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Perspectives in Education
Topic: Concept and Meaning of Education
This summary highlights the essential ideas related to the concept, meaning, nature, and scope of education, focusing on key examination-oriented takeaways.
1. Core Understanding of Education
- Education is as old as the human race and exists in every society.
- The meaning and objectives of education change over time.
- There is no single universally accepted definition of education.
- Education goes beyond teaching or instruction and focuses on overall development.
2. Etymological Meaning of Education
- Educare means to raise or bring up.
- Educere means to lead out or draw out inner potential.
- Educatum refers to the act of teaching or training.
- Education aims at nurturing and developing innate human potentialities.
3. Nature and Scope of Education
- Education is a social process shaped by society and culture.
- It is also a natural process involving growth from within.
- Education is an initiation process into cultural and moral traditions.
- It is a worthwhile activity with intrinsic and lasting value.
- Education helps individuals adapt to physical, social, and spiritual environments.
- Educational institutions provide a controlled environment for systematic development.
Key Terms and Ancient Institutions
- Pathshalas: Indigenous schools found in Western India, often functioning as open-air institutions.
- Tols: Traditional centers of learning prevalent in Bengal, often associated with open courtyard structures.
- Chatuspadis: Centers of higher learning found in Bihar, traditionally described as structures with four pillars.
- Gurukuls: Ancient residential schools (Ashrams) situated in forests where students lived with the Guru.
- Viharas: Buddhist monasteries established for monks and nuns to meditate, debate, and discuss knowledge
- Pious: Referring to a religious or devout way of life, which children were guided to imbibe in ancient society
3. Educational Impact
- Mahatma Gandhi:By education, I mean, an all-round drawing out of the best in child and man—body, mind, and spirit.”
- Rabindranath Tagore:Education means enabling the mind to find out that ultimate truth which emancipates us from the bondage of the lust 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
- Sri Aurobindo: Education is “helping the growing soul to draw out that is in itself.”
- Bishnupuran: “Sa Vidya Ya Vimukteya” (That is knowledge which liberates).
- 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 makes internal external. - Rigveda: Education is something which makes a man self-reliant and self-less.
- Ross: Education is the development of valuable personality and spiritual individuality.
- Rousseau: Education is the child’s development from within.
- Sankaracharya: Education is the realization of self.
- Socrates: Education means the bringing out the ideas of universal validity, which are latent in the minds of every man.
- Herbert Spencer: Education is complete living.
- Aristotle: Education is the creation of a sound mind in a sound body. 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 of.. - 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.