Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education

Front matter

palgreve macmillan

Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education

Barry Chazan

Prologue

I have a thousand reasons to treasure Barry Chazan as a longtime leader and fellow laborer in vineyards of education, where so many of us struggle to get our art and craft right so we can serve our students well.

Fortunately, I don’t need to enumerate all my reasons in this brief Foreword. This book—a gift from Barry’s mind and heart to educators of every sort—sums them up ina single line found in the Epilogue: “I believe that education is the process whereby we become human.” He goes on to illumine that core belief with affirmations like these:

I believe that the subject of education is the person. I believe a person is someone whose enhancement, development, well-being and dignity are the ultimate aim of existence. I believe the educator is a person of ultimate faith, ultimate doubt, and ultimate courage whose calling is to help the young learn how to learn.

Barry’s focus on the personhood of both the student and the teacher is a radical statement in a world where education is often regarded as no more than a path to economic success. The commodification of education—and of those whom we educate—is one root of many of our troubles. We turn out graduates whose only aim is to maximize their market value, graduates who have no idea what “the examined life” is all about, graduates who have no capacity to be exemplars of humankind’s “better angels” or critics of its “lesser angels.”

When we treat students as objects that need to be shaped for market appeal, we turn out graduates who objectify the world. That means vii vill PROLOGUE business folk who have no problem gaming consumers and the economy for fun and profit; doctors who treat their patients like broken machines to be fixed; and citizens who make “difference” into “otherness,” making it far too easy to hate. This is a book that can help return education to its ancient mandate to expand the human mind and heart and help build the Beloved Community.

Barry Chazan is an analytic philosopher. So this book is bright with intellect, as Barry strives to bring more clarity to our professional discourse. But his is not a detached intellect: I experience him as a scholar who knows how to “think with the mind descended into the heart.” Only from that heart-place can the power of intellect be put at the service of the human possibility. Only from that heart-place can we become educators who help our students to become more fully human.

Barry Chazan’s lifetime of work, as crystallized in this book, will help everyone who teaches come closer to fulfilling that vision.

Madison, WI, USA Parker J. Palmer

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My life has been shaped by interactions with words, nature, and human beings. I would like to thank everyone that I have taught and everyone who has taught me—I have learned from each of you. I would like to thank the person who has known me the longest—my brother Robert Chazan, a distinguished medieval historian and one of the shaping figures of Jewish studies in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American academic life. This very distinguished big brother and friend and wife Saralea and their remarkable clan are treasured family and sources of great wisdom and joy.

Over the years, I have been blessed with dear friends, and I would like to thank Janet Aviad, my oldest friend since college walks near Grant’s Tomb, Andy Griffel, Richie Juran, Zohar Raviv, and Michael Soberman, all of whom have helped me to see myself and the world more clearly. Erika Vogel has guided me through the publication of four books over the past few years and has become a colleague, friend, and teacher.

I would like to thank longtime colleague Professor Len Saxe of Brandeis University and Professor Michael Feuer, my Dean at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development, for their wisdom, intelligence, and support of my work. My academic partner, colleague, and friend of over 20 years Professor Ben Jacobs has occupied a central position in my thinking, teaching, research, and life. He is a gem of a person and educator, and it has been my luck to be able to partner with him on so many projects related to our shared passions for education and life.

x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I enjoy words, but there probably are not enough words to describe my admiration and affection for Parker Palmer who wrote the prelude to this book. Parker is a more recent friend although his books, words, and mind have been shaping me for years. I have had the pure joy of being able to spend time with him over these past few years and this is a privilege I could only have dreamt about.

I am grateful to Nadia Jacobson for her super editing of this book and for her uncanny ability to sometimes know my mind better than me. Milana Vernikova of Palgrave Macmillan Press is a true professional to whom I am very grateful for her wise guidance and constant goodwill.

I have five remarkable children spread over diverse locations and age cohorts, each of whom is a unique treasure. In truth, Shai, Tali, Idan, Adi, and Lia, individually and together, have been the dearest teachers I have known. Idan and Adi have read several chapters of this book, (Adi has also aided me in many technical details) and any good ideas are theirs!

