What does education mean?

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 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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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!

That was in reply to Growstuff

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.

Learning is not education.
Education is understanding learning and using it.

That's interesting. To me, instructing is showing somebody how to do something, eg how to assemble an IKEA bookcase (!). There shouldn't be much critical thinking involved. However, university should be about critical thinking - more so in some subjects than others. It should be about skills such as analysis and evaluation, which aren't need for instruction.

PS. Come to think of it, assembling an IKEA bookcase is probably a bad example, as anybody who's ever tried to do it knows that it doesn't always go to plan and a little creativity is needed.

"What's the difference between educating, instructing and training?"

The word "educate" comes from the Latin for "to draw forth" and it means finding and encouraging in someone the ability to discover meaning in the world around them. Among other things, that involves observing appearances and phenomena (colours, sounds, textures, and shapes, and letters and numbers) and sorting them imto categories. It is discriminating between small differences in these categories, which leads on to discriminating between small differences in the meanings of words, which later leads on to recognising what a writer wants them to feel by the choice of words used in a passage

"Instruction" is partly giving a pupil information on facts about that world around them which have been established by observation, exploration, experiment, careful thought and considered discussion. (history, geography, science, etc) and partly passing on skills which can be used in their lives (reading and interpreting written work for their own learning and pleasure, and writing their own words to record their ideas and pass thoughts on to others who are not present, manipulating numbers in more complicated ways than just counting on their fingers, and doing mechanical and creative skills with hands or tools.

"Training" is teaching how to do a specific skill in exactly the way that the instructtor knows it should be done, or how it applies to a specific situation. There is less room for individuality in training than in instruction, and much of it is learnt "on the job".

There is a lot of overlap between these categories, and other people may have other definitions.

What's the difference between educating, instructing and training?

What Cabbie said!

These are overlapping terms to a certain degree where meaning has altered over time but speaking etymologically, education is about children (or young animals).

Educate is the more rounded; from the Latin ēducāre meaning to to rear, to bring up children (and young animals).

Education is bringing up a child with respect to physical, mental, and spiritual development. We educated children to eat sensibly, to take exercise, to be safe, to get enough sleep and so on.

It doesn’t have to be about book learning. An adult animal will educated its young in how to to be safe, how to hunt food and so on.

Instruction is also something taught; knowledge or authoritative guidance imparted by one person to another. An example would be religious instruction, driving instruction.

Training is discipline and instruction given (or received) for development of character, behaviour, or ability with a view to proficiency in it. So we might train to be an accountant, a lawyer, a teacher. We say: teacher training, police training, sports training.

The definition of univerisity is a body of masters and scholars engaged in giving and receiving instruction. In other words, we don’t go to university to be educated. We go to be be instructed.

Once you’ve learned tolerance, respect and kindness for others. regardless of class, religion or sexual orientation, you are educated.

It follows from that that education is the role of parents, in the first instance, then school and society in general.
In French ‘ education’ means ‘upbringing’, so definitely not limited to the classroom.
Instruction means being told about / shown how to do something.
Training, for me, is preparation for something specific: a skill, an event, a job, a career.

Educare - to bring up or nourish
Educere - to lead forth or bring out

Somewhere in the depths of my (now not so good!) memory, I recall being told on a course during my teaching career that the origin of the word education is from Latin meaning to draw out. It could be regarded as the process of developing a person's potential as they are helped to understand the world around them.

You can be ‘given’ an education without learning much from it.
It’s a two way street as you need to be willing to learn and to put in the brain work necessary to really ‘receive’ it.
Free education for 4 to 18 year olds isn’t a given in this world so it’s a shame that it’s not valued enough by all.
A good well rounded education can set you up for life and I thank all good hard working teachers for this public service to the children in their care.
Outside of school parents can help with education and the importance of libraries was also mentioned by a poster, for those children hungry to learn about life.Books! Wonderful things that they are.
Learning continues in life outside of schools and higher education by many means and the ability to think and process knowledge never really stops, or shouldn’t anyway.

escaped

For me, education is never missing an opportunity to learn something and to use this knowledge in life. Not always the academic stuff in a classroom either.
Like I'm off on a visit tomorrow to walk amongst a load of megalithic stones purely for aesthetic pleasure, but I'll create my own learning from the experience.

I agree! Education continues way beyond the classroom.

And, as the saying goes - 'Every day's a school day on Gransnet!'

"Do not start a sentence with 'And', Allira!"
"I will now I've left school, Miss Jones."

Learning and educating are not the same.
Indeed.
Educating is normally more structured, narrower, learning is bigger altogether. There are some of us who dislike being "taught" without allowing us to discover our own ways of doing things. I am not an exponent of educating for the sake of it, but I do see the benefit in training the brain to learn from all experiences.
If you get what I mean.

GNHQ: where's the spell checker ??

Educating and instructing seem the same but training seems luke a practice.

Can one (with no learning disabilities) not learn while receiving education?