The developmental mold of Education
The second trend of definitions of Education subscribes to the view that human
being is the embodiment of rich inherent potentialities and it is the task of
education to help him/her to develop, enhance and realize these
potentialities. It believes that every child is capable of developing into a
competent adult individual and innate potentialities are to be trapped within
right from birth and nurtured through his/her growth and development for
adulthood.
Socrates: “Education means the bringing out of the ideas of universal validity
which are latent in the mind of every man”.
Plato: “Education is the capacity to feel pleasure and pain at the right
moment. It develops in the body and in the soul of the pupil all the beauty
and all the perfection which he is capable of’’.
Aristotle: “Education is the creation of a sound mind in a sound body. It
develops man’s faculty, especially his mind so that he may be able to enjoy
the contemplation of supreme truth, goodness, and beauty of which perfect
happiness essentially consists.
Rousseau: “Education of man commences at his birth; before he can speak,
before he can understand he is already instructed. Experience is the
forerunner of the perfect”.
Pestalozzi: “Education is natural, harmonious and progressive development of
man’s innate powers”.
Froebel: “Education is enfoldment of what is already enfolded in the germ. It
is the process through which the child draws out his internal potentialities.
It is the cultivation of awareness, love, and independence of the child”.
T. P. Nunm: “Education is the complete development of a child so that he can
make an original contribution to human life according to the best of his
capacity”.
Rishi Aurobindo: “Education is helping the growing soul to draw out that is in
itself’’.
Rabindranath Tagore: “Education means enabling the mind to find out that
ultimate truth which emancipated us from the bondage of the dust and gives us
the wealth, not of things but of inner light, not of power but of love, making
this truth it’s own and giving expression to it”.
Mahatma Gandhi: “By Education, I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in
the child and man-body, mind, and spirit”.
UNESCO- “Education includes all the process that develops human ability and
behavior”.
A close study of these and other such definitions will reveal that the task of
Education is to ensure harmonious and balanced development of this in a power
of an individual by providing a nurturing and conducive environment for their
growth and development.
