CONCEPT OF EDUCATION: CONFLUENCE OF DEFINITION CRITERIA, TEMPORARY FORMATIVE ORIENTATION AND COMMON ACTIVITY AS CORE CONTENT OF ITS MEANING

In this work, the purpose is to establish the need to go beyond the nominal definition of the concept of education and justify the existence of distinctive traits of the real definition of the term ‘education’ in character and sense inherent in its meaning, which must be taken into account at all times and places, whenever we carry out pedagogical intervention. It is about forming criteria on meaning of ‘education’ and importance of Pedagogy in the construction of education fields. Knowledge of education makes it possible to build fields of education over cultural areas, transforming information into knowledge and knowledge into education. And this requires executing pedagogical function with competence, establishing an educational relationship in which common activity is the working tool.


INTRODUCTION
It is a common observation that the true knowledge of things is only attained through the experience of its frequent use, since it allows us to get an idea of them and reach its meaning or understanding by means of a personal assimilation. This generally occurs in all kind of matters, but it is especially useful for the spheres of knowledge. That is why the understanding of the meaning of a term is a late and reflexive result more than an entirely a priori task without previous experience. I am writing this work from that conviction.
In general, every definition can be verified in a double way: as a nominal definition or as a real definition, depending on whether it focuses respectively on the word or name with which we designate a thing, or on the traits and particular characters of the thing which is designated.
The nominal definition offers the signification of a word, whilst the real definition expresses the distinctive and singular characters of the thing that we try to define.
It is usual, before elucidating the traits which are identified in the real definition, to consider the signification of the word with which we name it. The study of the word has been specified in the definition in two ways: attending to its origin and to its synonymy. The nominal definition has two modalities: etymological definition and synonymic definition. In the first case, the method which we use to express the signification of a term is resorting to its origin; in the second case, we reach its meaning by looking for its explanation by means of other more common voices and with a similar signification.
In this work, the purpose is to establish the need to go beyond the nominal definition of the concept of education and justify the existence of distinctive traits of the real definition of the term 'education' in character and sense inherent in its meaning, which must be taken into account at all times and places, whenever we carry out pedagogical intervention.
The development of this work can be summarised in the following theses:

THE STARTING POINT TOWARDS THE REAL DEFINITION OF EDUCATION IS IN THE COMMON USE OF THE TERM AND IN THE ACTIVITIES WHICH ARE CARRIED OUT
According to the principle of meaning, apart from discerning and defining, the real definition demands to understand, that is to say, it demands to know in a full sense: 1) to show the logical need for some characters or constitutive traits, 2) to reason theoretically and practically about its principles and 3) to measure the impression of reality which they transmit us. Therefore, it makes sense to affirm that the undefinition of meaning is a constant source of bad comprehension and of erroneous considerations. When the meaning is ambiguous, we interpret other people, other things and ourselves badly: we distort and misrepresent because of ambiguity (Dewey, 1998, p. 140).
From the perspective of the nominal definition and the finality related to the activities, 'educating' is basically to acquire a set of behaviours which qualify educatees to choose, to engage, to decide, to perform their personal life project and to construct themselves by using the axiological experience in order to give an answer to the demands that may arise in each situation according to the opportunities. It is a question of making educatees acquire knowledge, attitudes and skills-abilities-habits which qualify them to choose, to engage, to decide and to perform their projects by giving an answer to the demands that arise in each situation according to the opportunities, from every internal common activity: think, feel affectively, want, choosedo (operate), decide-act (project) and create (build by symbolising), and from every external common activity (game, work, study, profession, investigation and relationship) (Touriñán, 2014).
From the perspective of the nominal definition and the activity, it is affirmed that the educational activity is "educational" because its finality is to educate and it adapts meaning to the criteria of common use of the term, like any other entity which is defined nominally and is comprehensible.
The criteria of common use of the term and the criteria related to the activities allow us to discern and to relate the definition to the finality: the concept of education is demarcated whenever the criteria of common use of the term are fulfilled and the aim of educating is preserved.
This is necessary, but it is not enough if we want to make a real definition.

