“The word "educate" is closely related to the word "educe." In the oldest pedagogic sense of the term, this meant a drawing out of a person something potential or latent.”
Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: We have framed... some questions which in our judgement, are responsive to the actual and immediate as against the fancied and future needs of learners in the world as it is (not as it was). … There seemed to be little doubt that, from the point of view of the students, these questions made much more sense than the ones they usually have to memorize the right answers to in school. Contrary to conventional school practice, what that means is that we want to elicit from the students the meanings that they have already stored up so that they may subject these meanings to a testing and verifying, reordering and reclassifying, modifying and extending process. In this process the student is not a passive "recipient"; he becomes an active producer of knowledge. The word "educate" is closely related to the word "educe." In the oldest pedagogic sense of the term, this meant a drawing out of a person something potential or latent. We can after all, learn only in relation to what we already know. Again, contrary to common misconceptions, this means that, if we don't know very much, our capability for learning is not very great. This idea — virtually by itself — requires a major revision in most of the metaphors that shape school policies and procedures.
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Neil Postman 106
American writer and academic 1931–2003Related quotes
Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 115
"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Mythical Phase: Symbol as Archetype
Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter I, Secrets Behind History
“The investigation of the meaning of words is the beginning of education.”
Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus, i. 17
“It is clearly absurd to limit the term 'education' to a person's formal schooling.”
Source: Education, Free & Compulsory
Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)
"Proclamation 3422 — American Education Week, 1961" (25 July 1961) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=24146<!-- Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project -->
1961
Context: The education of our people should be a lifelong process by which we continue to feed new vigor into the lifestream of the Nation through intelligent, reasoned decisions. Let us not think of education only in terms of its costs, but rather in terms of the infinite potential of the human mind that can be realized through education. Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our Nation.