This book is for Anne Lanski, my dear and beloved wife of over two decades. Anne is a remarkable partner, mother, leader, educator, and human being—and all of this is done with her unmatched humility and authenticity.

Anne, this is for you!

Contents

1 The Journey

2 What Is “Philosophy of Education”?

6 What Is “Contemporary American Jewish Education”? 7 What Is “Informal Jewish Education”?

CHAPTER 1 The Journey

Abstract The goal of this book is to analyze the meanings of core terms used in the discussion of education and Jewish education and to conclude with an educator’s credo.

Keywords Philosophy ° Education ¢ Jewish education

This book will lead you on a journey into the magical kingdoms of education and Jewish education. Our travels will take us on the highways and byways of questions, ideas, visions, and practices related to these wonderful dominions. The questions we shall encounter have been discussed by thoughtful and wise people throughout the ages, and they continue to be central to our lives as parents, educators, and students. There are three terms central to our journey: “philosophy”; “education”; and “Jewish education”.

The word “philosophy” refers to the love of wisdom; namely, the systemic activity of utilizing the intellect to explicate life’s “big questions”. While often associated with sagely looking bearded males wearing flowing robes, philosophy is actually a quality and technique that can be used by people of all ages, genders, and garb to examine important issues.

The word “education” refers to a practical activity that has been part of the human experience throughout the ages. Philosophers of education,

© The Author(s) 2022 1 B. Chazan, Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education, https: //doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83925-3_1 educators, parents, and children of all ages try to understand the diverse meanings of the phenomenon called “education” and its implications for daily life. Indeed, the activity of reflecting on what education is and how it works constitutes one of humankind’s oldest and most important preoccupations.

The phrase “Jewish education” refers to the conscious effort of a group of people—described over the centuries alternatively as “a religion”, “a people”, “a civilization”, and “a “tribe”—to create and implement frameworks aimed at engaging their young and all of their members in the core ideas, values, and practices of that group.

The “compass” we shall use on our journey is the philosophic method, which is a technique dedicated to asking, discussing, and in many cases attempting to answer core questions of life. Philosophy of education draws upon the general skills of philosophy, but it is unique in that it is aimed at the framing, shaping, and implementation of educational practice. It is preoccupied with questions such as the following: “What does it mean to know?”; “How do people learn?”; “What are the goals of education?”; “Are educators gardeners who plant seeds and then watch them grow or sculptors who takes blocks of stone and chisel them into the form they desire?” It also attempts to consider how thinking might be translated into practical life.

Traveling on many roads over the years, both in the general and Jewish world, has enabled able me to meet a multitude of thinkers—Socrates, Rabbi Akiva, Maimonides, Augustine, Rousseau, the Baal Shem Tov, John Dewey, Martin Buber, and Carl Rogers—through their writings. In addition, it has been my unique good fortune to meet both in writing and in person some luminaries who influenced contemporary education—Erik Erikson, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Lawrence Kohlberg, Parker J. Palmer, and Israel Scheffler. My travels have been nourished and enriched by the committed educators and effervescent young people who constantly ask “beautiful questions” and often provide “beautiful answers” (indeed you may notice that I love questions so much that the titles of most of the chapters in this book are questions!).

In my wanderings, I have tried to be loyal to my chosen field of analytic philosophy of education whose purpose is to decode and explicate the frequent confusion caused by people trying to talk “at” rather than “together with” others. The raison d’être of the analytic approach to educational philosophy is to enable coherent discussion of educational issues, l THE JOURNEY 3 based on the assumption that a clear understanding of concepts enables us to have a more constructive conversation about education and its practices.

In Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 of this book, I discuss a variety of topics: analytic philosophy of education; key educational concepts; the moral situation and moral education; indoctrination; informal education; travel as education; and Israel education. While I propose to remain loyal to the credo and value of the analytic mode, I have come to believe that there is a time and a place for both questions and answers. Therefore, the book’s epilogue is an essay of one educator’s credo, in which I—with a hefty dose of awe and trembling—present some of my answers to the questions that I have heard over the years while being “on the road”.

Our first chapter begins with the discussions of several meanings of the phrase “philosophy of education” and what this means for the practical world of the educator. Welcome aboard and thanks for joining me on this ride!

