ABSTRACT
This book was written backwards. It came into being to meet a specific query raised about my previous book, Moral Philosophy for Education, raised by two tolerant but shrewd critics. In that book I argued that 'an activity is worthwhile insofar as it promotes pleasure and/or diminishes pain in general'1 and that, consequently, 'the task of education is . . . broadly speaking, to develop people in such a way that they will be enabled to take pleasure in life, while contributing to the maximisation of pleasure in the community as a whole. What is educationally worthwhile is whatever will contribute to that end.'2 Both Ivor Morrish and Peter Renshaw, independently, suggested to me that, even if one accepted my argument so far, it led in practice to the conclusion that virtually anything could be educationally worthwhile. They felt, perhaps, that there were certain things that I would regard as educationally worthwhile, which would not necessarily be so by my argument. They wanted a clearer account of what kind of curriculum my theory would actually lead to and why.