The Concept of Education Is
Nominally Related to Criteria of Common

Use of the Term
Today it is usual to listen to sentences that reflect the most common uses of education: is politeness outdated? Where is civic behaviour? Where is courtesy? Is it useful to respect social norms? Kindness is not rewarded, and it is not usual. Now, more than ever, ignorance is daring and it is excused as if it was naivety; "that boy does not seem to be educated; it is necessary to "polish him up", that is, it is necessary to make him better; this boy is badly brought up". All these sentences stress the most traditional statements of the common use of 'polite'.
The most traditional forms which the common use makes of the meaning of education come from our historical and collective experience; in very different authors and historical passages we find arguments which have been transmitted as collective cultural heritage and are part of the collective experience and the memory which identifies education in the following common uses: 1) education is courtesy; civic behaviour and urbanity; 2) education is material and spiritual upbringing; 3) education is improvement; 4) education is formation.
In short, the criteria related to the use of common language are grouped in four sections: criteria of content, form, formative use and balance (Esteve, 2010, pp. 21-28;Peters, 1969 andTouriñán, 2015 The educational process has to respect the educatees' dignity and freedom, because they are also the agents of their own development. If we do not achieve this, we are in process of instrumentalization c) Something is education because it obeys a criterion of formative use: those kinds of learning in which educatees repeat something that they do not understand and that they do not know how to use is not described as educational. Whether we speak about general formation or skilled formation, we speak about formation built on the principle of balanced education. If we do not achieve this, we do not educate, we are in process of specialism. It is true that, from an anthropological point of view, education is culture and, therefore, it makes sense to affirm that the function of the professional of education is to transmit culture.

