Man's essential characteristic is his rational faculty. Man's mind is his basic means of survival-his only means of gaining knowledge. Man cannot survive, as animals do, by the guidance of mere precepts. He cannot provide for his simplest physical needs without a process of thought. He needs a process of thought to discover how to plant and grow his food, or how to make weapons for hunting. His precepts might lead him to a cave, if one is available-but to build the simplest shelter, he needs a process of thought. No precepts and no "instincts" will tell him how to light a fire, how to weave cloth, how to forge tools, how to make a wheel, how to make an airplane, how to perform an appendectomy, how to produce an electric light bulb or an electronic tube, or a box of matches. Yet his life depends on such knowledge-and only a volitional act of his consciousness, a process of thought, can provide it. Informal education is the sharing of this knowledge, and formal education provides the building blocks to gain more knowledge.
             A formal definition by the Websters Dictionary would be :
             ed.u.ca.tion .ej-*-'ka -- sh*n -shn*l, -sh*n-*l n 1a: the action or process of
             educating or of being educated; also : a stage of such a process 1b: the
             knowledge and development resulting from an educational process {a man
             of little ~} 2: the field of study that deals mainly with methods of teaching
             and learning in schools - ed.u.ca.tion.al aj
             Consequently education is summed up to be what you learn from a process or stage of development. Most education is informal. The baby/mother combination is the very first example of informal education. It was created out of a need to reproduce. In today's age we all know that a baby needs to be fed and sheltered. This education/knowledge was passed on to us by our family, our observations of other successful parents and by our teachers. The very first parents probably learned quickly t...