The English word “education” comes from the Latin verb educare, and, most dictionaries will tell you, is related to another Latin verb educere. How exactly it is related most don’t say. The first verb educare has the same meaning as the English verb “to educate.” Lewis and Short says, “to bring up a child physically or mentally, to rear, to educate”, using the English verb in the definition of the Latin verb. The second verb educere comes from ex-out of + ducere-to lead, and means, again according to Lewis and Short, “to lead forth, draw out, bring out”
Often when looking into the meaning of “education”, people will relate it to this second verb educere-to lead out. Some however object that this shouldn’t be done. “One of the old chestnuts that textbooks on education often toss to their readers, usually on the first page or so, is the pious reminder that ‘education’ derives from the Latin, ‘to lead out.’” So says Albert Keith Whitaker in his book A Journey Into Platonic Politics: Plato’s Laws. He goes on, “But even a cursory examination of the etymology of ‘education’ should unsettle these claims. The old Romans rarely used educere in the sense of “to bring up or rear” (see Lewis and Short, s.v., II.A.4.b.(a)). Rather, they used the closely related but distinct verb educare. Educare may derive from educere in the unrecorded past. But in the best classical authors the terms stand distinct.”
It may be that the old Romans rarely used educere in the sense of “to bring up or rear”, but they did in fact use it that sense. And it is certainly true that “the two terms stand distinct” in the classical authors (whether the best or the worst, I don’t know). However a more than cursory examination of the meanings of the two Latin verbs, as they are defined in Lewis and Short, show why the two terms were distinct and why, after a time, the old Romans did not have to use educere to mean “to bring up or rear”: because educare is derived from educere. It grew organically out of it as a sense, until its meaning was important enough and used enough to merit its own word. Thus, without going through the whole process, we can get a snapshot of this development by looking at its last step: II, A, 4 “to assist at birth” as a midwife and “of birds, to bring out of the egg, to hatch”, moves into II.A.4.b.(a) “to bring up, rear, a child.” It is right then to trace the etymology of “education” through educare to educere which contains the concrete image of “leading out” upon which the meanings of the words derived from it, including educare and “education”, are founded.
In their definition of educare, Lewis and Short cite this example from Varro, “educit obstetrix, educat nutrix, instituit paedagogus, docet magister”, “the midwife draws forth, the wet nurse nourishes, the tutor trains, the teacher teaches.” Albert Keith Whitaker cites this as evidence of the distinction of the two verbs, which it is. But it also shows the continuity of the process of “leading out”, which begins with birth, and continues throughout the life of the person. This process we call education. It is a process, as evidenced by the whole array of senses given by Lewis and Short, that is, in each case, a movement from hiddenness to manifestation, from obscurity to clarity, from potency to act.
This, in any case, is how Socrates saw the process as we read in the Theaetetus:
Soc. Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women; and look after their souls when they are in labour, and not after their bodies: and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth. And like the mid-wives, I am barren, and the reproach which is often made against me, that I ask questions of others and have not the wit to answer them myself, is very just-the reason is, that the god compels-me to be a midwife, but does not allow me to bring forth. And therefore I am not myself at all wise, nor have I anything to show which is the invention or birth of my own soul, but those who converse with me profit. Some of them appear dull enough at first, but afterwards, as our acquaintance ripens, if the god is gracious to them, they all make astonishing progress; and this in the opinion of others as well as in their own. It is quite dear that they never learned anything from me; the many fine discoveries to which they cling are of their own making. But to me and the god they owe their delivery.
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