Education refers to the teaching and learning of knowledge, beliefs and skills. The word education, derived from the Latin educare meaning “to raise”, “to bring up”, “to train”. Recently a different verb; educere, meaning to “lead out” or “lead forth”, has been suggested as the root of education. However, the English word from this verb is “eduction”: drawing out, and bolsters the theory behind the function of education — to develop innate abilities and expand horizons. Please see Education Versus Eduction.

‘Pedagogy’ is the study of being a teacher and usually refers to strategies and styles of instruction. The word ‘pedagogy’ is from the Greek ped=child+gogy=to lead. Andragogy refers to adult education.

A

Edwin Abbott
Henry Adams
John Adams
Maude Adams
Cannonball Adderley
Mortimer Adler
Aesop
Louis Agassiz
Maria Gaetana Agnesi
Mikael Agricola
Amos Bronson Alcott
Stephen Ambrose
Maya Angelou
Susan B. Anthony
Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle
Henry Edward Armstrong
William H. Armstrong
Matthew Arnold
Thomas Arnold
Roger Ascham
Sri Aurobindo
Avicenna

B

Roger Bacon
Anna Laetitia Barbauld
John Barth
Clara Barton
Jacques Barzun
Katherine Lee Bates
Dorothea Beale
Catherine Beecher
Alexander Graham Bell
Jeremy Bentham
Henri Bergson
Johann Bernoulli
Wendell Berry
Mary McLeod Bethune
Alfred Binet
Hildegard von Bingen
Hiram Bingham
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Blackwell
Eugen Bleuler
Benjamin Bloom
Edward Wilmot Blyden
Barbara Bodichon
Kees Boeke
Aime Bonpland
Arna Bontemps
Don Bosco
Nadia Boulanger
Omar Bradley
Louis Braille
E. R. Braithwaite
Gwendolyn Brooks
Hallie Quinn Brown
Margaret Wise Brown
Jerome Bruner
Martin Buber
Buddha
Frank Gelett Burgess
John Burroughs
Nannie Helen Burroughs
Nicholas Murray Butler
Frances Mary Buss

C

Joseph Campbell
Geoffrey Canada
Georg Cantor
Thomas Carlyle
Lewis Carroll
Geo. Washington Carver
Ernst Cassirer
Carrie Chapman Catt
Lydia Maria Child
Mr. Chipping
Chiron
Shirley Chisholm
Noam Chomsky
Muzio Clementi
Marva Collins
John Amos Comenius
Henry Steele Commager
Barry Commoner
James Bryant Conant
Confusius
Maria Cosway
Norman Cousins
Pierre de Coubertin
Prudence Crandall
Ichabod Crane
Countee Cullen
Marie Curie

D

John Dalton
Mary Daly
Jacques d'Amboise
Alexandra Danilova
Emily Davies
Robertson Davies
Angela Davis
Katherine Kennicott Davis
Richard Dawkins
Lisa Delpit
John Dewey
Jared Diamond
Mattiwilda Dobbs
Christopher Dock
Deodat Gratet de Dolomieu
Aaron Douglas
W. E. B. DuBois
Katherine Dunham
Will Durant

E

Umberto Eco
Marian Wright Edelman
Betty Edwards
Albert Einstein
Loren Eiseley
Abbe Charles-Michel de l'Epee
Desiderius Erasmus
Jaime Escalante
Simon Estes
Euclid

F

Jessie Redmon Fauset
Philippa Garrett Fawcett
Francisco Ferrer
John Charles Fields
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Michel Fokine
Celestin Freinet
Paulo Freire
Ida Freund
Friedrich Froebel
Robert Frost
Leonhard Fuchs
Francis Fukuyama
Margaret Fuller

G

Ernest J. Gaines
Galileo Galilei
Edward M. Gallaudet
Howard Gardner
Caleb Gattegno
John Taylor Gatto
Murray Gell-Mann
Madame de Genlis
“Nikki” Giovanni
Edouard Glissant
Robert H. Goddard
William Golding
Thomas Gray
Brothers Grimm
Alfred Whitney Griswold

H

Ernst Haeckel
Kurt Hahn
Nathan Hale
Edith Hamilton
Kate Harrington
Hubert Harrison
Gabriel Harvey
Dorothy Height
Robert Henri
Johann Friedrich Herbart
Hans Hofmann
John Holt
bell hooks
Myles Horton
Hypatia