Knowing, teaching and
But, if we also affirm that the educational terms have no own content, knowledge of the diverse cultural areas is converted into the axis of all pedagogical activity to the point that the same professionals of education accept that their training is simply knowledge of those cultural areas, and that knowing, teaching and educating would be the same thing. For me, by principle of meaning, knowing a cultural area is not teaching, because knowledge can be separated from action and teaching is not educating, because we can affirm that there are teachings that do not educate, based on the meaning of those terms (Touriñán, y 2017b; SI(e)TE, 2016).
Regarding to cultural areas, it is true that knowledge of the cultural area is a component of educative action, but knowledge of cultural area has a different role when we speak of "knowing a cultural area", "teaching a cultural area" and "Educating with a cultural area". What we say, is obvious, if we think of a specific case, because it is not the same "to know History", "to teach History" and "to educate with History", and so on with each area of experience which constitutes an object of teaching and field of education. Knowing, in the broad sense of performance identified with the expressions "I know what, I know how, and I know how to do", is not confused with teaching. Aptitudes and competences to know and aptitudes and competences to teach are not subsumed one into another, nor they do both empty the meaning of the expression "educate with" a cultural area (Touriñán, 2015(Touriñán, , 2019c(Touriñán, , 2018(Touriñán, y 2017a us to distinguish between "knowing History", "teaching History" and "educating with History", 1 Pedagogue is responsible for making the intervention with a specialized approach (look), in order to get a critical vision of his method and his actions, and with a specific mentality, in order to integrate theory into practice and solve the problem of educating in each interaction. Pedagogical mentality is a mental representation that the pedagogue makes of the action of educating from the perspective of the theory-practice relationship; refers, from the perspective of action, to the capacity of solving education problems which is attributed to the knowledge of education in Pedagogy, regarding each one of knowledge of education currents. Pedagogical mentality is a specific one. It is not a general one about life, but about education as a cognisable and attainable object. Neither is it a philosophical mentality about cosmovisions of the world, of life in general or about the diverse senses of way of life, nor should it be confused with the educational mentality which is adjusted to criteria of meaning and temporary formative orientation of educating. The pedagogical mentality is a mentality founded on education as an object of knowledge and therefore on the knowledge of education. Pedagogical approach (look) is the mental representation that the educational professional builds about their technical performance, that is, on their performance as pedagogical; it corresponds to the critical scope that the pedagogue has about his method and his acts; this critical vision is based on principles of intervention and principles of education. Pedagogical approach (look) is, therefore, a specialized one: it is focused on the problems of education and the technical competence of making a pedagogical approach depends on the knowledge of education which has been acquired. understood as a matter of cultural area which is part of the curriculum together with others and it has become from Pedagogy in an education field.
Field of education, as used in this context of argumentation, is not a physical space, but a concept derived from the educative valuation of the area of experience that we use as an instrument and goal of education. Education field is the result of the educative valuation of the area of experience that we use to educate and that is why are integrated, from Pedagogy, in the concept of field of education: the meaning of education, the intervention processes, the dimensions of intervention and the areas of experience and forms of expression along with in each technical acceptation of education field.
Field of education, which is always an expression of the cultural area valued as an object and instrument of education, integrates, as a concept, the following components: area of experience with which we are going to educate, convenient forms of expression to educate with that area, criteria of meaning of education reflected in character and sense traits inherent to the meaning of educating, general dimensions of intervention that we are going to use in education, educational processes that must be followed and technical acceptation of 'field', regarding education. Integrating these components is what makes the knowledge of education with each cultural area in order to speak with conceptual property of educating "with" a cultural area as a different concept of teaching a cultural area and knowing a cultural area which is part of the curriculum.
If we do not confuse knowledge of cultural areas and knowledge of education, it is not true that the teacher is a learner of the cultural areas that he teaches, nor is it true that necessarily the one who knows the most Art is the one who teaches it best, nor is it true that the one who best masters a skill is the one who best teaches another to master it, unless, tautologically, we say that the skill that masters is that of teaching, nor is it true that, when someone is teaching, it is always using cultural content as an instrument for achievement of character and sense proper of the meaning of education, because teaching is not educating. It is the objective of Pedagogy to transform information into knowledge and knowledge into education, building education fields from different cultural areas, and precisely for this reason we can say that Pedagogy is responsible for valuing each cultural area as education and constructing it as a "field of education" (Touriñán, 2020c; SI(e)TE, 2020). This is so, because each of these activities requires different competencies and skills for its mastery, and practice and perfection in one of them does not automatically generate mastery of the other. In logical rigour, it must be accepted that knowledge of education is, therefore, a specialized knowledge which allows to the pedagogue to explain, interpret and decide the appropriate pedagogical intervention for the cultural area that is the object of teaching and education, as the case may be.  (Quintana, 1988, p. 51;Berlo, 1979, pp. 209-228 and serve to create funds of personal knowledge (González, Moll, and Amanti, 2005). They are types of specific learning that affect the cognitive capacity, the information processing and the affective-emotional and social competence from the perspective of situated and meaningful learning (Novak, 1998;Díaz Barriga, 2006;Polanyi, 1978;Ausubel, 1982) Nothing of the nominal definition allows us to establish with certainty which will be the In short, we have to build the thought that allows us to justify that the educational activity is "educational", because: 1) it adjusts to the criteria of use of the term, 2) it fulfils the finality of educating in its activities and 3) it adjusts to the real meaning of that action, that is to say it adjusts to its typical traits of character and sense, like any other entity that can be defined and is understandable.

The Concept of Education Is
To be able to affirm that something is really educational and is education, we have to ask ourselves: • What we can do with all the activities to turn them into education?
• What we can do to make an artistic activity be educational?
• What we can do to turn a certain content of cultural area from information into knowledge and from knowledge into education?
• What we can do to teach a cultural area in some cases and to educate with the cultural area in other cases?
• What we can do to turn an area of cultural experience into a field of education? • · 4 1 · educate and on the distinctive traits of character and sense of education that qualify and determine its real meaning in each educative act. We are going to advance in this challenge by facing two issues: 1) the analysis of the activity as capacity, from the perspective of the pedagogical function and 2) the systematization of the character and sense traits of 'education' which determine and qualify its meaning.