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

CHAPTER 2 What Is “Philosophy of Education”?

Abstract Philosophy of education refers to the systematic process of understanding and explicating key concepts related to educational practice. Analytic philosophy of education is a contemporary approach to this task and is the technique used in this book to explain key educational concepts.

Keywords Prescriptive ° Descriptive ¢ Analytic Philosophy of Education

Over the years, many have been the committed educators and teachers I have met on the long highway of education who have said to me, “I am a practical person, I simply don’t have a philosophical mind.” The word “philosophy” frightens many people who believe that it requires special knowledge, it is ethereal and incomprehensible, and it focuses on the most abstract ideas and concepts of classical theories and thinkers.

In fact, “philosophy” and “the philosophy of education” refer to one of the oldest and most basic of human endeavors—thinking and pondering about basic and core ideas of life such as “How was life created?”?; “What is the right thing to do?”; “What does it mean to think about thinking?”;

Adapted from Barry Chazan. The Language of Jewish Education (Hartmore House) 1978.

© The Author(s) 2022 5 B. Chazan, Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education, https: //doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83925-3_2

“How do we learn?”; and “What is death, why does it happen and what happens?”

From the earliest of human narratives, fables, and stories until the most recent of video games, children’s books, and graphic novels, thinking about “big issues” is at the heart of the human condition. Indeed, it is not by accident that twentieth-century philosopher Gareth Mathews wrote books entitled Philosophy and the Young Child (Matthews 1980) and The Philosophy of Childhood (Matthews 1994) and that cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga published a book entitled, The Ethical Brain. (Gazzaniga 2009), and contemporary child psychologist Allison Gopnik wrote The Philosophical Baby (Gopnik 2009).

The term “philosophy” refers both to the categorial organization of the many diverse types of questions that we human beings ask and to the process of reflecting on these issues in organized and systematic ways. Thus, the term metaphysics is used to describe questions about the nature of being; epistemology refers to questions about how we know; ethics (or axiology) focuses on questions about what is right or wrong or good or bad; logic is the study of patterns and methodologies of rules of inference; and aesthetics reflects on the nature of beauty. There is also an organizational structure within philosophy, which utilizes the philosophic method to help us deal with professions or spheres of activity which are practical in nature such as medicine, law, or architecture. One of the most prominent forms of this category of philosophical method focused on practical activities is philosophy of education, which is the subject of this book.

One may well ask, “Why study philosophy?” One answer is that we brought this upon ourselves—as described in the philosophical book of Genesis—when the human obsession to eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge resulted in our being sentenced to exile (“east of Eden”) and to wander forever seeking “to know”. Seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes said in answer to the question “Why study philosophy?” that it was rooted in the nature of being human—we are homo sapiens—which he succinctly summarized as cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am.

A different answer suggests that thinking and philosophic reflection are connected to the idea of “wonder” or “radical amazement” (Heschel 1976)—the amazement that greets us when we wake up in the morning and see a sunny day or a smiling face or a child’s query about how airplanes stay in the sky or why seesaws go up and down. Nineteenth-century English poet William Wordsworth suggested that philosophy begins with

2 WHAT IS “PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION” 7 children and that “the child is the father of man” (Wordsworth 2018) and twentieth-century Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai mused that “God has mercy on kindergarten children/but less and less as they grow/and on adults He has no mercy at all”! (Alter 2015).

PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The dominant practice to pursuing and teaching philosophy of education in twentieth-century American academic departments or schools of education typically fell into two categories. One category focused on the presentation and comparisons of diverse philosophies of education that developed over the ages. This category concentrated on specific theorists—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William James, John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Nel Noddings (Reed and Jackson 2000)—and/or it organized diverse educational philosophies into distinctive categories (e.g., perennialism, essentialism; utilitarianism; constructivism; progressivism; existentialism). The purpose of these historical and comparative overviews was to help prospective educators understand diverse viewpoints about the theory and practice of teaching.

