Extended Definition of Education

Kathryn Tian

Registered Doctor ofTraditional Chinese Medicine (Canada)

Registered Acupuncturist(Canada)

ND Candidate (Canada)

MD (Canadian Equivalence)

The essential definitionof education can be looked up in the Oxford Dictionary: “the process ofreceiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school oruniversity.” To completely understand education, we need to analyze itsextended definition. In the following paragraphs, I will comment on educationby narration, classification, process analysis, and negation.

First, let’s trace thehistory of the changing meaning of education. Etymologically, the word"education" is derived from the Latin words “educare” and “educere”.Educare means “bring up, rear”; educere means “bring out, lead forth”. In ancienttimes, adults train the young to get survival abilities, usually bystory-telling and hands-on method. Those are the original forms of education.In the mid of 16^th century, when the scientific revolution occurred,there were more and more schools showing up. The word “education” substitutedthe words “educare” and “educere”, and that was when the essential definitionof education being shaped. Today is an era of “knowledge explosion”; the schooleducation is not enough anymore, we need more forms of education and the term“education” need an extended definition.

Except for the formalsystematic school education, people find that the informal education is alsovery important. The formal education is the basic in education; it is astandardized system involving fixed semesters, structured curriculum, andclassroom-based environment. Through formal education, students learn the basicknowledge and skills; for example, math and literacy in high schools, and thespecific courses in universities. The disadvantage of formal education is thatit might suppress the creativity. If Bill Gates did not quit school, he mighthave lost the chance to create Microsoft. Self-study is one kind of informaleducation; others include volunteer work, community services, on-line study,etcetera. Informal education helps people build up the social abilities andinterpersonal skills which are very important for modern life, it alsoencourages creativity and free-thinking. So, informal education is an extensionof formal education, and it can make the education system well-rounded.

If we furtherly analyzethe process of education, we can understand even better why we need to extendthe definition of education. First, it is the need of the times; the typicalexample is the computer science. The computer science develops so fast thatpeople working in this field need to study new techniques continuously. It isimpossible for a person to go back to school all the time; the informal butefficient forms of education like self-study, on-line courses, andcompany-training programs, are good choices. Computer science is influencingalmost all domains nowadays, so basically, everybody in this modern world needto have continuing education. Second, the characteristics of some careersdecide that people working in them need lifelong study. For example, themedical practice. Medical students accept their formal school education foreight years. After that, they have their residency training in hospitals fortwo to five years. Medical doctors who have just started their own practicesusually encounter with so-called difficult cases; the reason for this is thatthey don’t have enough experiences. The experience accumulation is a veryimportant part of medical education which can only be obtained by real-worldpractice.

Now the last but not theleast, are learning and education the same? “Education” and “learning” seem tobe used as synonymous in many instances, but they are not the same. Learningstarts with the eager to know something, it is a willingness to be educated. Wewant to learn, that is why we need education. The goal of education is aboutcultivating the ability to learn; once the learning ability is built up, peoplecan have continuing education for the whole life and achieve their accomplishments.

According to the aboveanalysis, in my own opinion, the extended definition of education is: thelifelong process of learning which include both systematic instruction informal schools and various real-world studies.