What is Education? Part Two

Last week (February 9), I wrote about my definition of education: “Educare” is a Latin verb, translated as "to draw out that which lies within."

You can read the post: https://saratusek.blogspot.com/2020/02/what-is-education.html

This week, I look at the progress of education through your lifetime.

When does education begin? When must it end?

I have taught people from nursery school to old age, and have found this to be true: each person comes to me, the teacher, as a whole human being, already “filled” to the brim with knowledge, experiences, attitudes, ways of looking at life and preferences for what and how to learn. 

Far from being a “tabula rasa” (blank slate), each person is an intact individual from birth. Newborns absorb and integrate their surroundings at an astounding rate, developing their personality as they interact with their environment. Their genetic inheritance produces a predisposition to move in particular directions; the influence of the world around them creates their unique character and preferred way of dealing with what touches them.

All of these fancy words simply mean that even a newborn has a mind that’s not empty. And the rate at which babies take in new experiences and information is impressive because they are educating themselves—constantly readjusting their opinions and reactions to life, based on what’s already inside them as compared with what is happening to them minute-by-minute.

Education happens all the time, everywhere. Children up to age of about ten are usually open to making changes and adjustments to their worldview as they encounter experiences, people, books and other sources of information that augment, challenge or throw into complete disarray their previous knowledge about life.

 As they get older, many children’s minds begin to close with the certainty that they already know whatever they need to know. By the time they are adults, most people are basically done with learning, which they see as a difficult struggle that lays bare the misunderstandings, wrong interpretations, incorrect premises and distortions of truth that live in each person’s intellect.

Of course, there’s no reason to stop being educated. It’s a choice to declare one’s mind “made up” and refuse to entertain further input from the outside world. But it’s a foolish choice, as a closed mind soon begins to decay and is as good as dead. To stop being educated is to stop dealing with the world.

(to be continued next week, Feb. 23)