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Understanding education as a right, 116328scr_india_pupils.jpg.

Education is not a privilege. It is a human right.

Education as a human right means:

• the right to education is legally guaranteed for all without any discrimination
• states have the obligation to protect, respect, and fulfil the right to education
• there are ways to hold states accountable for violations or deprivations of the right to education

Human rights are inherent to all human beings, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. They cannot be given or taken away.

Human rights are the foundation for freedom, justice and peace in the world.

They are formally and universally recognised by all countries in the  Universal Declaration on Human Rights  (1948, UDHR). Since the adoption of the UDHR, many treaties have been adopted by states to reaffirm and guarantee these rights legally.

International human rights law sets out the obligations of states to respect, protect, and fulfil human rights for all. These obligations impose specific duties upon states, regardless of their political, economic, and cultural systems.

All human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated ( Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action , 1993, para. 5).

Equality and non-discrimination are foundational and cross-cutting principles in international human rights law. This means that all human rights apply to everyone.

International human rights law guarantees the right to education. The  Universal Declaration on Human Rights , adopted in 1948, proclaims in Article 26: 'everyone has the right to education'.

Since then, the right to education has been widely recognised and developed by a number of international normative instruments elaborated by the United Nations, including the  International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966, CESCR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989, CRC), and the  UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education  (1960, CADE).

The right to education has also been reaffirmed in other treaties covering specific groups ( women and girls , persons with disabilities , migrants, refugees , Indigenous Peoples , etc.) and contexts ( education during armed conflicts ). It has also been incorporated into various regional treaties and enshrined as a right in the vast majority of national constitutions.

See our pages on international law and national implementation  for more information.

Both individuals and society benefit from the right to education. It is fundamental for human, social, and economic development and a key element to achieving lasting peace and sustainable development. It is a powerful tool in developing the full potential of everyone and ensuring human dignity, and in promoting individual and collective wellbeing.

• it is an empowerment right
• it lifts marginalised groups out of poverty
• it is an indispensable means of realising other rights
• it contributes to the full development of the human personality

For more details, see the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights'  General Comment 13 on the right to education  (1999, para. 1).

The right to education encompasses both entitlements and freedoms, including the:

right to free and compulsory primary education

right to available and accessible secondary education (including technical and vocational education and training), made progressively free

right to equal access to higher education on the basis of capacity made progressively free

right to fundamental education for those who have not received or completed primary education

right to quality education both in public and private schools

freedom of parents to choose schools for their children which are in conformity with their religious and moral convictions

freedom of individuals and bodies to establish and direct education institutions in conformity with minimum standards established by the state

academic freedom of teachers and students

The 4As were developed by the first UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Katarina Tomaševski, and adopted by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in its General Comment 13 on the right to education  (1999, para.6). To be a meaningful right, education in all its forms and at all levels shall exhibit these interrelated and essential features:

Available – Education is free and there is adequate infrastructure and trained teachers able to support the delivery of education.

Accessible – The education system is non-discriminatory and accessible to all, and positive steps are taken to include the most marginalised.

Acceptable – The content of education is relevant, non-discriminatory and culturally appropriate, and of quality; schools are safe and teachers are professional.

Adaptable – Education evolves with the changing needs of society and challenges inequalities, such as gender discrimination; education adapts to suit locally specific needs and contexts.

For more details see:

• Primer 3  Human rights obligations: making education available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable (RTE, Katarina Tomaševski, 2001)

When a state has ratified a treaty that guarantees the right to education, it has obligations to respect, protect, and fulfil this right. Some obligations are immediate. Others are progressive.

