In this article, I observe that the current practice of liberal-arts learning has entered into a historical crisis in which its central, defining convention--that this learning, unlike grammar learning and vocational learning, promotes freedom--no longer holds much meaning. To overcome this crisis, I suggest that liberal-arts learning should base…

'The human being', Kant contends, 'is the only creature that must be educated'. Thus, for Kant, the concept of education plays a central role in the answer to one of the fundamental questions of philosophy: What is the human being? Education is the means by which the rational powers definitive of our humanity are actualised and cultivated. It is…

The indoctrination debates have been a key feature of the philosophy of education over the past 50 years. While it is generally acknowledged that the pejorative associations of indoctrination only emerged over the last 100 years, those normative associations are widely taken to be an essential part of the concept itself as are the positive…

What role should moral philosophy give to considerations about human nature and the character of human life? And what part should such considerations play in moral education? This paper explores these questions by contrasting the 'new intuitionist' position I defend in 'Practice, sensibility and moral education' (Bakhurst, 2018) with Philippa…

R. S. Peters and Paul Hirst were the most influential figures in philosophy of education in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The claim in this paper is that their rationalist's approach was often misleading and unilluminating. They believed they were preparing children for life beyond school, but to a large extent they failed because they did not take…

Over the past decade or so within this journal, there have been critical debates concerning the role of mindfulness within education, the influence of neoliberalism on education in general and well-being interventions specifically, and the relevance of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger for critiquing modernity including the nature and purpose…

My discussion suggests that one of Richard Peters' main contributions to the philosophy of education was in expounding and stressing the need for a particular view of the subject, essentially conceptual analysis. The paper proceeds to defend this view and Peters' specific account of education against the charges that his work relies simply on…

It is argued that two plausible goals of the educational enterprise are (i) to develop the intellectual character, and thus the intellectual virtues, of the student, and (ii) to develop the student's intellectual self-confidence, such that they are able to have conviction in what they believe. On the face of it, however, these two educational…

In this paper I explore the prospects of a Neo-Aristotelian position--according to which the difference between the human species and non-human animals is a difference in 'form'--in the context of the question of how the human form of life is related to the idea of education. Two interpretations of this idea have been suggested by contemporary…

In this brief comment on "Educational Goods," I raise two worries about the authors' proposed normative framework for educational decision-makers. The first concerns the omission of rationality, or responsiveness to reasons, from the list of educational goods; the second concerns the inclusion of parental interests in the list of…

This essay critiques the infection of the curriculum with the concerns of the adult political community, treating successive generations of children as if they were responsible for changing the world and that education was the vehicle. Such impulses are, in part, the result of a failure to consider childhood as a particular, liminal, space rather…

The goal of moral education is moral formation and moral improvement. Kant's duty of moral self-perfection applies to people who have undergone preliminary stages of moral formation and are in the position to strive for moral improvement based on a grasp of principle and an understanding of ends that are also duties. We are familiar with standard…

Greed and power have morphed into forms of capitalism unaddressed from a philosophical, moral or educative framework. This article seeks to address this important gap in the literature by first outlining how the financialisation of capital constitutes the new educational subject in primary, secondary and tertiary school. The author establishes how…

This classic essay--Die Schulwerkstatt als Grundlage der Organisation der Fortbildungsschule--by George Kerschensteiner (1854-1932) is here published for the first time in English, in a translation by Stephanie Wilde and Christopher Winch. The essay was highly influential in the formation of the successful economy in modern Germany. It has had a…

My aim in this paper is to draw the attention of educational theorists to the pedagogical arguments that Plato puts forward in his account of imperfect political systems ("Republic," VIII and IX)--viz. his discussion of timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny. I present Plato's account of political systems and argue that the…