1. Education is a social activity for human beings to cultivate people purposefully, and it is a way to inherit culture and pass on experience in production and social life. Education in a broad sense refers to activities that enhance people's knowledge and skills, develop people's intelligence and physical strength, and influence people's thinking. Education in a broad sense may be unorganized, spontaneous or decentralized, or it may be organized and systematic. It includes social education, school education and family education.

In a narrow sense, education refers to school education, which is an activity that educators exert influence on the educated purposefully, systematically and systematically according to certain social requirements and the laws of the physical and mental development of the educated, so as to promote their development and change in the expected direction. Therefore, education is a purposeful activity to cultivate people.

2. Education is a purposeful social activity to cultivate people, which is the fundamental feature that distinguishes education from other things and the fundamental attribute of education. The special contradiction it wants to solve is the contradiction between the educated individual and the society, which is also the qualitative stipulation of education. If this qualitative stipulation is lost, it cannot be called education.

3. Activities that affect people's physical and mental development may be purposeful or spontaneous. Only the purposeful activity of cultivating people is education, so the expression of the topic is incorrect.

The main functions of education are:

(1) The primary function of education is to promote individual development, including individual socialization and individualization.

(2) The most basic function of education is to influence the change of social talent system and economic development. Modern society emphasizes that the economic function of education mainly includes: providing a good background for the sustained and stable development of the economy; Improve the potential labor ability of the educated; Form ideas, attitudes and behaviors that adapt to modern economic life.

(3) The social function of education is to cultivate talents for the development of the country and serve the political and economic development of the country.

(4) The most far-reaching function of education is to influence the development of culture. Education should not only convey culture, but also meet the requirements of the continuation and renewal of culture itself.