ABSTRACT
Currently, principled accounts of the school system take two main forms. One derives from liberal political and moral philosophy, the other from 'dialectical' (now mainly Marxian) social theory. Liberalism views national schooling as the self-formative institution of a democratic community composed of rational individuals. The principle to which all principled accounts of education are committed is contained in a certain image of the moral personality. The Marxian sociology of education of course understands itself as a critique and alternative to the liberal position. In both liberal and Marxian approaches to education the formation of moral personality is treated as an abstract object of theoretical insight. Whether lodged in the rational individual or the developmental society, it is treated as a general principle of which the actual school system is a partial realisation. Liberal and Marxian theories of education may simply be too 'profound' for their object.
