ABSTRACT

Every generation has its educational crisis. In seeking to determine what is considered worthwhile to transmit to the next generation, different educational values come into conflict. The fundamental opposition of values was put bluntly, but accurately, by John Anderson, who described education as a battlefield between liberals, who see any member of a new generation as ‘the heir of all the ages’, and philistines who merely see such individuals as ‘job-fodder’ (Anderson, 1980:156). This opposition is familiar and for over two thousand years it has been the cause of anxiety and crisis for parents, teachers, politicians, philosophers and others concerned about future generations. In Aristotle’s The Politics, for example, there is a description of anxiety and crisis that mirrors this concern in our contemporary writings on education, which are evident throughout the chapters in this book:

in modern times there are opposing views about the tasks to be set, for there are no generally accepted assumptions about what the young should learn, either for virtue or for the best life; nor yet is it clear whether their education ought to be conducted with more concern for the intellect than for the character of the soul. The problem has been complicated by the education we see actually given; and it is by no means certain whether training should be directed at things useful in life, or at those conducive to virtue or at exceptional accomplishments. (All these answers have been judged correct by somebody.) And there is no agreement as to what in fact does tend towards virtue, so naturally they differ about the training for it.