Education and the Education of Teachers

This collection of papers represents the authors developing thought over the past ten years about education and the education of teachers. The first two papers were given at conferences and represent attempts at the end of the 1960s to make clearer what might be meant by education and by the quality of educationa phrase that is often used in public debatee.g. about comprehensive schools, but seldom analysed. The next two papers, dealing with liberal education, are more recent products. In the first, ambiguities are explored in the interpretation of liberal education as knowledge for its own sake, as general education, and as non-authoritarian education, and attention is drawn to the fact that no determinate answer is given by any of these interpretations to Herbert Spencers question, What knowledge is of most worth? In the second paper, which was first read at the Hull department of politics, the dilemmas and problems facing any teacher who is committed to liberal education, in any of its senses, are sketched. The fifth paper is a reprint of the authors attempt to improve on, as well as clarify, his first attempt to justify education in Ethics and Education. The sixth paper was originally given to the Joint Association of Classics Teachers, and is a constructive attempt at bringing out what is acceptable in Platos views about education instead of concentrating on the easier and more usual task of emphasizing what is unacceptable.