Educating is a social event of sharing meanings. Meanings can be shared between individuals – this makes the events of educating possible. The conditions of shared meaning, in the context of educating, have patterns, and thus educative events can be subjected to rational (planned) inquiry, even though the regularities are artifactual (not natural). Making educative events happen is a consequence of human choice, invention, and inauguration. Literally, thousands of educative events happen. Formal education is not only a deliberate intervention in the lives of people but an intervention with a highly selected and refined set of materials. These materials must be tailored for their meaningfulness, and they must embody the criteria of excellence. Furthermore, in formal education we believe that repeated events of deliberate intervention gradually shape habits such that persons are liberated by and freed from both the intervention and the materials. As durable and reliable as educational activities are, they are also shortlived and ephemeral; no single characterization will capture completely the whole scene. So, recognizing that we are not trying to define the ineffable, we use the following statement to provide a working sense of direction.

The notion of meaning is a foundation in the theory of educating.