A Critique of the Meaningfulness of the Term "Education" and Presenting Some Alternatives to It

Throughout the history of Islamic education, educational concepts in the Qur'an and narratives have been introduced in various terms. However, today, the term "education" has become outstanding among the concepts related to human growth and excellence, and educational concepts have been strictly confined to this term. This paper critically studies the meaningfulness of the word "education (tarbiat)" in the two axes of the literal meaning and the historical identity of the term, and then the terms "refinement (tazkiye) " and "discipline (ta’dib)" are introduced and analyzed as alternatives to the term "education”. The results show that from the literal meaning of the word "education", lofty concepts on human excellence cannot be derived; moreover, this term has only had a marginal role in the history of the Islamic education's thoughts; whereas the term "refinement”, in terms of its literal meaning and application in religious texts, has more richness than the word "education", and in the Qur'an, the terms "education and refinement" have been used instead of the term "education". Moreover, compared to "education", the term "correction" has a more reliable historical identity and has been dominant in the texts on Islamic education for about twelve centuries.