The Forgotten Roots of "Education"

It might be our only way to stay truly human in an automated world

Most people think they know what education means. You go to school, sit in classrooms, study textbooks, memorize facts, pass exams and somehow become "educated." But if we return to the etymological roots of the word education, we discover a story of two Latin words, both ancient, both powerful, and both in quiet opposition:

Educare, meaning "to raise," "to bring up," or "to train."

Educere, meaning "to lead out," "to draw forth," or "to bring out what is within."

Though these words sound similar, their nuances are radically different. Think of it like download vs upload. Educare is about filling, pouring content into someone. Educere is about drawing out what already lies within: the potential, the insight, the fire.

Unfortunately, most modern education especially in highly structured, exam-driven systems has favored educare. This is particularly true in post-colonial countries, where obedience and uniformity were tools of control.

Why Educare Dominates: Religion, State, and Control

Take Indonesia, for example. In many religious schools, educare becomes the dominant paradigm. Children are taught to memorize religious texts, repeat prayers, and answer theological questions with rehearsed answers. Doubt and questions are dangerous. Questions are disrespectful and of course thinking differently is punished.

This isn't just about Islam or any one religion. The issue is that this educare model treats students like empty vessels to be filled, rather than minds to be activated. It doesn’t encourage independent thought or critical reflection, both essential for developing wisdom.

Such training creates adults who are good at remembering rules, but ill-equipped to challenge them. And when people are raised this way, they often become:

• Easy to manipulate

• Afraid to challenge authority

• Reliant on structure

• Hostile to ambiguity or dissent

Misunderstanding Education

Most parents and teachers still equate education with discipline, memorization, and correctness. But this mindset is rooted in fear, fear of failure, fear of questioning, fear of standing out. And this fear kills curiosity, the engine of real learning.

Some progressive schools are pushing back. At some schools students give presentations instead of just taking tests. This is a shift toward educere. Why? Because presentation requires:

• Comprehension, not memorization

• Confidence, not compliance

• Synthesis, not regurgitation

That’s the beginning of real education. Not memorizing but understanding and expressing.

Can We Bring Back Educere?

The goal of education should never have been just to produce “good students”. It should be to cultivate independent thinkers, creative builders, and ethical challengers.

To do that, we must return to educere:

• Ask children what they think before telling them what to think.

• Teach them how to doubt, how to reason, how to disagree respectfully.

• Let them struggle, because struggle is where growth happens.

• Let them question, because questioning is where freedom begins.

We need to stop fearing that letting children think will make them rebels. If anything, not letting them think ensures they’ll become either conformists or cynics, both dangerous in their own ways.

So ask yourself, as a parent, teacher, or student:

Are you being taught to follow or to find?

Are you downloading... or uploading?

Are you being raised... or being drawn out?

Choose educere.That’s where the future and freedom lives.

Educare in Indonesian Religious Teaching and the Death of Critical Thinking

To understand how educare suppresses the intellect in religious teaching, especially in Indonesia, we need to look at what kind of education religious institutions tend to favor and why.

The Nature of Educare in Religion:

The word educare means “to rear,” “to bring up,” or “to mold.” This form of education is instructional, top-down, and didactic. Its purpose is to form individuals into a pre-existing mold, not to help them discover their individual insights or develop their reasoning power.

Religious institutions, especially when aligned with the state (as in Indonesia’s madrasah and public religious curriculum), almost always:

• Impose fixed doctrines as ultimate truths

• Reward obedience and memorization, not curiosity

• Promote fear-based moral control (e.g., hellfire, shame, social ostracization)

• Discourage inquiry that might challenge doctrine

In short, it’s not about what you think, it’s about what you repeat.

Let’s say a child asks, "If God is fair, why do some children die young while bad people live long?"

In a true educere classroom, that question would be a gift, a moment of philosophical awakening. The child would be encouraged to reflect, debate, imagine different perspectives, and explore.

In a typical educare religious classroom, however, that same question would likely receive:

• A formulaic answer: "We must accept God's will."

• A warning: "Don't ask such things, it shows weak faith."

• A dismissal or even punishment.

Thus, the mind is trained to distrust itself.

Why Educare Persists in Religion

In Indonesia, religious teaching is heavily institutionalized.

These institutions:

• Operate under centralized authority (ministries, religious councils, Majelis Ulama)

• Reflect a communitarian and hierarchical culture, where elders and clerics are unquestionable

• Use indoctrination to preserve group identity and control

• To such systems, educere is dangerous. A child trained to think critically might grow up and question:

• The logic behind religious mandates

• The moral hypocrisy of religious leaders

• The relevance of rituals

• The justice of divine laws applied selectively

This is why religious institutions often disguise indoctrination as "education". But it's not education, it's conditioning.