Obligations to respect, protect, and fulfil:

• respect: refrain from interfering with the enjoyment of the right (e.g., the state must respect the liberty of parents to choose schools for their children)
• protect: prevent others from interfering with the enjoyment of the right usually through regulation and legal guarantees (e.g., the state must ensure that third parties, including parents, do not prevent girls from going to school)
• fulfil: adopt appropriate measures towards the full realisation of the right to education (e.g., the state must take positive measures to ensure that education is culturally appropriate for minorities and indigenous peoples, and of good quality for all)

Immediate and progressive obligations:

As with other economic, social and cultural rights, the full realisation of the right to education can be hampered by a lack of resources and can be achieved only over a period of time, particularly for countries with fewer resources. This is the reason why some state obligations are progressive, for instance, the introduction of free secondary and higher education.

However, no matter how limited resources are, all states have immediate obligations to implement the following aspects of right to education:

• ensure minimum core obligations to meet the essential levels of the right to education, which includes prohibiting discrimination in access to and in education, ensuring free and compulsory primary education for all, respecting the liberty of parents to choose schools for their children other than those established by public authorities, protecting the liberty of individuals and bodies to establish and direct educational institutions
• take appropriate steps towards the full realisation of the right to education to the maximum of its available resources. A lack of resources cannot justify inaction or indefinite postponement of measures to implement the right to education. States must demonstrate they are making every effort to improve the enjoyment of the right to education, even when resources are scarce
• not take retrogressive measures. This means that the state should not take backwards steps or adopt measures that will repeal existing guarantees of the right to education. For instance, introducing school fees in secondary education when it had formerly been free of charge would constitute a retrogressive measure

States have the primary duty to ensure the right to education. However, other actors play a key role in promoting and protecting this fundamental right.

According to international law, other actors have responsibilities in upholding the right to education:

• the role of multilateral intergovernmental agencies, such as UNESCO, OHCHR, UNICEF, is of particular importance in relation to the realisation of the right to education in providing technical and financial assistance
• international financial institutions should play greater attention to the protection of the right to education in their policies, credit agreements, structural adjustment programmes and measures taken in response to the debt crisis
• private businesses also have the responsibility to respect human rights and avoid infringing on the rights of others. For more information, see UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights , Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights' General Comment 24 , Committee on the Rights of the Child's  General Comment 16 , and our page on Privatisation
• civil society plays a crucial role in promoting the right to education and holding the state accountable for its obligations
• parents have the responsibility to ensure that their children attend compulsory education. They cannot deny their children access to education

Violations of the right to education may occur through direct action of States parties (act of commission) or through their failure to take steps required by law (act of omission). Concrete examples are given in paragraph 59 of General Comment 13 .

Whilst the vast majority of countries have ratified international treaties that recognise the full right to education, it is still denied to millions around the world due to lack of resources, capacity, and political will. There are still countries that have not integrated the right to education into their national constitution or provided the legislative and administrative frameworks to ensure that the right to education is realised in practice. Most of the children and adults who do not fully enjoy the right to education belong to the most deprived and marginalised groups of society which are often left behind in national policies.

• raise awareness on the right to education. If individuals knows their rights they are empowered to claim them
• monitor the implementation of the right to education and report regularly on deprivations and violations
• advocate and campaign for the full implementation of the right to education, holding the state accountable
• seek remedies when there are violations of the right to education

See our page on Using rights in practice  for more details on what you can do.

5 Must-Read Essays on the Right to Education

When the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Article 26 asserted that all people have the right to education. That right appears in other documents such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and in treaties about women and girls, refugees, migrants, and others. Many constitutions around the world also list education as a right. However, the right to education isn’t always upheld. To understand more about education as a human right, and where and why it’s often not a reality, here are five must-read essays:

“ Girls Can Change The World – But We Have To Invest In Them First ” – Malala Yousafzai

Writing for Time Magazine in 2018, Malala Yousafzai’s essay details the importance of educating girls. It’s short, but like all of Malala’s writing, it’s impactful. She opens with the sobering statistic that 130 million girls are not in school. Despite promises at the United Nations to guarantee that every girl will get 12 years of education by 2030, donor countries either halted or decreased their giving for education. Malala expresses her discouragement, but remains hopeful, drawing attention to the Malala Fund and impact of local activists and educators.

