ABSTRACT
Not all schooling is educational; nor is all education schooling. One of the philosophically most important differences between education and schooling, I suggest, is that schooling as we know it is pervasively coercive. Schooling is coercive education, and this chapter explores it as such. I begin by showing how common controversies about schooling can be regarded as disagreements over the coercion it imposes. I then consider the goods that schooling is commonly thought to provide, which might justify schooling as a coercive social enterprise to educate children. By getting clearer on just what schooling should aim to accomplish, I suggest, we can begin to develop principled answers to questions about the extent to which—and the ways in which—it may justifiably coerce children, parents, and taxpayers.
