This volume provides a rigorous examination of theoretical concepts such as need, interest, growth, play, experience, activity and self-expression. It also makes an important contribution towards getting a closely argued educational theory. In the first part of the book the author establishes general aims and ends with suggestions as to what the curriculum ought to be. The second part is concerned with the procedures of learning and teaching appropriate to such a curriculum.

There are many students who find philosophy of education difficult, because they have never received teaching in the basic essentials of general philosophy. This book begins by asking the basic question ‘what is philosophy?’ and examines a number of possible answers. Step by step the reader is introduced to the modern techniques of linguistic and concept analysis. Whenever a technical term is used it is explained and illustrated by reference to familiar situations in everyday life.

This introduction to Plato’s philosophical and educational thought examines Plato’s views and relates them to issues and questions that occupy philosophers of education. Robin Barrow stresses the relevance of Plato today, while introducing the student both to Plato’s philosophy and to contemporary educational debate. In the first part of the book the author examines Plato’s historical background and summarizes the Republic. Successive chapters are concerned with the critical discussion of specific educational issues. He deals with questions relating to the impartial distribution of education, taking as a starting point Plato’s celebrated dictum that unequals should be treated unequally. He examines certain methodological concepts such as ‘discovery-learning’ and ‘play’ and also raises the wider question of children’s freedom. He looks critically at the content of the curriculum and discusses Plato’s theory of knowledge and attitude to art. Finally Robin Barrow discusses Plato’s view of moral education and the related problem of what constitutes moral indoctrination

Many people have come to feel that the controversy on education in Britain has got bogged down in political polemics, and that common polarisations between ‘conventional’ and ‘progressive’, ‘selective’ and ‘comprehensive’, ‘elite’ and ‘democratic’ are both unrealistic and damaging. The author believes that a new educational ethic is needed now that former religious sanctions are no longer generally operative. He believes that it is possible to regard the concept of a Rational Good as a basis for educational theory and practice. The book discusses important practical issues in education: liberty and equality, use and abuse of convention, the ethical basis and occasion for coercion, the validity of co-education as an educational principle and the John Wales concludes that the correspondence between the popular extremes of educational views is much more significant than their differences.

This volume is a comprehensive critique of the radical tradition in educational theory. It traces the development of the key ideas in radical literature from Rousseau to the present day. Two opening chapters set Rousseau’s educational views and arguments in their political perspective, and subject them to an extended critical treatment. Subsequent chapters provide detailed analyses and examination of the ideas of A S Neill, Paul Goodman, Ivan Illich and Everett Reimer, Charles Weingartner and Neil Postman. Each author is treated separately but certain common themes and ideas are extracted and considered without reference to any particular author. Amongst others, the concepts of nature, learning, hidden curriculum and the relativity of knowledge are examined; at the same time broader arguments about the degree and nature of freedom that should be provided to children, deschooling and assessment are pursued.

This book deals with the everlasting problem of war and peace. In it, the author argues that mankind must be predisposed for peace by the right kind of education and he discusses how to devise methods of education which will prevent war.