ACTIVITIES
In education we carry out many actions in order to influence the educatee and achieve the educational result. They are always mediated actions of one subject with another or of a subject with himself. And all those actions, which must respect the condition of agent of the educatee, seek to provoke the activity of the educatee. In its most common use, 'activity' is understood as a state of activity, it is activity-state: activity is the state in which any person, animal or thing that moves, works or executes an action is found at the moment he is doing it (we say: this child is thinking). This use also refers to the capacity we have for action in that activity and this is why we can say the child has lost activity (now he thinks less, he has dropped). Because it is the most common use of the term 'activity' as state and capacity, we denominate it common activity and it occurs in all people because in all people there is activity as a state and as a capacity to do (Touriñán, 2014a and2020a for study, play, work, exploration, intervention and relationship. And they are external common activities, because they necessarily have a result to be obtained, which is external to the activity itself, but which is conceptually linked as a goal to the activity and characterizes it as an identitary trait. Hence, we say that studying is having and organizing written information "for" their mastery (mastering or knowing the subject of study); The domain-knowledge of the subject of study is the external result of the activity and this result is the finality which identifies the study, regardless of whether I can use the study to make a friend, to altruistically help another, to steal better, et cetera, which are uses of the activity as instrumental specifications of it .
As an external common activity, studying, for example, has its own purpose linked to that activity in a conceptual and logical way (the proper finality of studying is to master-know what is studied: information, content or the study technique itself). But, in addition, as an external common activity, studying can become a specified instrumental activity for other purposes, they are specified purposes and external to the activity itself, but linked to the activity of studying in an empirical or experiential way (studying becomes an instrumental activity specified, because we can study to steal, to make friends, to help another, to educate ourselves, et cetera) (Touriñán, 2019a).
It is a fact that common activities are used propaedeutically for educational aims, but they can also be used for other purposes. Common activities can be used to perform instrumental specified activities and they have propaedeutic value; they are preparatory for something later. And this is so, on the one hand, because everything that we use as a means in a meansend relationship, acquires the proper condition of the means in the relationship (the means is what we do to achieve the end and the end is a value chosen as the goal in the means-ends relationship) and, on the other hand, it is so, because the means shows its pedagogical value in the conditions that are proper to it, adjusting the means to the agent, the educational aims and the action, in each circumstance (Touriñán, 2020b).
From the perspective of internal common activity, we can say that activity is principle of education, because no one is educated without thinking, feeling, wanting, et cetera And from the point of view of external common activity, we can say that we do many activities whose purpose is to 'educate'. Always, from the perspective of the principle of activity as the guiding principle of education: we educate with activity respecting the condition of agent (Touriñán, 2015).
precisely because this is so, it is explained that the activity becomes the backbone axis-principle of education and represents the real sense of the meaning of education as an activity aimed at the use and construction of valuable experience to generate educated activity. We use the common activity to educate; we educate the appropriate competencies of the common activity and hope to get educated activity. In short, we use the activity in a controlled way to achieve educated activity and educate the activity through the appropriate skills .  (González Álvarez, 1947). Objectual correspondence implies that the method depends on the object or on the aspect of reality that we intend to know, therefore, it is true that the method cannot be formulated before undertaking the study of the object because a method described as a priori is usually unsuitable for the object; it is also true · 4 4 · that we cannot go further in the study of the object without acquiring a method, because we will act in a disorganised way (Colbert, 1969, p. 667). We are methodologically forced to advance in the theoretical development of the object of research by the principle of objectual correspondence.
In the year 1947 Professor González Álvarez, stated this fundamental principle of methodology: "all science, as a human product, depends on two fundamental factors: the object which it deals with and the subject which elaborates it.
This implies this fundamental truth: the method of a discipline has to be congruent with the noetic structure of the object that it researches and be adapted to the cognitive contexture of the subject that receives it" (González Álvarez, 1947, p. 10 education. In this determination, we are destined to complexity due to the particular condition of the object 'education' because very diverse aspects make education a complex object and the paradigm of the complexity helps to outline the conditions that make it be like this (Arendt, 1974;Lyotard, 1984;Prigogine, 1997;Prigogine and Stengers, 1983;Lipovetsky, 1986;Sáez, 2006 and2015;Luhman, 1983;Maslow, 1982;Bateson, 1979;Damasio, 2010;Pinker, 2003;Zubiri, 2006).
The displacement which has occurred in Epistemology at present clearly shows that the essential does not consist in eliminating perspectivist interpretations, but in "the production of a way of totally critical knowledge, that is to say, which is able to control each of its processes, to consciously set its goals and to justify the procedures used to attain them" (Ladrière, 1977, p. 115). Objective knowledge must be able to be judged and therefore, must "pronounce on the value and the validity limits of what it finally proposes" (Ladrière, 1977, p. 115).
The variation that has been carried out aims at the interpretative conceptual system and its rationality rules are not given 'a priori': "Criticism also associates judgement and the construction of criteria in an inseparable way. It does not possess in advance the principles according to which it will be able to direct its appraisals; it builds its principles while it uses them (...) The implicit norms of science do not exist 'a priori', they are built and rebuilt continuously" (Ladrière, 1977, p.115).
According to Ladrière, the idea of mastery is perhaps the one that summarises the specific of this change from the concept of objectivity to complexity in a better way; mastery "represents the capacity to achieve the set goals and to gain independence from all external conditioning" (Ladrière, 1977, p. 120  Simplicity is not considered an irrefutable principle, and certainly it is not a scientific result, because the simplest and sufficient explanation is the most probable, but not necessarily the true one. Its basic sense is that the simplest theories will be preferred in identical conditions, but a different question is to know which evidences will support the theory. Against the principle of simplicity, common sense suggests that a simpler theory but less correct should not be preferred to a more complex theory but more correct (Novak, 1998;Bunge, 1975, pp. 145-184   To achieve all this in education, we sometimes focus on the intelligence, other times on feelings, others on willingness, others on intentionality, others on morality and some others on the creative spiritual sensitivity in order to make the creation of typical symbols of the human culture become effective. We, obviously, use resources for all this, and these resources are, in many occasions, the contents of the areas of experience, but in that case we must distinguish between knowing history, teaching history and educating with history, for example.
All this is the objectual complexity of "education", which has to turn into specific educational action in each case of intervention. The complexity arises from the activity diversity; we intervene by means of the activity to achieve educated activity, which means that we go from knowledge to action to form the individual, social, historical and species-being human condition, taking into account the characteristics of the object "education", which make it possible to identify its internal character determining traits. Activity is the central pillar of the complexity of the object "education".
Objectual complexity is a property of pedagogical research which makes us keep the connection of the individual, social, historical and species-being human condition with the object "education" accurately and deal with its characteristics. This is because the internal common activity of any human that is educated implies thinking, feeling affectively (having feelings), wanting objects or subjects of any condition, operating ("choosing to do" things by building processes and processing means and aims), projecting ("deciding to act" on the internal and external reality by guiding oneself, building projects and setting goals) and creating (building culture, building something from something, not from the void, by symbolising the notation of signs; performing something -note-and giving it meaning -signify-by building symbols of our own culture).

