ABSTRACT

Although there are certain universal demands on the educational structure in any time and place, any aim of education is essentially specific to society and time. Aims of education are designed so that education helps to bring about some state of affairs that the power hierarchy in a society has defined as desirable. The definition of worthwhile aims of education and the selection of appropriate curricula contents to match these is to a large extent subject to the dictates of (for example) what is taken to be in the national interests as these are conceived by those in authority. That is one reason why most aims of education are contentious.