ABSTRACT
We shall start by being clear about the way in which the terms 'education', 'educate', 'educated', etc., are used in contemporary English: how else can we, as English-speakers, be sure that we know what we are talking about? This procedure has been demonstrated and explained by many philosophers from Socrates onwards, and I shall not argue for it at length here; partly because it is not clear what the status or value of any argument could be, if the participants were not already committed to the idea of mutual intelligibility. We need, at the least, an insurance policy against muddle or vagueness.
