The key to what education can be is embedded in the word itself, which comes from the Latin root, educere, “to bring or lead out.” It implies a bringing out and developing of an individual’s full capacity for living.
In his book “The Direction of Human Development”, Anthropologist and author Ashley Montague wrote: “Instruction is the process of pumping information into the person; it literally means ‘to build into’; whereas education means the process of nurturing or rearing”. He explained, “We must recognise that today we have far too much instruction and all too little education. We are far too busy filling up the young with what we think they ought to know, to have much time left over for helping them become what they ought to be.” Or, in the words of the distinguished American educator Robert M Hutchins, “The aim of education in an age of rapid change should be to do what it can to help everybody gain complete possession of all their powers……this is what we ought to have been doing all along.”
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who took Transcendental Meditation from India to the West, in his classic book “Science of Being and Art of Living”, opines: “The purpose of education is to culture the mind of a man so that he can accomplish all his aims in life. Education, to justify itself, should enable a man to use the full potential of his body, mind and spirit. It should also develop in him the ability to make the best use of his personality, surroundings, and circumstances so that he may accomplish the maximum in life for himself and for others”. But, it feels like, Socrates, the Greek philosopher who is credited as a founder of Western philosophy, defined education the best, among other luminaries, stating: “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel”.
Considering how far we are from accomplishing these basic and sensible aims, we can say why there is such widespread dissatisfaction with education. Students are asked to absorb and produce more, but as the demands on them increase, what is being offered to actually increase their abilities, to provide added intelligence, insight, or emotional stability? What is being done to help them discover and create meaningful values and goals, and a direction in life? Shouldn’t education encourage and support students to discover and become who they really are, and prepare them to confront and solve the problems and answer the questions that life poses?
It is an ancient truth that the cultivation of the person is the root of all else. If society is be improved, it will happen not by forcing a programme of social reform down its throat through the schools, or otherwise, but by the improvement of the individuals who compose it. In the view of philosopher Plato, “Governments reflect human nature. States are not made of stone or wood, by out of the characters of their citizens: these turn the scale and draw everything after them. The individual is the heart of society.
What has been missing from education, then, is an effective methodology to upgrade our capacity for creative and humane action.
The solution to the problems confronting people in every nation on Earth lies in the same place as the source of the problems: those individuals who make up the society.