What is education? Part One

"To draw out that which lies within."

I have happily spent my career of 30+ years in education. What has inspired me in my educational endeavors is the process itself. Like a detective, I have approached each person whom I wished to educate with the desire to discover and bring to light everything that lay within that person’s mind, psyche and experience.

Here I am in Prague, a city where I've been an educator for 30 years

Education, defined

“Educare” is a Latin verb, translated as "to draw out that which lies within." This definition is at the core of the educational process. Far from being an “adding to,” in the sense of education as a means of pouring new information into the mind to fill it up, the true definition of education is that it is built on what already exists.

For in-depth, long-lasting education to happen, 
three conditions must be present:

1. The students' willingness to expose (at least to themselves) all the attitudes, information, premises, conclusions and gaps of understanding that exist in their  intellect. 
2. A trusted source of additional information (ideally supplied by a teacher, a parent, a mentor, or a friend); self-educated people may primarily use an institution, a book, or any other collection of ideas and experiences that the student may find interesting and challenging.
3. A commitment by students (and often, but not always, a corresponding commitment by the person who is the source of information) to conscientiously and methodically pull out that which lies within themselves: ideas, concepts, presuppositions,  paradigms, ways of analysis, facts, interpretations, attitudes, ways of determining importance, values, ethical constructs, beliefs, and means of evaluation; to then critically and dispassionately examine each of these pieces of knowledge and compare them to the new information and perspectives offered by the trusted source, and make changes and adjustments accordingly; to take the synthesized product (called “learning”) and make it the new standard of knowledge.

Just describing this process is exhausting. The actual process of education is a demanding, labor-intensive undertaking for both the student and the human information source, not just because of the intellectual effort but also because of the element of trust and emotional commitment needed on both sides. (to be continued next week)