Definitions of Education
"Education" has been defined by philosophers, thinkers and educationists in different ways according to their philosophy of life gained out of their past experiences.
Since, education is related to time and space, philosophers and thinkers, from Socrates to John Dewey in the West and Yajnavalkya to Jiddu Krishnamurti in the East have defined it differently.
Indian Views on Education
Rig Veda: "Education is something which makes a man self reliant and selfless".
Upanishads: "Education is that whose end product is salvation".
Bhagavad Gita: "Nothing is more purifying on earth than knowledge".
Yajnavalkya: "Education is that which makes a man of good character and useful to the world".
Panini: "Human education means the training which one gets from nature".
Kautilya: "Education means training for the country and love for the nation".
Kannada: "Education means development of self-contentment".
Sankaracharya: "Education is the realization of the self and attainment of Moksha (liberation)".
Guru Nanak: "Education is self realization and service of the people. It enables an individual to win victory over the five enemies-lust, anger, greed, infatuation and ego" (kam, krodh, lobh, moh, ahankar).
Dayanand: "Education is a means for character formation and righteous living". To him, an educated person is healthy and an uneducated person is suffering from the disease of ignorance.
Swami Vivekananda: "Education means the manifestation of the divine perfection, already existing in man".
Tagore: "Education means enabling the mind to find out that ultimate truth which emancipates us from the bondage of the dust and gives us the wealth, not of things but of inner light, not of power but of love, making this truth its own and giving expression to it". In short, "The widest road leading to the solution of all our problems is education".
Mahatma Gandhi: "By Education, I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in the child and man-body, mind and spirit".
Aurobindo: "Education is helping the growing soul to draw out that is in itself".
Radhakrishnan: "Education means training the intellect, refinement of the heart and discipline of the spirit".
Zakir Hussain: "Education is the process of the individual mind getting to its full possible development to realize absolute moral and intellectual value".
Jiddu Krishnamurti: "Education in the true sense is helping the individual to be mature and free, to flower greatly in love and goodness".
Humayun Kabir: "Education is a dynamic process which in its totality changes with the changing situations and developing circumstances. It enables man to realize higher values of life which are essential for him to become roof and crown of all creations".
P.C.Bannerji: "Education is the development of the power of adaptation to an ever changing social environment".
A.P.J.Abdul Kalam: "Education is one that fosters capacities such as spirit of enquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership, which are central to nation building in a democracy. We need education which develops in our children these capacities and makes them autonomous learners who are self-directed directed and self-controlled".
However, the meaning of education has been changing from time-to-time time and place-to-place. Today, we may define education as anything by which the individual prepares and develops himself to undertake any sort of task and adjust to the varying environments for the purpose of attaining his goals of life. It is a very comprehensive definition of education, which reflects a complete picture of the present system of education in the emerging Indian society. Thus, education is the process of gaining those experiences which prepare the individual for personal, social, spiritual, cultural, aesthetic, political and economic life.
Western Views on Education
Socrates: "Education means the bringing out of the ideas of universal validity which are latent in the mind of every man. It is dispelling error and discovering truth".
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".
Aristotle: "Education is the creation of a soundbody. 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".
Comenius: "All those who are born as human beings need education because they are destined to be real men, not wild beasts, dull animals and clumps of wood".
Rousseau: "Education of man commences at his birth before he can speak, before he can understand, he is already instructed. Experience is the fore runner of precept. It is the development from within".
Kant: "Education is the development in the individual of all the perfection of which he is capable".
Pestalozzi: "Education is natural, harmonious and progressive development of man's innate powers".
Froebel: "Education is unfoldment of what is already enfolded in the germ. It is the process through which the child draws out his internal potentialities. It is the cultivation of awareness, love and independence in the child".
John Dewey: "Education is the development of all those capacities in the individual which will enable him to control his environment and fulfil his possibilities".
T.Raymont: "Education is a process of development from infancy to maturity, the process by which he adapts himself gradually in various ways of his physical and spiritual environment".
James Drever: "Education is a process in which and by which knowledge, character, and behaviour of the young are shaped and moulded".
Bossing: "Education is conceived to be the adjustment of man to his environment, to the end that most enduring satisfaction may accrue to the individuals and to the society".
Adams John: "Education is a conscious and deliberate process in which one's personality acts upon another in order to modify the development of the other by the communication and manipulation of knowledge".
T.P.Nunn: "Education is the complete development of the individuality of the child so that man can make an original contribution to human life according to the best of his capacity".
Ruskin: "Education does not mean teaching the people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave".
Thompson: "Education is the influence of the environment on the individual with the view to producing a permanent change in his habits, behaviour, thought and attitude".
Ross: "Education is the development of valuable personality and spiritual individuality".
Brown: "Education is the consciously controlled process whereby changes in behaviour are produced in the person and through the person within the group".
William James: "Education is fitting the individual to his physical and social environment".
Huxley: "Education is fashioning the will of the individual to enable him to move in harmony with nature".
Montaigne: "Education is cultivating manners, behaviour, and judgement than bare and mere liberal learning".
Herbert Spencer: "Education is preparing for complete living".
Emerson: "Education means controlling mind".
Milton: "Education is that which fits a man to perform justly skillfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private, and public of peace and war".
Redden: "Education is the deliberate and systematic influence exerted by the matured person (educator) upon the immatured (educand) through instruction, discipline and harmonious development of physical, intellectual, aesthetic, social and spiritual powers of the human being, according to individual and social needs and directed towards the union of the educand with his creator as the final end".