Which Determine the Meaning of 'Education'
In my opinion, it is possible to systematise the complexity of the object education from three axes that determine traits of character of education: •  (Ferrater, 1979, pp. 119-155;Dearden, Hirst, Peters, 1982).

Axiological character
We choose values when we set aims and determine the sense of action

Value-duty relationship:
Wanted value

Value-decision relationship:
Decided value

Value-election relationship:
Chosen value

Personal character
We engage with values voluntarily to comply with rules and norms

Patrimonial character
We decide values by integrating them into our projects with sense of life

Integral character
We establish positive links of attachment between values and what we want to achieve Gnoseological character.

Spiritual character.
Creative-Symbolizing integration, which is a form of creative relationship between the self, the other person and the other thing and an emergent consequence of the human connection between the mental and the physical in the brain which makes it possible to create culture and symbols to note and to signify reality from the human condition itself   (Novak, 1998).  .
We intervene to establish an educational relationship that manages to educate and for   (Touriñán, 2014a).

THE SENSE OF EDUCATION AS
In each educational act there is a connection between the self, the other person and the other thing and the sense of spatial, temporary, genre and specific difference qualification is generated in education. A territorial, temporary, cultural and formative sense is materialised in each educational act, without which education is not defined. All education has a spatial (territorial), temporary (durable), genre (cultural) and specific difference (formative) sense, regardless of the area of cultural experience with which we educate and regardless of the philosophical sense which a society attributes to education (Touriñán, 2014b(Touriñán, y 2015.  (Formative: general, vocational, professional, etc.) There is a connection between the self, the other person and the other thing in each educational act, therefore the territorial, durable, cultural and formative sense is generated in education attending to the conceptual classifying categories of space, time, genre and specific difference.  Spatial (territorial), temporary (durable), generically (of cultural diversity), and specifically (of general, professional or vocational formative sense)

Traits of real definition
Criteria of common use of the term: Criteria of content, form, formative use and balance

