ABSTRACT
The term 'education' covered a variety of processes including the rearing and bringing up of animals as well as children. In addition to the sort of instruction and training that went on in schools, 'education' also referred to the less formalised child-rearing practices such as toilet-training, getting children to be clean and tidy and to speak well. The knowledge-ideal only values the reproduction of the knowledge-ideal, and other 'potential' characteristics are either squashed or relegated to a secondary position in the value system. However, it is necessary to look at conceptions of knowledge itself, and in particular the persistence of notions of cultural worth in our evaluation of different types of knowledge. A more important criticism of the evaluation of knowledge in terms of cultural traditions is the one that implies that such traditions in fact stem from the attempts of some power elite to maintain the status quo in general and its own privileged position in particular.