I

Jovita Idar
Ivan Illich
Jean Marc Gaspard Itard
Johannes Itten

J

Shirley Jackson
William James
Émile Jaques-Dalcroze
Lois Mailou Jones
Lyndon B. Johnson
James Weldon Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Barbara Jordan

K

Tamara Karsavina
Ibn Khaldun
Stephen King
Charles Kingsley
Maxine Hong Kingston
Paul Klee
Malcolm Knowles
Zoltan Kodaly
Herbert Kohl
Alfie Kohn
Janusz Korczak
Jonathan Kozol

L

Rudolf Laban
Christian Louis Lange
Lao-Tzu
Tom Lehrer
Franz Liszt
Alain LeRoy Locke
John Locke
Belva Ann Lockwood
James Loewen
Mary Lyon
Albert John Lutuli

M

Wangari Maathai
Maimonides
Thomas Malthus
Horace Mann
Frankie Manning
Charlotte Mason
Abraham Maslow
Colman McCarthy
William Holmes McGuffey
Marshall McLuhan
Margaret Mead
Donella Meadows
Carmen Melis
Thomas Merton
Gabriela Mistral
Maria Mitchell
Maria Montessori
Hannah More
Greg Mortenson
Lucretia Mott
Robert Muller

N

Scott Nearing
Ada Negri
John G. Neihardt
A. S. Neill
Friedrich Nietzsche
Kwame Nkrumah
Charles Eliot Norton

O

Johannes Ockeghem
Carl Orff
Robert Owen

P

Vivian Paley
Parker Palmer
Franceis Wayland Parker
Giuditta Pasta
Angelo Patri
Elizabeth Peabody
Frances Perkins
Jules Perrot
John J. Pershing
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
Jules Petipa
Jean Piaget
Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier
James Pillans
Plato
Henri Poincare
Neil Postman
Pol Pot
Roscoe Pound
Joseph Priestley
Alexander Pushkin

R

Pandita Ramabai
Marie Rambert
Ellen Richards
Sir Ken Robinson
Romain Rolland
Theodore Roszak
Mark Rothko
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
J. K. Rowling
Ernest Rutherford

S

Saratheswathee
Augusta Savage
Franz Schubert
John T. Scopes
Glenn T. Seaborg
Edouard Seguin
Sequoyah
Mother Seton

Lydia Sigourney
Gene Simmons
Elisabetta Sirani
Jessie Willcox Smith
Lillian Smith
Socrates
Joel Elias Spingarn

Rudolf Steiner
Cora Wilson Stewart
Sting
Bill Strickland
Annie Sullivan
Shinichi Suzuki

T

Mary Burnett Talbert
Ida M. Tarbell
Susie King Taylor
Alma Woodsey Thomas
Benjamin Thompson
Henry David Thoreau
Leo Tolstoy
Evangelista Torricelli
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

U-V

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Thorstein Veblen
Andreas Vesalius
Giambattista Vico
Lev Vygotsky

W-Z

Louis Wain
Eugenius Warming
Booker T. Washington
Alice Waters
Noah Webster
Eliot Wigginton
Alfred North Whitehead
Eli Whitney
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Emma Willard
Mary Lou Williams
E. O. Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Carter G. Woodson
Sir Christopher Wren
Heinrich Zimmer
Howard Zinn
Zitkala-Sa

Do not feel certain of anything.
Do not feel it's worthwhile to hold on to a belief by concealing contrary evidence, for that evidence will surely come to light.
Never discourage thinking (in a philosophical sense.)
Overcome opposition via argument, not force. A victory based upon force is unreal and illusionary.
Have no respect for the authority of others, for there will always be counter-authorities.
Don't use force to suppress opinions which you think are dangerous, for if you do they will surely suppress you.
Don't fear being different and eccentric, for every mainstream idea was at one time eccentric and different.
Find pleasure in intelligent, not passive, agreement.
Be scrupulously truthful, even when the truth is inconvenient, for it is always more inconvenient when you try to conceal truth.
Don't feel envious of the happiness of those living in a fool's paradise, for only a fool would see it as true happiness.