ABSTRACT
This book discusses the 'conservative' case for education. In 1976, when giving the T S Eliot Lectures on traditions in English conservative thought, Anthony Quinton described 'the operative doctrine of the present-day Conservative Party' as reliance on 'traditional conservative beliefs more for ritual ornamentation than for actual political use'. The US Republican Party's relationship with 'conservatism' in recent decades has been similarly ambiguous. The Republican Party is often said to be not a one but a many, with free market neo-liberals, neo-conservative interventionists, libertarians, isolationists, cultural conservatives and Christian fundamentalists coexisting uneasily. The main reference is to schools but, in the same way that Oakeshott uses schole to refer both to schools and to universities, some of the more general Principles apply to both. These are Principles against which educational programmes might be checked. Educational administrators and politicians should use language when talking about their plans that models the intellectual virtues being developed among pupils.
