There are two things, one is the word and the other is its meaning. 'Education' is a word everyone uses with a certain meaning attached to it, a meaning that it has acquired with its usage by society over a period of time. Today when we say Education, a particular image comes to our mind- a school, a teacher, a classroom, exams, tests, punishment, and competition. All these things are what we as a society relate to Education. But I will not talk about that education, so for the sake of this article let's dissociate the 'meaning of education' from the word, and dive into it afresh, without carrying the societal baggage it comes with. Let's make up the meaning of education from scratch so that education will act as a tool of empowerment rather than the bondage it brings in the present context.
So, what is education? Before going into what it is, let's look at what it is not. First of all, it surely can't be the accumulation of information as often perceived. because even a machine can do that, and being a consciousness-ridden life we should not limit the scope of education to mere accumulation of data. So, then could it be the training of the mind, the mind which comes unformed and as a blank slate in the world, to mold it according to the already existing structure of the society, is that Education? I think not, because a trained mind can not come upon something totally new, it can not discover new things as it is trained on the previous ideas or patterns and hence becomes mechanical in its approach. I would say a trained mind is no better than a machine, as a machine works on pre-fed patterns so does a trained mind which we can see in today's world where everyone is going through the same education system, or rather a training system, where your mind is anchored on a pre-existing structure resulting in the scarcity of new ideas, it's all just repetitions and modifications of the same things over and over again.
So we have established that Education has to be more than the accumulation of data and training of the mind. After going through what education is not, now comes the part where we have to define what Education is? But defining anything binds it into the strictures because our definitions are also based on what we already know, defining education will limit its scope and that is the last thing we should do. Limiting the Scope of Education will make it exclusive as then anyone who pursues anything outside of its scope will be excluded and exclusion can not be and should not be part of education.
What do we do then? Well! let's keep it that way, let's not define Education, just see what it is not and what it is, will come through not in terms of words or definition but in terms of living reality.