3 1.3 CONTEMPORARY DEFINITIONS

Literature on philosophy of education is replete with a variety of definitions of the word “education.”

Some scholars define education as: “the transmission of life by the living to the living,” while others define it as “the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge” (Whitehead, 1962).

James Majasan, of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, defined education simply as: “the art of learning” (Majasan, 1967) and emphasized the relevance to development of indigenous education in Africa (Majasan, 1976).

Carter Good (1959, p. 191), education is: “the art of making available to each generation the organized knowledge of the past”.

Oladele Taiwo (1964, p. iv), in the preface to his book entitled Agencies of Education, defined education as: “the total efforts of a community to raise its economic, social and political standards of life”.

Other relevant definitions of education include those by Snelson (1974, p. 1) who presented education as: “a condition of human survival, . . . the means whereby one generation transmits the wisdom, knowledge and experience which prepares the next generation for life’s duties and pleasures”.

Lane (1976, p. 1, quoted in Kelly, 1991, p. 7) defined education as: “the transmission of wisdom, knowledge, experience and skills”.

Hegel (1807, translation by Baillie, 1949, p. 807), offered a somewhat complex definition. According to him, education is: “a progressive perfection of humanity from a simple, uncultivated, primitive mind, through the hard discipline of labour and toil to the consciousness and exercise of its freedom”.

In a recent work, Adeyinka (2000, pp. 19-20) defined education as: “the process of transmitting the culture of a society from one generation to the other, the process by which the adult members of a society bring up the younger ones”.

The above definitions implies that education is a gradual development of the body and mind from infancy to adulthood. Related to Bloom’s taxonomy, it implies a progressive development of the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains (or areas) of knowledge.

It is, indeed, a three-stage process:

• First a generation inherits the culture of the society from the older generation.
• Second, they change that culture, for better or for worse – or, we could say, they modify the culture they inherited and adapt it to their own situation: the political, social and economic situations of their time.
• Third, they pass on the modified culture to the generation following them.

As the society becomes more highly urbanised and detribalised, particularly in an age of science and technology, the process of education becomes more complex. Education could be seen as the process of interaction between the guardians and the seekers of knowledge. It could be seen as a dialogue between the men and women with ideas and skills and the adolescents and young adults seeking to acquire and develop those ideas and skills, knowledge that they need to earn a living in an age of computers, science and technology.

Education today is more than what the schools, colleges or universities alone can give. Industry, the mass media, the internet and related sources of learning in society are intended to complement institutionalized education; and, as we now live in a new century, the 21″ century, no person would be deemed to have been truly educated if he or she is not computer-literate. Further, he or she should be able to tap information through the electronic media, to complement whatever information has been obtained in the formal classroom situation.

From the above, it is clear that education can be defined in various ways. Indeed, there are as many definitions of education as there are educational philosophers, scholars or students. There could even be more, because a single person can define education in more than one way and it is clear from the illustration given above and from the works of Jerome Bruner that one’s conception of education changes as one grows older. The way a student in a university defines education, for example, would be different from the way he would define it when he starts to teach in a university. We change our minds or develop our ideas every day. Education therefore leads to a change in behaviour and it is clear that the development of the individual is the ultimate goal of all education. We may now offer a general statement on what the purpose of education is, or should be.