A second practice in teaching philosophy of education focused on instructors presenting an integrated normative philosophy which they regarded as reasonable, intelligent, and worthwhile for the practice of education. Perhaps the best examples of this practice were the remarkable courses on philosophy of education presented by John Dewey in the first half of the twentieth century at Teachers College, Columbia University, which were ultimately collected, transcribed, and edited by his students and emerged as a profound book on democracy and education (Dewey 1997). Dewey utilized the tools of philosophy to weave together and present an integrated convincing educational philosophy to guide young, and not-so-young, educators through their work in schools. I was to discover a third approach to philosophy of education—the analytic approach—by traveling on highways between New York-Boston-New York!

A Roap TAKEN

Many decades ago, as I began to pursue travels on the road to a career in philosophy of education, my journey took me on New York to Cambridge, Massachusetts. to meet with a shaping figure of twentieth-century philosophy of education, Israel Scheffler of The Harvard Graduate School of

Education. Scheffler, along with British colleague R. S. Peters, had become the central figures in shaping a new and different approach to the study and teaching of philosophy of education called “the analytic” or “linguistic” philosophy of education (Scheffler 1960; Jonas Soltis 1978). They did not aim to preach what the goals of education should be, what we should teach, or advocate or how we should teach, but instead they focused on the way we talk about education.

The assumptions of analytic philosophy of education are: (1) words matter and precision in the use of words in educational discourse matters a lot; (2) much of the discussion of “education” is confused and unclear because there is no consensus or agreement on such core educational terms as “teaching”, “learning”, and “knowing. If educators could arrive at some shared agreement and clarity about such words, it would greatly facilitate discussion and minimize confusion. (3) It is necessary to clarify and analyze diverse types of educational terms which include stipulative, programmatic, and descriptive definitions in order to understand what the speaker’s intention is in using the words he or she uses. The analytic philosopher of education wants to understand the distinctions between such phrases as “knowing how”, “knowing that”, “thinking that”, and “thinking about”. What is the difference between knowing that there are 50 states of the United States as compared to knowing how to swim? What is the difference between teaching that George Washington was the first President of the United States and teaching someone how to think? The assumption of this approach is that words often express diverse meanings, and through an analysis of common language we might be able to understand diverse usages, meanings, and ultimately practices in teaching, learning, and education.

Therefore, rather than focusing on the promulgation of normative or ideological theories of education, the analytic philosopher of education clarifies the way words are used in education, based on the belief that many of the confusions about education are linguistic rather than ideological. The intention of this approach is not to preach a particular or personal vision, but rather to improve the clarity and mutual agreement of core terms in educational discussion.

2 WHAT IS “PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION” 9

I CAME FOR A VISIT AND STAYED FOR A LIFETIME

That visit at Longfellow Hall in Cambridge was to lead me to Dodge Hall at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York where I become a disciple of one of Israel Scheffler’s prime students, named Jonas Soltis. The methodology of Scheffler and Soltis seemed to me to make a lot of sense and to be extremely useful in practice. I cared deeply about education, I wanted to make a difference, and I wanted to know what I could do to make a difference. My teachers taught me that I could potentially make a contribution to education by improving the way we talk about it. What was needed was not more sermons from on high, but clear, understandable, and agreed-upon language so as to enable reflective practitioners to shape the course of their practice.

So off I went to be an analytic philosopher of education—and indeed much of my work discussed in the coming chapters reflects this approach to clearer talking and thinking. This method was to guide my work in the world of education at diverse universities, in a variety of countries, and in multiple roles. I came to realize that a certain percentage (sometimes a great percentage) of the confusion about education was not about intrinsic issues but of a linguistic nature. This approach to educational language coalesced with my ongoing engagement with and love of words in poetry and literature (Oz & Oz-Salzberger 2014). My academic roots in Cambridge, Massachusetts and in the Upper West Side of New York led me to many venues, from New York to Jerusalem to Caracas to Melbourne to London, and to other stops in between, where my concern was to try to facilitate clear discussions of the language of education.

APPLYING THE METHOD

This book comes to apply the linguistic methodology to issues dealing with the meaning of the word “education” in general education and Jewish education. The assumption explicit in my approach is the belief that one can only understand the specific term “Jewish education” within the broader context of the general term “education”. At the same time, we must take into account that the term “Jewish education” refers to a specific and sometimes quite different kind of education, which has a long and laudatory tradition of its own.

Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of this book deal with the analysis of general educational concepts, while Chaps. 6, 7, 8, and 9 focus on educational concepts specific to Jewish education. My intent is not to present a history of philosophy of Jewish education nor of general education but to help us understand how to talk about and, hopefully, implement education in a clear and cogent manner.

THE Roan Not TAKEN

Has the twentieth-century linguistic analytic approach played a role in contemporary Jewish education? The answer is short and—for those who see value in the analytical approach—not sweet. I believe it is fair to say that the analytic approach has had little influence on contemporary Jewish education.! This is not to say that twentieth-century Jewish education was neglectful of the philosophy of Jewish education nor that distinguished philosophers did not make use of aspects of analytical thinking. Indeed, twentieth-century American Jewish education has been enriched by the writings of a group of significant normative philosophers of Judaism who in various ways referred to Jewish education. German-Israeli philosopher Martin Buber wrote a series of significant essays on education and national education (Buber 1947). While Abraham Joshua Heschel’s writings focused mainly on Jewish theology, he did, in various contexts, comment on issues related to Jewish education (Heschel 1966). Mordechai Kaplan devoted two chapters of his magnum opus, Judaism as a Civilization, to theoretical and practical issues related to Jewish education (Kaplan 2010). One of the most prominent voices of contemporary Jewish thinking, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (“The Lubavitcher Rebbe”) is perhaps the most prolific writer on the role of education in life, in general, and in Jewish life in particular in his many decades of teaching, speeches, and writings (Solomon 2000; Wexler et al. 2019; Solomon 2020). It should also be noted that contemporary Jewish academics rooted in philosophy of education such as Hanan Alexander (Alexander 2001, 2012, 2015), Jon Levisohn (2005, 2009, 2013), and Michael Rosenak (1987, 1995) have made important contributions to the field.

ON THE ROAD

Now that I have framed an approach that I believe has much to contribute to Jewish education, in the next chapters I will apply this approach to a series of core questions I have heard in many places and in many venues on this exciting highway.

2 WHAT IS “PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION” ll

NOTE

1. B Chazan “Analytic Philosophy of Education; the road not taken” in. H. Miller, L. Grant and A. Pomson, editors. International; Handbook of Jewish Education. (Springer) 11-28.

Alexander, Hanan. with Ayman Agboria. 2001. Reclaiming Goodness: Education and the Spiritual Quest. (University of Notre Dame Press).

Alexander, Hanan. 2012. Commitment, Character and Citizenship; Schooling in Liberal Democracy. (Routledge).

Alexander, Hanan. 2015. Reimagining Liberal Education; Affiliation and Inquiry in Democratic Schooling. (Bloomsbury).

Alter, Robert, editor. 2015. The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai. (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux).

Buber, M. 1947. “Education” and “The Education of Character”: in Between Man and Man. (Routledge Paul).

Dewey, John. 1997. Democracy and Education. (Free Press).

Gazzaniga, Michael. 2009. The Ethical Brain. (Dana Press).

Gopnik, Alison 2009. The Philosophical Baby. (Farrer, Straus and Giroux).

Heschel, A. J. 1966. “Jewish Education” in Heschel, A. J. The Insecurity and Freedom: Essays on Human Existence. (Jewish Publication Society).

Heschel, A. J. 1976. “Jewish Education” in Heschel, A. J. The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence. (Jewish Publication Society).

Kaplan, M. (2010). Judaism as a Civilization. (Jewish Publication Society).

Levisohn, Jon. 2005. “How to do Philosophy of Religious Education” Religious Education, 90-101.

Levisohn, Jon. 2009. “From the Integration of Curricula to the Pedagogy of Inquiry: Journal of Jewish Education.

Levisohn, Jon with Susan Fendick. 2013. Turn It Over and Turn It Again.: Studies in the Teaching and Learning of Classical Jewish Texts. (Academic Studies Text).

Matthews, Gareth. 1980. Philosophy and the Young Child. (Harvard University Press).

Matthews, Gareth. 1994. The Philosophy of Childhood. (Harvard University Press).

Oz, A. and Oz-Salzberger, F. 2014. Jews and Words. (Yale University Press).

Reed, R. and Jackson, T., editors. 2000. Philosophical Documents in Education. (Longman).

Rosenak, N. 1987. Commandments and Concerns: Jewish Education in Secular Society. (Jewish Publication Society).

Rosenak, M. 1995. Roads to the Palace: Jewish Texts and Teaching. (Berghahn Books).

Scheffler, I. (1960). Language of Education. (Charles Thomas Publishers).

Solomon, A. 2000. The Educational Teachings of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. (Jason Aronson).

Solomon, A. 2020. Spiritual Education: The Educational Theory and Practice of the Lubavitcher Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. (Herder and Herder).

Soltis, Jonas. 1978. An Introduction to the Analysis of Educational Concepts. (Addison-Wesley).

Wexler, H. et al. 2019. Social Vision: The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Transformative Paradigm for the World. (Herber and Herder).

Wordsworth, William. 2018. The Collected Poems of William Wordsworth. (Digireads.com Publishing).

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

CHAPTER 3 What Is “Education”?

Abstract Analytic philosophy of education focuses on clarifying such key terms as: “education”, “aims”, “goals”, “objectives”, “overt curriculum”, “covert curriculum”, “null curriculum”, “pedagogical content knowledge”. The understanding of these and other concepts is critical to enable contemporary education to be regarded as a truly professional domain.

Keywords Aims ° Goals è Objectives ¢ Pedagogic content knowledge

The world of education—like law, medicine, business, and other spheres— has its own unique language. A discussion of this language is important for principals and teachers, parents, and students in order to facilitate a clear understanding of what education is. In this chapter, I analyze and clarify some key terms with a view to promoting a coherent and more precise educational practice.

THREE Ways TO ANALYZE THE TERM “EDUCATION”

There are three kinds of definitions of “education” (Scheffler 1960). The first type is called the descriptive. It is a statement that proposes to denote or explain the nature of the meaning of the word called “education” by using a variety of words to explain either what the phenomenon is or how

© The Author(s) 2022 13 B. Chazan, Principles and Pedagogies in Jewish Education, https: //doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83925-3_3 l4 B. CHAZAN the term is to be understood. This type of definition claims to describe precisely how the word denoted as “education” is most prominently used.

The second type of definition of “education” is the programmatic, which comes to advocate for or prescribe a belief of what education should be or should do. A programmatic definition is less preoccupied with what the phenomenon or language of education is and more concerned with promulgating a particular practice of education that is regarded as desirable. Sometimes prescriptive definitions are expressed in short, clipped sentences such as Pink Floyd’s “We don’t need no education” or the title of Jonathan Kozol’s description of education as Death at an Early Age (Kozol 1985). Programmatic definitions are ultimately short slogans or deeply felt preaching about the way education should be.

The third type of definition is the stipulative and its purpose is technical and utilitarian. It is basically a linguistic agreement or pact that enables a discussion to proceed smoothly without forcing a person to each time state, “This is what I mean by the term ‘education.’” It is essentially is a linguistic shortcut, in which one person’s explanation of the word “education” is called Version 1; a second person’s explanation is Version 2, and the third interpretation is called Version 3. This is a kind of a shortcut that enables the discussion to precede at a decent pace.

My concern in this chapter is the descriptive mode, namely, the endeavor to arrive at a clear and generally agreed-upon statement of what the word “education” means. My aim is to refer to terms that are generally used in everyday speech and to attempts to search for viable and relevant definitions that reflect as accurately as possible the common language usage of the term. There is a technique that students and some academics use in the attempt to understand the term, namely, to trace it back to its original linguistic roots. There are times when this is helpful, but very often this can be misleading, since the way it once was used does not necessarily help us understand the way it is used today. The contemporary word “education” is sometimes traced to the Latin root educare, which means “to train” or “to mold”. Based on this linguistic root, some people like to argue that training or molding is what education today should be. At the same time, the Latin word educere means “to lead out”, which suggests a totally different understanding of “education” as a process aimed at that freeing the person from the prison of ignorance. Generally, it is my sense that the technique of tracing back to former linguistic roots is more useful for understanding ways in which terms were understood in the past rather than helping us to grasp what they mean today.