Introduction

This chapter provides a brief general account of past and more recent philosophical analyses of the meaning and aims of education. It presents an account of 'postmodern' scepticism regarding such analyses. The chapter identifies some of the conceptual confusions in such skeptical responses to philosophical analysis. Knowledge or appreciation of the goals of education is not simply to be had by sociological or other social scientific study or survey but is unavoidably implicated in reflections or deliberations of a normative or evaluative kind that take us beyond mere data-gathering. The trouble with any such strategy, however, is that what is taught in schools is and has ever been subject to wide variation and there is also equally wide disagreement about whether much of this could or should be regarded as educational. Schools and other contexts of formation have often been sites of teaching and instruction that might be regarded as falling short of education.