ABSTRACT
Childhood has been a privileged object of pedagogical utopias of various sorts throughout the history of Western educational thought, which goes back at least as early as Plato's Republic. In the Republic, it is someone external, the educator, the philosopher, the legislator of the polis, who will give form to another who in himself, has no form, and who is not considered capable of finding it by himself. To give someone a form; to inform him: education is understood here tout simple as the formation of childhood. In this approach, education is normative; adjusting what is to what ought to be. According to this orientation, children represent adult's opportunity to carry out their ideals, and education is considered an appropriate instrument for such an end. Philosophical education, whether of the child or adult, and whether conducted through instruction or communal inquiry, is defended on the promise of its formative potential for a better world.
