Education

Education doesn't make you happy, and nor does freedom.

We don't become happy just because we're free,

if we are, or because we've been educated, if we have,

but because education may be the means by which we realise we are happy.

It opens our eyes, our ears...

tells us where delights are lurking...

convinces us that there is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever...

that of the mind...

and gives us the assurance, the confidence, to walk the path our mind...

our educated mind... offers.

-from the script of Iris, and spoken by Judi Dench

To be changed by ideas was pure pleasure.

But to earn ideas that ran counter to values and beliefs learned at home

was to place oneself at risk, to enter the danger zone.

Home was the place where I was forced to conform to someone else’s image of

who and what I should be.

School was the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself.

-bell hooks 1994

Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills,

and also something less tangible but more profound:

the imparting of knowledge, positive judgment and well-developed wisdom.

Education has as one of its fundamental aspects the imparting of culture

from generation to generation (see socialization).

Education means 'to draw out', facilitating realization of self-potential and latent talents

of an individual. It is an application of pedagogy,

a body of theoretical and applied research relating to teaching and learning

and draws on many disciplines such as psychology, philosophy,

computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, sociology

—often more profound than they realize—though family teaching may function very informally.

-Wikipedia

The essential nature of education is making real use of the ideas and not merely storing of facts by rote memory. He says "Books are useless until our book opens; then all other books are good, so far as they conform to our book." "No one can teach anybody. The teacher spoils everything by thinking that he is teaching." “Education is not the amount of information that is put into the brain and runs riot there, undigested all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making, assimilation of ideas." “Education should unveil the divinity in man and this divinity should be seen in treating lunatics, in punishing criminals and in everything that is connected with human life.”  “In any case it is the thought force of a nation that determines the character of its people.” "Thoughts live; they travel far. And so take care of what you think."

-Swami Vivikenanda (1863-1902)