Education is the whole business of teaching and learning, from a first classroom to a last evening course. Not just school — the whole process.
The word covers the system, the experience and the result all at once, so a country has an education system, a person has a good education, and travel is said to be an education in itself. It divides into stages: primary, secondary, higher and further education. Adult education and continuing education carry the idea past childhood, which is the point the phrase lifelong education is making. The adjective is educational, and the verb is educate.
1nouneducationThe process of teaching and learning.
“She went back into education at forty.”
2nounknowledgeThe knowledge and training a person has received.
“He had a good education and made no use of it.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Education is a leading out. Latin ēdūcō means to lead forth or to draw out, and ēducātiō first meant the rearing of a child. The idea that teaching draws something out of a learner is sitting inside the word.
Proto-Indo-European
*dewk-
Middle French
éducation
Latin
ēducātiō
English, today
education
Built from
From Latin ēducātiō. Middle French éducation, from Latin ēducātiō (“a breeding, bringing up, rearing”), from ēducō (“to educate, train”), from ēdūcō (“to lead forth, to take out; to raise up, to erect”). See educate. Morphologically educate + ion.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA