Docente, Spanish for “teacher,” comes from the Latin docere, meaning, “to teach”. From the same root, we get the English… education. The parallel becomes clear when we observe the d-c root in all of the variations.
The Latin root, Docere, however, is first cousins with ducere, meaning… “to lead.”
To teach is thus to lead — literally. Even more specifically, education is the ducere root, but beginning with the prefix ex-, meaning, “out of”: To teach is to lead out of (the darkness of ignorance)!
But it gets better: from the same root is to lead in a different direction… to seduce: sub- (Latin for, “away from”) plus ducere. To seduce is thus to lead away from where you should be!
