ABSTRACT
The aims of education, and the appropriate means of realising those aims, have been a persistent, if not universal, concern of utopian authors (Massõ, 1927; Fisher, 1963; Ozmon, 1969). Thomas More (1478–1535) might be thought to bear much of the responsibility here, since education plays an indispensable role in the commonwealth of ‘Utopia’ (whose citizens are said to be so well educated that they need few laws). However, whilst More named he did not invent the utopian tradition, and this preoccupation with education certainly predates him. Plato (429–347 bce) would be an obvious example; the central role of education is made clear in Book Four of the Republic, a work plausibly considered the first great political utopia. (I use the term ‘utopia’ here to refer to a detailed description of an ideal society, whether or not that description takes the narrative form typical of what we might call a literary utopia proper – in which a traveller from the world of the author visits a superior society in a chronologically or geographically distant location.)
