They must be learned.
This social heritage (culture) must be transmitted through social organisations. Education has this function of cultural transmission in all societies. It is Only at the under leaves of the school that any serious attempt has been, or now is, made to deal with this area.
(3) For the formation of social personality
Individual must have personalities shaped or fashioned in ways that fit into the culture. Education, everywhere has the function of the formation of social personalities.
Education helps in transmitting culture through proper molding of social personalities. In this way, it contributes to the integration, to survive and to reproduce themselves.
(4) Reformation of Attitudes :
Education aims at the reformation of attitudes wrongly developed by children already. For various reasons the child may have absorbed a host of attitudes, beliefs and disbeliefs, loyalties and prejudices, jealously and hatred etc. these are to be reformed.
It is the function of education to see that unfounded beliefs, illogical prejudices and unreasoned loyalties are removed from the child's mind, though the school has its own limitations in this regard, it is expected to continue its efforts in reforming the attitudes of the child.
(5) Education for occupational placement :
An instrument of livelihood. Education has a practical and also it should help the adolescent for earning his livelihood. Education has come to be today as nothing more than an Instrument of livelihood. It should enable the student to take out his livelihood.
Education must prepare the student for future occupational positions, the youth should be enabled to play a productive role in society. Accordingly, great emphasis has been placed on vocational training.
(6) Conferring of Status :
Conferring of status is one of the most important function of education. The amount of education one has, is correlated with his class position. This is four in U.S.A., U.S.S.R., Japan, Germany and some other societies.
Education is related to one's position in the stratification structure in two ways. (1) An evaluation of one's status is partially decided by what kind of education one has received and (2) Many of the other important criteria of class position such as occupation, income and style of life are partially the result of the type and amount of education one has had.
Men who finish college, for example, earn two and a half times as much as those who have a grammar school education.
(7) Education encourages the spirit of competition :
The school instills co-operative values through civic and patriotic exhortation or advice. Yet the school’s main emphasis is upon personal competition. For each subject studied the child is compared with the companies by percentage of marks or rankings.
The teacher admires and praises those who d well and frowns upon those who fail to do well. The school’s ranking system serves to prepare for a later ranking system. Many of those who are emotionally disappointed by low ranking in the school are thereby prepared to accept limited achievement in the larger world outside the school.
Other Functions of Education
Peter Worsley has spoken of a few more functions of education. Some of them may be noted.
Education Trains in skills that are required by the Economy
The relation between the economy and education can be an exact one. For example the number and productive capacity of engineering firms are limited by the number of engineers produced by education.
In planned economy, normally it is planned years in advance to produce a definite number of doctors, engineers, teachers, technicians, scientists etc. to meet the social and economic needs of the society.
Fosters Participant Democracy :
Education fosters participant democracy. Participant democracy in any large and complex society depends on literacy. Literacy allows full participation of the people in democratic processes and effective voting.
Literacy is a product of education. Educational system has this economic as well as political significance. Education Imparts values:
The curriculum of the school, its extracurricular activities and the informal relationships amongst students and teacher communicate social skills and values. Through various activities a school imparts values such as co-operation or atmospheric, obedience, fair play.
This is also done through curriculum that is through lessons in history literature etc.
Education acts as an integrative force :
Education acts as integrative force in society by communicating value, that unite different sections of society. The family may fail to provide the child the essential knowledge of the social skills and values of the wider society.
The school or the educational institutions can help the child to learn new skills and learn to interact with people of different social backgrounds.