What is Education? SEMNAWOREQ’s Definitions

The best educators in the world - and the worst - are parents. As a rule, parents are concerned with upholding their authority as parents than with teaching the young idea how to shoot on its own responsibility. Failing in this, they pass on the burden to the college and then blame the college when their sons and daughters come home as “college bred in a three or four-year loaf” with nothing to show for it but a heightened tendency to live beyond their means. 

In a well-regulted family the greatest sin of childhood is disobedience; and, up to a certain point, this is as it should be. Lacking knowledge to control himself/herself, a child must necessarily be controlled by some external forces. But as he/she approaches maturity a youth should be given to understand that the time has come for a new experiment in control. As  his/her parents liquidate their receivership over him/her, the youth is not to view his emancipation as an abandonment of all restraints; on the contrary, he/she is now to play a man’s part and learn to control himself. One must suppose that it was of this principle of inner control that Doctor Iguale Gebre Yohannes was thinking when he said that all education is self-internalization. Besides, it is farming the soul, the spirit, and the consciousness. (ትምህርት ማለት የነፍስ፣ የመንፈስ፤ ወይም የሕሊና እርሻ ማለት ነው፡፡)

 

There is much confusion just now concerning educational purpose and ideals. Some say that education should be practical – that is like teaching a trade. Others say that it should produce scholars, masters of learning to bring out gentlean/woman. But when it is cultivated for its ownsake alone, learning may be as irresponsible as art (i.e learning for learning sake is not reliable). The Loeb-Leopold tradgedy testifies to this. These two young men were rated as extraordinary scholars by the unanimous judgement of their teachers. But they were not educated. They lacked that which is at the very centere of true education, – self-control. They had submitted to only half of the education process. They had taken the measure of the world and had acquaired humility; and without humility self-confidence becomes mere arrogance – the characteristics trait of the new barbarians who stand between the uneducated and the educated.

“Self-education” said Doctor Iguale; “self-control,” said Emerson; “a means for self-mastery,” said Socrates – three aspect of the same thing. Self-education is the process, self-control is the achievement; and self-mastery is the excellence to the ultimatum. By the achievement shall the process be tested, and ultimately the person declares his freedom. 

Here are the four SEMNAWOREQ defiations I tried to define.

1.   Education – is a three-fold process developed by an in a desire to facilitate the application of past experiences to making further process: first, a disciplining of the mind to enable it to function in its most productive manner; second, a widening of interests in the nobler things of life through intelligent understanding and appreciation; third,a discovery of one’s own qualities and potentialities through impartial self-examination, teading to their development.

2.   Education – the process of getting acquainted with the universe.

3.   Education – is the knowledge, acquired through the systematic and harmonious cultivation of one’s natural powers, which gives one the ability to adjest himself satisfactorily to this physical and intellectual environment. 

4.   Education – is a subject taught in a normal college by ubnormal professor to subnormal students. Period!