by Peta Ealing Cameron

Created on: December 08, 2010   Last Updated: December 09, 2010

Education is of the utmost importance in life; it can be many things to many people. To understand the meaning of the word education, we must first go back to the basics of any learned skill.

The human brain, amongst those of other primates, is capable of storing information which is acquired through a series of cognitive thoughts. In other words it is: knowings.

If we were to examine a dictionary for the meaning of thought, we would see the variety of explanatory references to its meaning: opinion, deliberation, feeling, consideration, attention, reflection, idea, and notion.

The dictionary refers to the word education as: learned well-read, knowledgeable, scholarly, teaching, culture, and intellectual.

If we look as far back as our primal ancestors, we can assume that when a newborn arrived, it was nurtured and then taught the skills of survival in the world into which it was born. Survival skills such as foraging for food, defense from predators, and comforts such as shelter were recognizable through learning from what our birth environment provided us with.

To look beyond this point in time is to acquire learned skills to help us become productive humans and to live to the best of our ability, a happy life as a contributor to the bigger picture: Planet Earth.

If we take the word "teaching," another reference in the dictionary to the word education, then it is imperative to pass on skills we learn, to share them with other human beings throughout life.

Thus we can deliberate the fact that sooner or later, the practice of education comes back to the basics: teaching skills, therefore allowing interaction and understanding of each other.

The world today, in 2010, appears to be slowly coming to the realization of just how important all forms of education truly are.

Education starts in the cradle. If environmental factors do play a huge role in the formation of the cognitive thought process, then, can we assume that human emotion is derived through the sensory connection with our parental source? It is a known fact that humans require some form of love, comfort, and nurturing, not only to allow for stability of existence, but to gain an understanding of themselves and others.

Environmental factors may be one prominent cause for lack of education, yet regardless of our education, we are all, at some point in our lives, students and basic teachers.

Differences between cultural beliefs play a huge role in the interactions of education in the world today. With so

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