The youngest Nobel Prize laureate, Malala is a Pakistani human rights activist, with a special focus on female education. In 2012, the Taliban attempted to assassinate her since she was already a well-known activist, but she survived. The attack and recovery made her a household name, and she won the Nobel Prize two years later. She is a writer and current student at Oxford University.

“ Is Education a Fundamental Right? ” – Jill Lepore

A relatively-unknown Supreme Court Case from 1982, Plyler v. Doe addressed questions about education, immigration, and if schooling is a human right. In her essay, Jill Lepore writes that this case could become much better known as various lawsuits filed on behalf of immigrant children enter the court system. These are the children who are separated from their parents at the border and deprived of education.  Using Plyler v. Doe as a guide along with the other cases both past and present, Lepore explores the issue of education as a fundamental right in the United States.

This essay appeared in the print edition of The New Yorker in September 2018 under the headline “Back to the Blackboard.” Jill Lepore is a professor of history at Harvard University and a staff writer for the New Yorker. Publications include the book These Truths: A History of the United States and This America: The Case for the Nation.

“ How to Improve Access to Education Around the World ” – Jan Lee

In this piece on the Triple Pundit platform, Lee takes a look at how Pearson, an education publishing and assessment service company based in the UK, is making an impact on education access around the world. In the United States, Pearson works on finding solutions for the social and economic problems that lead to low high-school graduation rates. Pearson also invests in low-cost private education around the world. The essay highlights how access to education can be improved through new educational technology for students with disabilities and outreach to underserved communities. Since this article was sponsored by Pearson, it doesn’t look at what other companies or organizations are doing, but it provides a good model for the kinds of actions that can help.

Jan Lee is an award-winning editorial writer and former news editor, whose work can be found Triple Pundit, JustMeans, and her blog The Multicultural Jew. On Triple Pundit, she’s written stories on a variety of topics, such as Leadership & Transparency, Data & Technology, and Energy & Environment.

“ Higher Education Is A Human Right ” – Heidi Gilchrist

It’s established that primary education is a human right, but what about higher education? In her essay, Heidi Gilchrist argues that it is. Looking specifically at the United States, her reason is that in order to access the American dream- which she calls the “ideal it [the country] was founded on” – people need higher education. As global society starts to depend more on technology and other complex systems, more and more jobs will require advanced degrees. In order to truly succeed and achieve their dreams, people will need higher education. Gilchrist offers another perspective on the issue, as well, writing that countries need people with advanced degrees to protect national security. Having higher education remain a luxury means only the wealthy can access it, and that harms a society in every regard.

Heidi Gilchrist is a Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School and an Assistant Professor of Legal Writing at Brooklyn Law. In her previous career, she served as a national security analyst in the federal government, and as a laison to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York City. She writes on national security and how it converges with human rights law and civil rights.

“ Public schools for private gain: The declining American commitment to serving the public good ” – David F. Larabee

In an essay that is both a history lesson and critical look at the pursuit of education as a “private benefit,” Larabee argues that this new view of schooling is dangerous. While in the past, school had been seen as a community where students of all backgrounds and finances mingle and receive opportunities, it’s morphing into just another capitalist arena. Wealthy parents are choosing private schools and focusing their resources there, while public schools and students struggle. School is becoming “a means of private advancement,” Larabee says, instead of a source of public good. This has serious long-term consequences.

David Larabee is a Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, emeritus, at the Standard University Graduate School of Education. He describes himself as a “sociologically oriented historian of education.” He is also an author, most recently of 2017’s A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education.

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What you need to know about the right to education

Why is it important to have the right to education formally enshrined in law and other instruments   .

