ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the selected opinions—some conflicting, others reinforcing—from the considerable number of philosophers, sociologists and psychologists who profess views on what education is about. The idea of a common school attended by all children in a district is plainly an egalitarian one. The argument here is that a comprehensive school will meet the needs of its pupils not by introducing them to a set of common experiences, but by fitting them to a sufficient variety of courses, or curricula, or activities. It has been a remarkably pervasive view and bears closer examination. The weakness in setting schools to rear the most 'current' men and women is that the skills which appear so much in demand today may be at a discount tomorrow. As P. H. Hirst observes: 'Liberal education as is here being understood is only one part of the education a person ought to have, for it omits quite deliberately for instance specialist education, physical education and character training.'
