ABSTRACT

What do the terms ‘education’, ‘educate’, and ‘educated’ mean? The hope must be that in answering this question we shall not simply find satisfaction in a job well done (undertaking the inquiry just for the sake of it) but also provide hints and clues for those engaged in education concerning the sorts of things they ought, as educators, to be doing and the ways in which they ought to do them. The situation seems to be parallel to someone wanting to be a shoplifter while not knowing what ‘shoplifting’ means. He is told, and then knows what to do in order to become a bona fide shoplifter. If only the parallel were exact.