ABSTRACT
Education has the function of increasing, while training has the function of decreasing the possibilities that emerge when we play with our environment. Common sense is a weak notion for anyone concerned with education, and this can be demonstrated by a list of statements. It was once common sense: to punish lack of effort in a child by placing him or her in a comer wearing a dunce cap, to teach boys woodwork and girls needlework, and to make children Christians by preaching about hellfire. Looking at Mill’s claims for education, the author reflects that there is a certain unpredictability about happiness: its operative causes are never certain. That is why education, which deals with all the increasing unpredictability that being human implies, and training, which attempts to deal in certainties that decrease our options, differ so radically. A school can be personal, social and moral - and not educational.
