Comprehensively, so as to include
everything that must be included, and yet without undue vagueness, I
would define education as _the provision of an environment_. We may
amplify this proposition, and say that it is the provision of a fit
environment for the young and foolish by the elderly and wise. It has
really scarcely anything in the world to do with my trying to make you
pay for the teaching to my children of dogmas which I believe, and you
deny. It neither begins nor ends with the three R's; and it does not
isolate, from that whole which we call a human being, the one attribute
which may be defined as the intellectual faculty. It is the provision of
an environment, physical, mental, and moral, for the whole child,
physical, mental, and moral. That is my _definition_ of education. Now,
what are we to say of the _object_ of education? In providing the
environment--from its mother's milk to moral maxims--for our child, what
do we seek? Some may say, to make him a worthy citizen, to make him able
to support himself; some may say, to make him fit to bear arms for his
king and country; but I will give you the object of education as defined
by the author of the most profound and wisest treatise which has ever
been written upon the subject--Plato, Locke, and Milton not forgotten.
'To prepare us for complete living,' says Herbert Spencer, 'is the
function which education has to discharge.
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