Around 244 million children and youth are deprived of education worldwide as a result of social, economic and cultural factors. 98 million of whom are in Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest out-of-school population. Yet only 70 per cent of the world’s countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education. And an estimated 771 million young people and adults lack basic literacy skills, of which two thirds are women

Education is an empowering right in itself and one of the most powerful tools by which economically and socially marginalized children and adults can lift themselves out of poverty and participate fully in society. To unleash the full transformational power of education and meet international markers of progress such as those of the Sustainable Development Agenda, everyone must have access to it. Binding countries to certain standards by way of law is one way of ensuring access to quality education is widened. Legal guarantees and protection of the right to education are not time-bound (unlike policies and plans). They also ensure that  judicial mechanisms  (such as courts and tribunals) can determine whether human rights obligations are respected, impose sanctions for violations and transgressions, and ensure that appropriate action is taken.

What are the key legal documents and instruments?  

Education as a fundamental human right is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and many other international human rights instruments . UNESCO’s foremost standard-setting instrument is the Convention against discrimination in education  which dates from 1960 and has so far been ratified by 107 States. It is the first international instrument which covers the right to education extensively and has a binding force in international law. The Convention also acts as a cornerstone of the Education 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goal 4 for education adopted by the international community. SDG 4 is rights-based and seeks to ensure the full enjoyment of the right to education as fundamental to achieving sustainable development.  

How does UNESCO work to ensure the right to education?  

Through its programme on the right to education, UNESCO develops, monitors and promotes education norms and standards in relation to the right to education to advance the aims of the Education 2030 Agenda. It provides guidance, technical advice and assistance  to Member States in reviewing or developing their own legal and policy frameworks, and builds capacities, partnerships and awareness on key challenges especially in light of the  evolving education context .  

It also supports and monitors States in their application of legal instruments, conventions and recommendations through periodic consultations , its online Observatory on the right to education and the interactive tool, Her Atlas, which shows where in the world and to what extent women and girls have their educational rights protected by law. As part of the monitoring, UNESCO also works closely with the UN system and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.   

In addition, it advocates for and promotes the right to education through communication actions  as well as research and studies on specific components of this right such as on pre-primary education, higher education , and digital learning .  

UNESCO mobilises, develops and fosters global partnerships to raise awareness on key issues such as the right to education of climate-displaced persons , non-state actors in education  and the right to education of vulnerable groups .  

Who does UNESCO partner with to ensure the right to education?

UNESCO has the lead role and responsibility in the field of the right to education in the United Nations system and cooperates with the following United Nations human rights bodies in monitoring the implementation of treaties and conventions relating to that right:

• Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
• UN Human Rights Committees
• Universal Periodic Review
• UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education
• International Labour Organization

UNESCO also acknowledges the importance of non-governmental organizations (NGOS), associations and the intellectual community in international cooperation and has built a network with organizations in its fields of competence including:

• The Right to Education Initiative  promotes mobilization and accountability on the right to education and builds bridges between human rights, development and education.
• The International Organization for the Right to Education and Freedom of Education, OIDEL  - a non-profit NGO promoting and creating novel educational models and policies and financing options for schools.  

More on UNESCO's partners for the right to education .

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• Right to education

Your Right to Equality in Education

Getting an education isn’t just about books and grades – we’re also learning how to participate fully in the life of this nation. (We’re tomorrow’s leaders after all!)

But in order to really participate, we need to know our rights – otherwise we may lose them. The highest law in our land is the U.S. Constitution, which has some amendments, known as the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees that the government can never deprive people in the U.S. of certain fundamental rights including the right to freedom of religion and to free speech and the due process of law. Many federal and state laws give us additional rights, too.

The Bill of Rights applies to young people as well as adults. And what I’m going to do right here is tell you about EQUAL TREATMENT .

DO ALL KIDS HAVE THE RIGHT TO AN EQUAL EDUCATION?

Yes! All kids living in the United States have the right to a free public education. And the Constitution requires that all kids be given equal educational opportunity no matter what their race, ethnic background, religion, or sex, or whether they are rich or poor, citizen or non-citizen. Even if you are in this country illegally, you have the right to go to public school. The ACLU is fighting hard to make sure this right isn’t taken away.

In addition to this constitutional guarantee of an equal education, many federal, state and local laws also protect students against discrimination in education based on sexual orientation or disability, including pregnancy and HIV status.

