What does education mean?

That was in reply to Growstuff

Elegran

That is where instruction overlaps with education. Lessons on factual things which should not be forgotten, such as the history of the location where the school is situated, based on old maps and writings and census returns and oral history from local people, can be linked with investigation of how dependable the sources are.

Agreed.

Maybe I should start a thread about the usefulness of history. IMO it's much underrated as subject which trains (ha! that word) the mind to be analytic and to evaluate all evidence.

My daughter has a First and Masters in history. It's a standing joke that her historical knowledge is patchy, but her ability to analyse, evaluate and cut through irrelevance is razor sharp - so much so that she frightens me!

Instructing is showing somebody how to do something, eg how to assemble an IKEA bookcase …

There’s a difference between following a set instructions slavishly and instruction.

If someone is taking religious instruction, they are being asked to think critically about religious texts and the meaning of faith.

When a judge instructs a jury, he or she is instucting a body of people on the law so that they might think critically about the evidence they have just heard and how the law applies to it.

Law is enshrined in legislation but there is also a substantial body of case law which is formed by thinking critically about how the law has been applied in particular situations.

We instruct lawyers to act on our behalf to think critially about the facts of our case as presented to them and to represent us through critical argument in the courts.

I’m inclined to think that beyond, our very early years, we educate ourselves. Fundamentally, it’s about how much we willingly (or is it wittingly?) absorb and then utilise what we have been instructed in.

Teachers instructed me how to play netball, how to do calculus and about the English Reformation but to what extent that has affected by physical, mental, and spiritual development is debatable.

I haven't played netball since I was 16. Calculus is a tool I used in my work. Knowledge of the English Reformatiion is useful when reading a Mantel or Shardlake novel ... but have I been or am I educated in all three?

Elegran's definition upthread is close to how I see it.

Being prepared for work in a niche field is not education but training (and I'm not saying one is better than the other, just that they are different). Education involves understanding why things should be done a certain way, and training is more about knowing that they should be done in a certain way and being able to do them in the 'correct' manner. Instruction doesn't involve understanding so much as following orders/requests, so 'give that to x then let the cat out' is not about either training or eduction.

Most of us will work on all levels in different situations. I can hold my own in nuanced conversations about my subject area, and have a reasonable understanding of overlapping fields because of education.

I can use IT in a way that meets my needs, and was aware of legislation and current thinking about areas such as diversity and educational policy (and others) when I worked in that sector because of staff training.

I could just about build a Billy bookcase, or do as I was told in the event of a situation with someone in charge who is co-ordinating assistance as I can follow instructions.

Sometimes education means that people question instructions or the value of aspects of training. Knowing more about a wider area and understanding things like the relative value of different sources means that educated people are probably less easily drilled into shape, which explains why intellectuals/experts are often seen as the enemy by dictators who prefer to train or instruct the masses.

The broad education and learning and training you get at school enables you (or should do) to do simple work under supervision and earn money to pay for food, housing and other trivialities.

Children then can choose to continue learning a skill that will enable them to earn more and improve their lifestyle. Many go to university they have been told that graduates have higher wages. You only get those higher wages if you find a graduate job so choose your course carefully

Oh God.

Education (broad or narrow) is not intended to allow people to do simple work under supervision. It is intended to teach them to think, and to verify sources.

Graduates do earn more than non-graduates. There are numerous sources to verify this, but I have attached an AI scrape of the information available online.

David, you are generalising again. Talk about what people 'should' do, and what 'children' go on to do, or 'many' graduates and what 'they have been told' are not sources. They are one man's opinion, seemingly based on a giant chip on his shoulder.

David49

The broad education and learning and training you get at school enables you (or should do) to do simple work under supervision and earn money to pay for food, housing and other trivialities.

Children then can choose to continue learning a skill that will enable them to earn more and improve their lifestyle. Many go to university they have been told that graduates have higher wages. You only get those higher wages if you find a graduate job so choose your course carefully

When I started the thread, I wasn't intending to limit the discussion to education at school.

If your definition is correct, presumably you think people's education stops when they reach school leaving age or leave college/university.

I agree with others that everybody learns throughout life, but that's possibly best described as experience rather than education.

Since retiring, I've actively participated in a number of more formal courses. Unfortunately, they're expensive and I don't expect anybody to pay for me. Why would I do that as I don't want to do paid work?

If you only educate schoolchildren to do simple tasks under instruction without questionning, and earn enough of a living to keep themselves and their dependants, you will end up with a Morlocks and Elim situation. If that means nothing to anybody, read HG Wells "The Time Machine". You also end up with stagnancy.

In the real world, those working nine-to-five routine jobs in unexciting businesses need education as much as top scientists. They have the vote - the ease with which Messrs Trump and his regime conned a section of US society into believing (among other things) that they were going to make America great again by forcing exporting countries to pay the tariffs on what America imports is evidence of what happens when people have no idea how to evaluate information they are given.

Just learning to obey simple instructions the right way may give you a pliant workforce, but in a world where "the right way" could just be "the way we have always done it" it is a criminal waste of human ingenuity. Take the chalet-maid makeg beds in, I think, Butlin's who realised as she refolded the umpteenth wrong-size sheet that there was a better way. Instead of having double and single sheets in random pink, blue and green, it would be more efficient if all the doubles wre one colour and all the singles a different colour. She suggested this to her supervisor, who passed it on, and it was taken up at once and all the bedding replaced - because the chalet-maids wasted less time by just using the right colour for the size of bed, instead of having to try sheets for size and choose the right ones then tidy away the ones which had been opened but not used. She got a bonus for helping to save time and money, too.

I agree with you Elegran that education has relevance beyond the workplace. If we have a vote, we should know how to use it. There are some people who can't work - surely they should have the opportunity of education too. Apparently some lifers in prison discover education, even though they'll never work. There must be something within people which craves learning.

I wonder how the Afghan women who have been denied education will be in 20 years' time.

Education is lifelong learning. I was lucky enough to do a history degree on retirement before all the prices rocketed. It was quite a struggle but in retrospect I learnt so much about myself as well as the topics.

Education can be learning a new task by watching, reading, experimenting etc.

growstuff

David49

The broad education and learning and training you get at school enables you (or should do) to do simple work under supervision and earn money to pay for food, housing and other trivialities.

Children then can choose to continue learning a skill that will enable them to earn more and improve their lifestyle. Many go to university they have been told that graduates have higher wages. You only get those higher wages if you find a graduate job so choose your course carefully

When I started the thread, I wasn't intending to limit the discussion to education at school.

If your definition is correct, presumably you think people's education stops when they reach school leaving age or leave college/university.

I agree with others that everybody learns throughout life, but that's possibly best described as experience rather than education.

Since retiring, I've actively participated in a number of more formal courses. Unfortunately, they're expensive and I don't expect anybody to pay for me. Why would I do that as I don't want to do paid work?

We all learn something every day it’s called experience, it’s not formal it’s part of the activities we are doing, today most of us get a lot online through social/news media of some kind.
It’s great if you enjoy history, Shakespeare, travel, sport or any other activity but that is incidental to your main need which is paying the rent and feeding the family.

Education for me is a life long thing, and it covers every subject that takes my fancy.

So as an example I have just ordered Alasdair MacIntyre’s “After Virtue” and will slowly make my way through that over the next few weeks.

I am also in the middle of teaching myself how to alter a dressmaking pattern, and then hope to tackle a winters dressing gown. All new stuff.

I constantly return to water colour painting and thst seems to be a life long bit of education😊. Just wish I was better at it.

There are myriad other things that I am interested in and constantly educate myself over.

Travel is another educational experience

That is the glory of being retired - time for everything and anything that takes your fancy.

Education can be learning a new task by watching, reading, experimenting etc.
Exactly, ayse, like great artists who experiment and practise over and over in different ways. No one instructs them what to do. To try to educate them in techniques only stifles their creativity.

I think it was Van Gogh who said something like, "I am always doing what I can't yet do, so that I to learn how to do it." He received no education as such to make him a genius, he was constantly learning for himself.

Take courage, Whitewavemark2, you're following a great Master in perseverance!

David49

growstuff

David49

The broad education and learning and training you get at school enables you (or should do) to do simple work under supervision and earn money to pay for food, housing and other trivialities.

Children then can choose to continue learning a skill that will enable them to earn more and improve their lifestyle. Many go to university they have been told that graduates have higher wages. You only get those higher wages if you find a graduate job so choose your course carefully

When I started the thread, I wasn't intending to limit the discussion to education at school.

If your definition is correct, presumably you think people's education stops when they reach school leaving age or leave college/university.

I agree with others that everybody learns throughout life, but that's possibly best described as experience rather than education.

Since retiring, I've actively participated in a number of more formal courses. Unfortunately, they're expensive and I don't expect anybody to pay for me. Why would I do that as I don't want to do paid work?

We all learn something every day it’s called experience, it’s not formal it’s part of the activities we are doing, today most of us get a lot online through social/news media of some kind.
It’s great if you enjoy history, Shakespeare, travel, sport or any other activity but that is incidental to your main need which is paying the rent and feeding the family.

Is education necessary for the offspring of royalty and billionaires?

I actually think that formal education is only the beginning of your life long learning. The advantage of a higher level of education as anyone who has been lucky enough to experience is that it gives a much bigger base on which to build further learning as you pass through life.

For me education is what someone else provides.

A parent educates a child in eating, keeping themselves clean and healthy etc..

A teacher educates according to the social and political expectations of what children should learn, ie an ethos or a curruculum.

Universities educate through promoting knowledge, skills, and expertise.

Employers educate through training.

However, learning is what you do for yourself using reason and judgement, with some knowledge acquired on the way...

The broad education and learning and training you get at school enables you (or should do) to do simple work under supervision and earn money to pay for food, housing and other trivialities.

I could translate Latin but never learnt to cook at school.
David49 might consider that was time wasted when I could have been learning a subject which trained me to do simple work or feed my potential family.
Did English literature help me when job-seeking or was it an unnecessary frivolity when learning the basics of English Language should suffice?

We should not be just churning out workers, we should be broadening children's horizons. Some children live in homes without a book.

Education should never be taken for granted, I could weep for the many girls who are denied an education due to Islamic extremism and the many children across the world who will never experience sitting in a classroom.

To me education is everything, our children went to great schools but a lot of their education was at home, conversation over the dinner table, the holidays we had the books they read and our wonderful friends who all contributed to their childhood.

Royalty in the UK certainly get better much better education than most some of them use it usefully.
Billionaires certainly are, in their own way they are highly intelligent, whether it is broad is another matter, they are often patrons of arts which keeps their social set happy and all the politicians too.
It’s not relevant to everyday people.

Elegran @ Today 11:49 and further posts.
Very well put.

Education is also the ability to apply and use what you have learnt
You don’t need to do that or retain everything you learn, e.g. I learnt how to patch holes in my car with fibreglass patches and coating, a necessary skill, but one I no longer need.
Experience is a great teacher, but you have to have the opportunities to gain that experience.
The infamous job hunting feedback “We need someone with more experience.” highlights the difficulty we sometimes face in trying to learn by experience.

“We should not be just churning out workers, we should be broadening children's horizons. Some children live in homes without a book.”

Quite right they don’t but they all have devices where information is instantly available, they have far more access to knowledge than we ever did, if the use it constructively

David49

Royalty in the UK certainly get better much better education than most some of them use it usefully.
Billionaires certainly are, in their own way they are highly intelligent, whether it is broad is another matter, they are often patrons of arts which keeps their social set happy and all the politicians too.
It’s not relevant to everyday people.

But presumably most billionaires ensure their children inherit something. In those circumstances, it's unlikely the children would need to work, although I expect most of them do. The question is why do they need any education, if education (according to you) is acquiring the skills to earn money to put food on the table.

they all have devices where information is instantly available
Another generalisation that was shown to be only variably true during Covid.

Elegran When you mention the Morlocks and the Elim (in my copy it is Eloi but no matter) why do you say 'If that means nothing to anybody read HG Wells "The Time Machine"?

In my experience, many of the GNs are very well read so I think it extremely likely that quite a few of them would have read the book. Uneducated though I am, even I have read it.

I think maybe we are mixing up intelligence and education. You can be educated with poor marks and you can be non-educated and have a brilliant mind.