Definition of Education

The influences, experiences, and knowledge(s) that comprise an individual’s path of education are unique. Nonetheless, there are some similarities if an individual is brought up in a similar culture as others. Education is different for everyone; everything from your environment to your personality to your relationships shape your definition of education. Simply put, anything you do is a process of learning and refining learnt actions. This can be applied into the physical, cultural, and even the formal.

To be able to run, you need to be educated in walking first. To be able to walk, you need to be educated in crawling first. To be able to crawl, you need to be educated in movement first. This continuous, branch-like learning process serves to function not only to refine our abilities, but also to grow and expand on new abilities. In what would be described as formal education, meaning the studying and mental information rather than the physical, this process still applies. Let’s take mathematics, for example. We count, then with counting we can add and subtract. Adding gives way to multiplication the same way subtraction gives way to division, so on and so forth. Once you’re educated in the most simple concept of a given subject, you branch out, becoming more complex and specialized. Just like Bonsai trees, our complexity continues to grow even as we grow older. It’s in our nature to keep growing.

History and culture is also education. The stories we share, the tales we tell, it’s all education. Stories and tales usually have morals, which help us be better people to others. History teaches us things that we should continue to do as well as things we shouldn’t repeat. Just like with the other two parts of education, history and culture can be specialized and made more complex, too. This large web or tree or whatever you want to call it continues to grow indefinitely and continuously, constantly evolving, constantly changing. This isn’t how some people perceive education, however.

Some people believe that education is strictly about the formal, narrow education that is schooling. Some believe that after high school or college that you stop being educated. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. As John Dewey, a famous American philosopher, once stated, “Education is not the preparation of life; education is life itself.” You can’t ever go a short amount of time without learning something. Someone’s favorite food, that tight turn around Third Street, any new information that you perceive is a chance for self-education. Our perspective of education should change then, too, to help support our natural way of thinking. “You don’t learn to walk by following rules.” English businessman Richard Branson explains, “You learn by doing, and by falling over.”

With that being said, the way that people are educated is a constantly changing process that reflects the individual and their experiences. We wouldn’t be here without our use of learning information. If we didn’t learn, we would still be cavepeople out in the untouched wilderness; we wouldn’t get far if we weren’t able to use, teach, and store that information. This is the meaning of education. Education is existence. This is the beauty of education. 

Works Cited

Dewey, John. Simon & Schuster, Democracy and Education, https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Democracy-And-Education/John-Dewey/9780684836317, Accessed 2 Dec. 2024. 

Branson, Richard. “You Learn by Doing and by Falling over: Virgin.” Virgin.Com, 26 Oct. 2014, www.virgin.com/branson-family/richard-branson-blog/you-learn-by-doing-and-by-falling-over.