In fact, even though some kids may complain about having to go to school, the right to an equal educational opportunity is one of the most valuable rights you have. The Supreme Court said this in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case when it struck down race segregation in the public schools.

If you believe you or someone you know is being discriminated against in school, speak up! Talk to a teacher, the principal, the head of a community organization or a lawyer so they can investigate the situation and help you take legal action if necessary.

ARE TRACKING SYSTEMS LEGAL?

Yes, as long as they really do separate students on the basis of learning ability and as long as they give students the same basic education.

Many studies show, however, that the standards and tests school officials use in deciding on track placements are often based on racial and class prejudices and stereotypes instead of on real ability and learning potential. That means it’s often the white, middle-class kids who end up in the college prep classes, while poor and non-white students, and kids whose first language isn’t English, end up on “slow” tracks and in vocational-training classes. And often, the lower the track you’re on, the less you’re expected to learn – and the less you’re taught.

Even if you have low grades or nobody in your family ever went to college, if you want to go to college, you should demand the type of education you need to realize your dreams. And your guidance counselor should help you get it! Your local ACLU can tell you the details of how to go about challenging your track placement.

CAN STUDENTS BE TREATED DIFFERENTLY IN PUBLIC SCHOOL BASED ON THEIR SEX?

Almost never. Public schools may not have academic courses that are just for boys – like shop – or just for girls – like home economics. Both the Constitution and federal law require that boys and girls also be provided with equal athletic opportunities. Many courts have held, however, that separate teams for boys and girls are allowed as long as the school provides students of both sexes the chance to participate in the particular sport. Some courts have also held that boys and girls may always be separated in contact sports. The law is different in different states; you can call your local ACLU affiliate for information.

CAN GIRLS BE KICKED OUT OF SCHOOL IF THEY GET PREGNANT?

No. Federal law prohibits schools from discriminating against pregnant students or students who are married or have children. So, if you are pregnant, school officials can’t keep you from attending classes, graduation ceremonies, extracurricular activities or any other school activity except maybe a strenuous sport. Some schools have special classes for pregnant girls, but they cannot make you attend these if you would prefer to be in your regular classes.

CAN SCHOOLS DISCRIMINATE AGAINST GAY STUDENTS?

School officials shouldn’t be able to violate your rights just because they don’t like your sexual orientation. However, even though a few states and cities have passed laws against sexual orientation discrimination, public high schools have been slow to establish their own anti-bias codes – and they’re slow to respond to incidents of harassment and discrimination. So while in theory, you can take a same-sex date to the prom, join or help form a gay group at school or write an article about lesbian/gay issues for the school paper, in practice gay students often have to fight hard to have their rights respected.

WHAT ABOUT STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES?

Although students with disabilities may not be capable of having exactly the same educational experiences as other students, federal law requires that they be provided with an education that is appropriate for them. What is an appropriate education must be worked out individually for each student. For example, a deaf student might be entitled to be provided with a sign language interpreter.

In addition to requiring that schools identify students with disabilities so that they can receive the special education they need in order to learn, federal law also provides procedures to make sure that students are not placed in special education classes when they are not disabled. If you believe you’re not receiving an appropriate education, either because you are not in special classes when you need to be, or because you are in special classes when you don’t need to be, call the ACLU!

And thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), students who are HIV positive have the same rights as every other student. People with HIV are protected against discrimination , not only in school but in many other public places such as stores, museums and hotels.

People with HIV aren’t a threat to anyone else’s health, because the AIDS virus can’t be spread through casual contact. That’s just a medical fact. Your local ACLU can provide information on how to fight discrimination against people with HIV.

CAN I GO TO PUBLIC SCHOOL IF I DON’T SPEAK ENGLISH?

Yes. It is the job of the public schools to teach you to speak English and to provide you with a good education in other subjects while you are learning. Students who do not speak English have the right to require the school district to provide them with bilingual education or English language instruction or both.

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” –Title IX, