Education vs. Manipulation: Key Differences Explained
Differences Between Educational and Manipulative Processes
Education is the set of actions and the influence exerted voluntarily by one being on another. An individual might learn to behave and actively work through negative reinforcement. However, such experience cannot be considered educational, even though there is learning. There are two criteria that lead to this disqualification. Studying practical cases of conditioning reveals that while these processes are used to learn, we are reluctant to classify conditioning processes as educational because of their incompatibility with two criteria:
- The way we have learned these provisions does not respect the dignity and freedom of the learner.
- There are serious doubts that the person is intellectually capable of organizing the reasons which lead them to act cooperatively.
Education is not accepted as learning a standard response induced by repeated stimuli that do not exercise the rational capacities of the subject or undermine their freedom or dignity. To define the terms related to others in its theoretical language fulfills three functions:
- Narrower what kind of phenomena we mean by a term.
- Set when we use a different term.
- Clarifying the criteria that allow us to distinguish between types with each other, to assert that we must apply either term as appropriate.
It would be ridiculous to say that a person is educated without learning anything. However, not all learning can be described as educational.
The Concept of Indoctrination
The concept of indoctrination has two basic criteria:
- The intention of the agent to introduce unshakable ideological convictions.
- The partiality of the content learned.
The concepts of indoctrination and conditioning have something in common. In both processes, the acquisition of new responses or behavior modification is driven and governed by an external agent without the learner truly mastering what they are trying to achieve in the learning process. This is the defining feature of the concept of manipulation. The criterion that separates handling processes from influence attempts is the learner’s awareness of what exactly is being done and what the real goal is to be achieved.
Instruction, Training, and Coaching
The first result of teaching and learning is to give instruction, where learning can be made without rational justification. When the teacher ignores the rationale, it means that in these cases, we speak of instruction, not indoctrination. These lessons can be the basis for further developing conceptual schemes themselves, learning that provides a rational justification.
There are also instructional processes, which are learning processes that do not require the development of conceptual schemes, although they can be the basis for further developments. These are training and coaching.
Training is learning to master a specific task, and specific, limited practice is essential to your domain. The development of conceptual schemes to explain the reasons behind procedures that are taught is postponed to the background. Training is used synonymously with Castilian training. Learning is an improvement as a result of personal effort.
Education vs. Training
Education refers to character and action, whereas training covers the understanding of oneself and the world. The three components of the latter concept are:
- The capacity for reflection.
- The ability of critical appraisal.
- The sensitivity to aesthetic values.
Finally, a criterion was set to separate the concepts of training and education. This is the criterion of content characteristic of the processes which we call education. With this component referring to utopian perfection, the discussion and determination inevitably introduces the use of discretion.