What Is Education?

 

 

What is education?

Is it an accumulation of facts?

Is it persons with very high IQ’s

Or is it acquiring what our parents lacked?

 

Is it the possession of certificates?

Is it a University degree?

Is it the acquisition of a Masters or Doctorate

Or the display of some special ability?

 

Is it getting ahead of everyone else?

Is it holding a leadership position?

Is it the ability to public speak

Or demonstrate extraordinary skills of oration?

 

Is it all of the above

Or is it none of the above?

Tell me, what is education?

What forms its hub?

 

Is it different for different people?

Can it be attained?

And in the event that it is not achieved

Who is to blame?

 

Does it have a purpose

And is that purpose specific?

Is it an organized body of knowledge

Or is its pursuit erratic?

 

 

At what point, if I may ask,

Can one be said to be educated?

Is it a particular age or a specific stage?

Is it sometimes belated?

 

Is it automatic for some

But nebulously difficult for others?

Is it more formal than informal?

Or is there another?

 

Questions, Questions, Questions,

Now it’s the answer time,

So, for an appropriate answer, my friend

Let’s ask Albert Einstein.

 

He starts with what it is not:

“Education is not the learning of facts,”

If this does not trigger your mind

To the first verse just go back.

 

A disappointment for many

But with them you need not sink,

Instead, grasp the hope that emerges:

In “training the mind to think.”

 

Thinking is hard work

Hence, we live in a lazy world,

Why else do you expect

There is so much of the absurd?

 

The acquisition of facts

Is like receiving a fish a day

But to out think the fish in the river

Is a far more accomplished way.

 

Stewart Russell © April 6, 2021

 

“Education is not the learning of facts.

It’s rather the training of the mind to think.”

 

Albert Einstein

(1879-1955)