ABSTRACT
The answer to this question depends on the values dominant in wider society. These values are increasingly what sociologists call ‘therapeutic’ values. One pointer to the truth of these broad sociological claims is that educationalists have clearly adopted or succumbed to a therapeutic ethos. They are promoting, and are engaging future teachers in promoting, forms of therapeutic education. If this bold assertion is true, we are at the beginning of an era of educational decline that is unique in its rejection of any notion of the transmission of what is worthwhile to new generations, with an uninspiring vision of all children and young people as being hapless and hopeless and in need of therapy.