The Consequence: A Hollowed Mind

By the time a child reaches adolescence in this system :

• They know what to say but not what they believe, fear asking questions, lest it labels them as "sesat" (heretical)

• Their moral development is based on external fear (hell, sin, shame), not internal reason or empathy

• This creates adults who conform outwardly but suffer inwardly:

• Spiritually confused but afraid to admit it

• Ethically dependent on rules, not principles

• Unused to navigating moral ambiguity

• Easily manipulated by populist or extremist rhetoric

It’s important to say: religion doesn’t have to be this way.

There are theologians, philosophers, and mystics in Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc., who emphasize reflection, doubt, and inner experience, in other words, educere. For example:

• Sufi poetry invites interpretation, not dogma

• Mulla Sadra and Ibn Arabi promoted metaphysical thought in Islam

• Islamic Golden Age thinkers (Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Averroes) deeply engaged with logic, science, and philosophy

But most of these traditions have been buried in favor of rigid orthodoxy.

The Dilemma: Can Religion and Critical Thinking Coexist?

Yes, but only if the method of religious education evolves. The problem is not religion itself, but the way it’s often taught:

“Memorize, obey, do not question.”

This turns divine teachings into a tool of control, not transformation.

But religion can coexist with critical thought, if:

We shift the focus from control and conformity → to inner growth and moral reflection.

We encourage dialogue with the divine, not just recitation of the divine.

Islam actually invites reflection. The Qur’an repeatedly says:

“Do they not reflect?” (Afala tatafakkarun)

“Do they not reason?” (Afala ta'qilun)

“To those who listen and use reason…”

When religion becomes about memorizing and obeying, it becomes just another tool of power. But when religion is used to explore meaning, justice, mercy, purpose, and suffering, it becomes what it was always meant to be:

A mirror, not a muzzle. A compass, not a cage.

Educare in Secular Schooling

Most people assume that if a school isn't religious, it must be “free” or “modern.” But often, secular education is still deeply shaped by the logic of educare. The same problems persist, just dressed in different clothing.

The Educare Blueprint in Secular Schools

Despite the absence of religious content, the structure and culture of schooling in Indonesia (and many postcolonial nations) follow this pattern:

• A national curriculum dictated by the state

• Teachers viewed as unquestionable authorities

• Tests focused on memorization and repetition

• Students judged by conformity and obedience

• Creativity and questioning seen as disruptive or “kurang ajar”

• What this produces isn’t a critical thinker, but a well-trained follower. A “good student” in such a system is someone who:

• Gets high scores by repeating the “correct” answer

• Doesn’t ask “Why are we learning this?”

• Avoids controversy or uncomfortable topics

• Does not challenge the teacher or the textbook

  In other words: a product, not a person.

Roots of the Problem: Colonial and Bureaucratic Legacy

This style of schooling didn’t arise by accident. It was engineered, first by colonial powers, then by postcolonial states.

• The Dutch system (Hollandsche Inlandsche School, etc.) was designed to create clerks and administrators, not philosophers.

• After independence, the New Order (Orde Baru) under Suharto intensified centralization, moral obedience, and Pancasila indoctrination. Students were taught "how to be good citizens", not how to be thoughtful ones.

• Even in the present day, schools are evaluated by standardized test scores, not by student growth in moral courage, autonomy, or critical insight.

Educare wins. And educere remains a whispered ghost in the margins.

The Price We Pay

Because of this educational conditioning, society ends up with:

• People who fear mistakes, so they avoid exploration

• Workers who can execute tasks, but rarely innovate

• Voters who can be easily misled by slogans and emotional triggers

• Citizens who don't ask "Is this law just?" but only "Is this law official?"

This is how a country can have millions of “educated” citizens, yet remain vulnerable to corruption, populism, bigotry, and uncritical nationalism.

A Glimpse of Educere, A Hope.

In some schools the teachers let the students to speak, express disagreement, and ask questions, even ones that challenge the teacher. That is not normal in most schools. It is radical. It is educere.

In such a classroom:

• Children learn to trust their minds

• They see disagreement as a sign of engagement, not disrespect

• They develop autonomy, not dependency

• They begin to internalize the ability to evaluate what they hear, even from adults

In short,their students are being prepared for life, not just for tests. And that is beautiful.

The Teacher's Courage

Teachers in those schools are quiet revolutionaries. They’re likely working:

• Against an outdated curriculum

• Under pressure to meet bureaucratic benchmarks

• Without institutional reward (because they are not producing test-robots)

Yet they choose educere, because they believe children are more than vessels to be filled. They are minds to be awakened.

This kind of teacher plants seeds that may not bloom immediately, but will one day help those students:

• Resist peer pressure

• Think through moral dilemmas

• See through political manipulation

• Discover his own calling, not just chase careers for status

We’ve now seen how both religious and secular systems in Indonesia rely on educare, and why it matters that some individuals, teachers, parents, thinkers, are rediscovering educere.

Marx's Tripartite Education and Its Overlap with Educere Got Right (and Wrong)

Karl Marx was not only a critic of capitalism, he was also deeply concerned about human alienation, especially through the way we raise, train, and school people. His notes on education are less known but incredibly important.

In the General Rules of the International Workingmen’s Association (1864), Marx proposed:

Marx’s Tripartite Educational Model:

“The education of children must combine productive labour, intellectual instruction, and physical training.”

This threefold system was revolutionary.

Productive Labour (Manual/Technical Work)

Children should learn practical, material skills, farming, carpentry, engineering, textiles, coding, etc. Not to become a “worker” in the capitalist sense but to understand how the world is made, and how humans can shape it. It gives people dignity through creation, not just consumption

Connection to educere:

Manual training awakens the will and the body, reminding the child: You can build, repair, change, contribute. It draws out agency, the power to shape the world, not just exist in it.

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Intellectual Instruction (Cognitive Work)

Rigorous education in philosophy, science, history, language, logic, art, and the ability to analyze structures of power and knowledge. So students can understand the systems they are born into so they can develop critical consciousness, not just acquire information. To think in systems, contexts, and contradictions, dialectically. Here’s where educere shines, drawing out reason, reflection, and the habit of asking “why” rather than blindly accepting “what.”

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Physical Training (Embodied Awareness)

Daily attention to the body through sports, movement, health knowledge, and play. Because a human is not just a brain or a laborer, we are embodied beings. The alienation of modern education often ignores this physicality

Physical confidence = psychological resilience

Movement draws out inner coordination, balance, limits, and self-discipline. It connects mind to body, teaching that thinking and feeling are not separate.

What Marx Was Really After

Marx’s tripartite model wasn’t just about “being well-rounded.” It was about restoring the wholeness of the human being, which capitalism (and many education systems) had split into:

• Laborer (useful but unthinking)

• Scholar (book-smart but detached from life)

• Athlete (disciplined but not reflective)

Marx wanted education to reunite these fragmented selves.

Marx's idea was to prevent the separation between mental and manual labor and to create whole human beings who are self-aware and socially engaged. While Marx didn’t use the terms educare or educere, his vision leaned more toward educere developing a human’s potential by involving them fully in their growth, not simply training them to be workers or obedient citizens. This aligns perfectly with educere, the kind of learning that draws forth the entire human being, not just a specific function.

But even Marxist-inspired systems often failed in practice. Why? Because the state often replaced religion as the new authority. And so, education still became a means of control, not liberation.

What Happens When Tripartite-Educere Fails?

Let’s imagine the opposite, which is, sadly, the default in many systems. People don’t know how things are made; can’t fix or build; dependent on systems they don’t understand, they can’t think for themselves, fall for propaganda, slogans, or fake certainty and become disconnected from body, fatigued, anxious, impulsive, unable to regulate themselves

Sound familiar?

This is the world we live in.

• We are educated to serve systems, not understand or transform them.

• We are trained to memorize dead knowledge, not awaken living understanding.

• We are treated as brains on sticks, not whole humans.

When we talked about Marx we need to mention Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich, two giants who attacked traditional education altogether.

Paulo Freire: "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"

Freire (Brazilian educator, 1921–1997) saw education as a political act. His core idea is the “banking model” of education exactly what educare can become when corrupted.

The Banking Model:

• The teacher “deposits” knowledge into passive students.

• Students are “empty containers” to be filled.

• There is no dialogue, no questioning, no real thinking.

Result? Obedient citizens who don’t challenge injustice.

Freire hated this. He said education should not be a tool of oppression, but a process of consciousness-raising (conscientização).

His alternative: Dialogical Pedagogy

• Teachers learn from students, too.

• Students are encouraged to analyze their own lives and conditions.

• Learning should provoke reflection, action, and transformation.

“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity... or it becomes the practice of freedom.”

Freire was educere to the core. But more than that he made education a weapon of liberation.

Ivan Illich: "Deschooling Society"

Illich (Austrian philosopher, 1926–2002) went even further.

