ABSTRACT
Michael Oakeshott believed in the idea of a 'liberal education', an education that is an end in itself, which is 'liberal' because 'it is liberated from the distracting business of satisfying contingent wants'. The teacher-learner relationship was at the core of 'School', Oakeshott's view of that relationship was not particularly Socratic. 'School' is therefore part of Oakeshott's wider and highly 'conservative' picture of a society with traditional institutions, communities and practices – rather than a set of abstract ideas – at its core. Another key feature of 'School' is that it is 'a personal transaction between a "teacher" and a "learner". For critics who react negatively to Oakeshott's 'conservatism' his emphasis on transmission as a core purpose of education is inevitably an important part of the critique. Oakeshott's view was that 'learning to read' – and by this he meant learning to pick up the 'fine shades of meaning' in what others were saying.