Criteria of nominal definition EDUCATIONAL RELATIONSHIP FOR EDUCATION ACHIEVEMENT:
To perform the meaning of education in any educational field by developing the general dimensions of intervention and the adjusted competences, the specific capacities and the basic willingness of each educatee for the achievement of knowledge, skills-abilities attitudes and habits related to the finalities of education and to the guiding values derived from them in each internal and external activity of the educatee, using for this the internal and external means suitable for each activity Criteria of activity oriented by finality: Educatees should acquire knowledge, attitudes and skills-abilities-habits which enable them to choose, to engage, to decide and to perform projects from each internal and external activity, by giving an answer to the requirements that arise in each situation

EDUCATION ACHIEVEMENT:
Knowledge, skills-abilities, attitudes and acquired habits which, by means of the meaning of education, enable us to choose, to engage, to decide and to carry out our projects by giving an answer to the requirements that arise in each situation according to opportunities B O L E T Í N R E D I P E 1 0 (  Formative orientation is applied by means of school subjects, and it lives on strata of thought, derived from diverse cultural areas and varied condition, which go from humanism to communitarianism, from nationalism to individualism, from ethics to aesthetics, from morality to religion, from philosophy to science, from anthropology to culture and so on and so forth. Education is not mistaken, or identified with these strata necessarily, because its meaning is specific, different and characteristic of that sphere of reality which is education and it is also adjusted to the nominal and real definition. Education will have temporary formative orientation in the educational politics of a socialist, humanist, communitarianist, secular, confessional, nonconfessional, etc., profile depending on the historical moment and attending to the greater or lower preponderance of a particular type of civic mentality; these are the philosophical senses of education related to social expectations (Pring, 2014). Besides, in all those cases education is education substantively and thus it keeps -it has to keep, at the risk of losing its own conditioncoherence with the meaning of education, with the features of character and sense which are inherent in the meaning of 'education'. In this way, education will be able to be socialist, humanist, Finally, as we have explained in the section dedicated to the pedagogical function, we educate ourselves with internal common activity.
But, in addition, we educate ourselves through external common activity (studying, playing, working, inquiring-exploring, intervening and relating to the self, the other person and the other thing), because by exercising a specific external common activity we activate the internal common capacities, we train them, we exercise them, we drill them and we improve them to do well each external common activity. The external common activity, by principle of activity, activates the internal common activity in each specific execution of the external common activity, whatever it may be (playing, studying, working, inquiring, intervening or relating). By executing the external common activity, we improve and train the internal activities-capacities: without the activity it is impossible to educate and through the activity it becomes possible for the educatee to be an actor-agent and an increasingly better author-agent of his own projects and acts.

AREA AS A FIELD OF EDUCATION
From the perspective of the knowledge of education and regarding the formative sense of 'education' we can identify and define, three possible meanings of the cultural areas as an instrument of education in any of its expressions. They give meaning to the cultural areas-education relationship "as education", "as cultural experience" and "as professional and vocational experience", that is, the conceptual difference of cultural area is justified as a field of education, as it is reflected in Chart 6: In the first two meanings, and by means of the cultural area, we perform the aims of education in general, related to the meaning of "education" and the aims of general education identifiable from the conceptual sense of cultural area. The third meaning covers the sense of education itself from the cultural area as professional and vocational orientation for a certain area. In the first two meanings, we give content to the expression "education through the cultural area". In the third meaning we give content to the expression "education for a cultural area".
For us, the cultural area, seen from the perspective of field of education is not only education "for" a cultural area (vocational Thus, we can strictly speak about education "for" a specific cultural area (that of my vocation or my profession), but we can also talk about general education "through" the cultural area.
In addition to being a field of vocational training and professional development, education WITH a cultural area is a general field of education, but it is also a field of general education, that is why it can be taught to educatees as common education and as general and basic education. Necessarily, as we already know, Pedagogy is specified as Mesoaxiological Pedagogy, because it is the objective of Pedagogy to transform information into knowledge and knowledge into education, building education fields from different cultural areas. Each cultural area is a cognisable, teachable, researchable and attainable experience area which can become an object and goal of education, by transforming itself into an education field. We are in a position to go from general pedagogy to applied pedagogies, building education fields, making the derived educational design and generating the pertinent pedagogical intervention.