ABSTRACT
Many academic authors have deplored this widespread aversion to philosophical questions about the purposes of education. In the United States, Israel Scheffler has argued for many years that a primary aim of a democratic society must be to cultivate the rational faculties of its young people rather than to treat education ‘as an instrument for the implementation of designated social values, taken as ultimate’ (ibid., pp. 134-5). Knowledge accumulates in unpredictable ways and its practical consequences are unforeseeable. Assessment of the effectiveness of an education in ‘shaping concrete results’ is irrelevant to the democratic ideal of an open and dynamic society, the laws, principles and moral standards of which are constantly subject to the critical scrutiny of its citizens. More recently Harvey Siegel has condemned the widespread and ‘stultifying misconception’ that ‘deep philosophical questions concerning values and the aims of education are somehow off-limits’ (Siegel, 1988, p. ix). Yet the influence of such
views on the general public and on governments, alert to electoral and media opinion, has been very limited.
