The child
at birth is born with certain biological inheritance. The biological
inheritance alone is not sufficient to enable him function in a social culture.
To equip him with the necessary skills and information, concepts and attitudes,
which society has created as a separate agency school, where he or she can
develop all the qualities and abilities required for successful social
adjustment. In the process of education, we try to shape the behaviour or
modification of behaiour of individuals for adequate adjustment in the society.
From the foregoing, lets look at some definitions of education by some authors.
Okafor (1981) defined education as the consciously
planned and systematically applied formal education or training carried on
through the various social agencies of education especially the school. If we
see education as schooling, we vividly see the change brought about through
education. In his book written he maintained that education is all those
experiences of the individual, through which knowledge is acquired the intellent
enlightened, or the will strengthened. A good example of this view of education
is the traditional African education in the words of Fatunwa (1974:15) African
education emphasized social responsibility, job orientation, political
participation and spiritual and moral values.
The qualities of an education man in African society
may be quite different from that in American or British culture. This is so
because what we value America. Thus Fatunwa (1974:17) defined education as the
aggregate of all the processes by which a child or young adult develops forms
of behaviour which are of positive value to the society in which he lives. In
this sense education implies the transmission of the culture of the society.
In a broad perspective education goes more than
schooling to include all influencies, social, cultural, political, religious
that influence from birth to death, Thus education in a broad perspective
includes all the worthwhile activities which an individuals engaged in so al to
become a contributing member of the society in which he belongs.
This implies that in every, education has a purpose of
aims to it. The aims vary from one society to another. Thus Nweke (1989:20)
said that a talk about aims of education could ordinarily involve specific goals
set by certain societies according to the purpose of its members and their
nature. The main aim of education is to help each individual to realize to the fullest
his capabilities and grow into a person who can participate freely with other
persons.
In a narrow or strict sense the “education refers to
what in the institution of learning. This us of what happens in schools or
colleges. In the view of Okafor (1992) education implies the education and
training, carried on through the various social agencies of education, teaching
as well as discipline are employed.
It is always difficult to give a precise one
universally accepted definitive of education, The reason being that education
is view from different perspective and its definition varies from society and
era to another. Education is related to so many concepts. However, education
carries the central notion of preparing men to face and surmount the challenges
of life. It prepares men for worthwhile listing. It is also the raising of the
intellectual tone in society cultivating the public mind, purifying the
national taste, giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age,
facilitating the exercise of private life. In other word education is to make
men.
One of the comprehensive and all embracing definitions
of education is as fellows.
Education in its everyday sense could mean the formal
training that is gives in schools and institutions, that is, the acquisition of
the ability to read and write and calculate. It could mean the specialized
training that given on the job, to enable one acquire skill in a certain field.
In the wider sense, education could mean the training of the entire person to
enable him not only perform in a given job, but also to enable him to fit
himself for living in society.
Broadly speaking, we see education as the influence of
person who holds a vital belief brought to bean on another person, with the
object of making him also hold that with belief. Those of us in the teaching
profession clearly remember having been told that education was the art of
“leading out’ and that this was proved by the derivation of the word.
Education, meaning to education’ or to bring up’ to raise. The professional
teacher by skillful questioning student think for himself relate one fact to
another, and form his own conclusion.
This is certainly the whole of the complex process we call
education.
We have seen that the person who is being educated has
influence brought to bear on him. Education, in the formal sense of the word,
refer to the systematically organized programme skill, understanding attitudes,
and behaviour patterns in members of given social group schools and
institutions of high learning are established for his purpose.
Education has also been viewed as a process, a
product, and as a discipline view as a process, education is the means by which
men acquire the civilization of the present, and make the civilization of the
future. It is also a process of initiation into the society or a process of
inculcating a way of life in the mind a newly born child which is like a blank
table (tabula rasa) on which experience write ideas viewed as a product
education means change in behaviour. In other words to be education means
change one’s behaviour. As a discipline, education is a following question and
responses.
Why should it be taught?
What should be taught?
Whom should it be
taught?
Who to teach?
According to Okafor (1992:19)
education is a process of acculturation through which the individual is helped
to attain the development of his potentialities, and their maximum activation,
when necessary according to right reason and to activated thereby his perfect
self -fillment this definition implies that education is a process deliberately
planned and methodically applied.