EDUCATION encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, positive judgment and well-developed wisdom. Education has as one of its fundamental aspects of imparting of culture from generation to generation.

Webster defines education as the process of educating or teaching .Educate is further defined as 'to develop the knowledge, skill, or character of..." Thus,from these definitions, the purpose of education is to develop the knowledge, skill, or character of students. Unfortunately, this definition offers little unless we further define words such as develop, knowledge, and character.

What is meant by knowledge? Is it a body of information that exists "out there" apart from the human thought processes that developed it? If we look at the standards and benchmarks that have been developed by many states or at E. D. Hirsch's list of information needed for Cultural Literacy, we might assume this to be the definition of knowledge. However, there is considerable research leading others to believe that knowledge arises in the mind of an individual when that person interacts with an idea or experience.

This is hardly a new argument. In ancient Greece, Socrates argued that education was about drawing out what was already within the student. (As many of you know, the word education comes from the Latin e-ducere meaning "to lead out. ") At the same time, the Sophists, a group of itinerant teachers, promised to give students the necessary knowledge and skills to gain positions with the city-state.

To make matters more complicated, theorists have made a distinction between the purpose of education and the functions of education. A purpose is the fundamental goal of the process-an end to be achieved. Functions are other outcomes that may occur as a natural result of the process- byproducts or consequences of schooling. For example, some teachers believe that the transmission of knowledge is the primary purpose of education, while the transfer of knowledge from school to the real world is something that happens naturally as a consequence of possessing that knowledge-a function of education. Because a purpose is an expressed goal, more effort is put into attaining it. Functions are assumed to occur without directed effort. For this reason it's valuable to figure out which outcomes you consider a fundamental purpose of education. Which of the following do you actually include in your planning?