The Question of Education

As I inch closer to the completion of my dissertation, I have been confronted with a question to which I was sure I had the answer. And, as is the case in most true education, the more I have read and studied the more I have moved away from my original answer.

The question is this: what is education? Because everyone has attended school, everyone thinks they know the answer to the question. With that knowledge, most consider the question once or twice, and then move on to more "important" things.

As I have read Rousseau, Dewey, Hume and Kant, I have come to the realize that the question is actually more important than the answer to the question. Each has taken education and turned it one way and addressed it another way in order to present their views on the process, but one of the things that stood out to me reading these philosophical giants is the question... it was always in the front of their thinking and never dismissed.

Dewey, in 1938, addressed educators with the idea of considering this question daily. His view is that this is a question that those of us in education must wrestle with daily in order to progress as educators. Education, the process, is much more than curriculum, pedagogy and policies. There is not a quick and sure answer to most questions, especially questions regarding education. But, if we consider the question every day, we start to slowly understand that the question keeps our thinking on the true nature of education... a process that is living, changing and so influential.

What is education? Let me think about it and get back to you.