The Aims of Education

Some of you may feel that all that is original and interesting that can be said about the aims of education has already been said by a stellar cast of philosophers ranging from Plato to Dewey. I do not think that this is the case. It shall be my thesis that the subject should once again become a matter of vital concern -as it already is to many ordinary citizens. We can learn from the past, but we can also improve upon it. To provide both a historical and a conceptual framework for what I have to say, I consider Aristotle, Dewey, and Freud. Analysis of their views occupies much of this paper; my emphasis is not on scholarship, however, but on the use of the past in order to help us think more cogently about the present, and the future, of education.