He said: the entire institution of school-even so-called "good schools"-is inherently flawed.

His core critique:

• Schools create dependency.

• They label people as “educated” or “uneducated.”

• They reinforce hierarchies (teacher above student, certificate above lived knowledge).

• People begin to believe that learning only happens in school, not in life.

Illich proposed a radical vision:

A society without formal schooling, where people learn through networks, communities, self-directed exploration, and mutual aid.

He didn’t want better schools, he wanted the death of schooling as a system. His ideas are foundational to unschooling, deinstitutionalized learning, and even some aspects of the open-source and digital learning movements today.

Make education liberating through dialogue and critical thinking

Two key Marxist thinkers help deepen the connection even more:

Antonio Gramsci – Cultural Hegemony

Said schools help the ruling class maintain control not through violence, but through “common sense” values: obedience, nationalism, religious piety.

Education under capitalism, he said, turns people into “intellectual workers” who never question their conditions.

That’s educare serving ideology.

Louis Althusser – Ideological State Apparatuses

Schools, churches, media: these all serve to reproduce ideology without using force. Education becomes a way to produce “docile bodies” who reproduce capitalist society.

That’s educare functioning as system maintenance.

Educere as Liberation from Alienation

Educare produces alienation:

• From ourselves (“I’m only worth my grades”)

• From others (“I must compete, not collaborate”)

• From the world (“I just follow rules, not ask why they exist”)

But educere, especially educere guided by Marx’s vision leads to:

Alienated Self → Liberated Self

Passive receiver → Active seeker

Fragmented being→ Integrated person

Tool of others → Author of life

Consumer → Creator

This isn’t romantic idealism. It is the most urgent task of our time.

If we want education that draws people out of their inner prison, we must:

• Reject schools that only reward conformity

• Fight for curricula that include ethics, logic, history of ideas

• Encourage doubt, complexity, and discomfort in learning

• Let children make, break, fail, and rebuild

• Treat the body as part of learning not a distraction from it

• Show by example what it means to be curious, courageous, and consistent

These modern version do make big changes:

• Socratic method

• Open-ended questioning

• Montessori, Waldorf

• Critical pedagogy (students question power structures)

The belief:

“Students already have something valuable inside. Let’s help it emerge.”

So Which One Is Better?

Neither is absolutely better, it depends on goals, context, and values.

Those teachers, by letting their students to question, disagree, speak is not just teaching.

They are helping liberate a mind. They are a guardian of educere in a world ruled by educare.

They are not raising a student, they are helping unearth a person.

In the Age of AI: Why Educere Matters More Than Ever

Now, here we are in the age of artificial intelligence.

Machines can:

• Memorize entire libraries

• Analyze data faster than any human

• Follow instructions perfectly

If your education only trained you to do what machines can now do better, then yes, you should be worried.

That fear many people feel about AI? It's not about AI itself.

It's the ghost of their own inadequate education catching up to them.

They were trained to follow orders, not to question them. They were praised for obedience, not for insight and were taught what to think not how to think.

The insecurity many people feel about AI often doesn't make sense when looked at rationally.

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AI doesn't replace people, it replaces patterns.

If someone's job consists of predictable, repeatable tasks (like data entry, basic summaries, formulaic decisions), then yes, AI can do that. But even in those cases, it's not the person being replaced; it’s the narrow way they were trained to work.

Many people were taught to:

• Follow instructions.

• Avoid mistakes.

• Fit into rigid molds.

• They were trained like tools, not nurtured like thinkers.

The fear is emotional, not intellectual.

People aren't afraid of AI per se, they’re afraid of being exposed.

• Exposed for not knowing how to adapt.

• Exposed for never having learned how to think independently.

• Exposed for being shaped by a system that only valued obedience.

This isn't a personal failure. It's a systemic failure, from schooling to employment.

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Those who understand “educere” see AI differently.

To someone trained to draw out their potential, AI is a tool, not a threat.

They think:

"How can I use this to go deeper?"

"How can this help me teach better, write better, think clearer?"

AI becomes amplification, not competition.

So the real danger is not AI. It’s refusing to evolve, refusing to reclaim educere.

“You’re Not Afraid of AI. You’re Afraid of Being Replaceable”

The age of AI is not a threat to thinkers. It’s a threat to unquestioning followers.

You feel replaceable because you were never taught to be irreplaceable. It hurts yeah?

The goal of education should never have been just to produce "good students." It should be to cultivate independent thinkers, creative builders, and ethical challengers.

To do that, we must return to educere.