Seeking the Meaning of Education

Cognition on education bears inevitably the nature of comprehensibility. This has been determined by social, historical and cultural characteristics in education. During or by the process of comprehension, the meaning of education is acquired. The meaning of education is the question of What is education? whose answer can be found in the circle of everyday language, and in the circle of educational theories. From the words and jargons relating to education, we can perceive peoples understanding and cognition on the sociality of education against the lively Chinese cultural background; while from educational theories on educational policies, we may perceive the sense of education, created by human beings. The educational meaning of everyday language circle is the deposit from the history of education, which is a succession of history and an illustration of the reality, which proves its practicality, which in turn proves the reasonability of reality. The educational meaning of theoretical circle lies in the fact that history is also succeeded by way of rationality, which involves criticism against reality, and whose greater inclination is to lead the educational reality towards future by dropping its burdens. To get an over-all comprehension on education we must build a bridge between the circle of everyday language and that of educational theories, to enable communication between general knowledge and theories, to build a chain linking history, reality and future, and to unite sensible logic with rational logic.