The failure of such attempts, often in the form of being unable to account for various counter examples, has led many theorists to adopt less precise conceptions based on family resemblance.
Clarity about the nature of education is central for various issues, for example, to coherently talk about the subject and to determine how to achieve and measure it.
These goals are sometimes divided into epistemic goods, like knowledge and understanding, skills, like rationality and critical thinking, and character traits, like kindness and honesty.
Some theorists define education in relation to an overarching purpose, like socialization or helping the learner lead a good life.
Traditional accounts of education characterize it mainly from the teacher's perspective, usually by describing it as a process in which they transmit knowledge and skills to their students.
Some conceptions take both the teacher's and the student's point of view into account by focusing on their shared experience of a common world.
[5] Nonetheless, some attempts have been made to give a precise definition of the essential features shared by all forms of education.
While there is wide agreement that many forms of education fall under these three criteria, opponents have rejected that they are true for all of them by providing various counterexamples.
Following this line of thought, it has been suggested that definitions of education should limit themselves to a specific context without claiming to be true for all possible uses of the term.
[4] Many researchers have specifically this type of education in mind and some define it explicitly as the discipline investigating the methods of teaching and learning in a formal setting, like schools.
[16][17] The importance of providing an explicit definition is further increased by the fact that education initially seems to be a straightforward and common-sense concept that people usually use outside the academic discourse without much controversy.
This impression hides various conceptual confusions and disagreements that only come to light in the attempt to make explicit the common pre-understanding associated with the term.
According to John Dewey, education involves the transmission of habits, ideals, hopes, expectations, standards, and opinions from one generation to the next.
However, different thick definitions of education may still disagree with each other on what kind of values are involved and in which sense the change in question is an improvement.
Some theorists also include an additional category for stipulative definitions, which are sometimes used by individual researchers as shortcuts for what they mean when they use the term without claiming that these are the essential features commonly associated with all forms of education.
[22][23][24][20] The transmission of knowledge has a central role in this regard, but most accounts include other aims as well, such as fostering the student's values, attitudes, skills, and sensibilities.
[4][1] However, it has been argued that picking up certain skills and know-how without the corresponding knowledge and conceptual scheme does not constitute education, strictly speaking.
Skill-based accounts, on the other hand, hold that the goal of education is to develop skills like rationality and critical thinking.
For character-based accounts, its main purpose is to foster certain character traits or virtues, like kindness, justice, and honesty.
A few hold that, at least in the early stages of education, some forms of indoctrination are necessary until the child's mind has developed sufficiently to assess and evaluate reasons for and against particular claims and thus employ critical thinking.
Some theorists give their characterization mainly from the teacher's perspective, usually emphasizing the act of transmitting knowledge or other skills, while others focus more on the learning experience of the student.
In it, he considers education to be the transmission of knowledge and skills while emphasizing that teachers should achieve this in a morally appropriate manner that reflects the student's interests.
[7] Other theories aim to provide a more encompassing perspective that takes both the teacher's and the student's point of view into account.
Ideally, this process is motivated by curiosity and excitement on the part of the students to discover what there is and what it is like so that they may one day themselves become authorities on the subject.
This conception can be used for answering questions about the contents of the curriculum or what should be taught: whatever the students need most for discovering and participating in the common world.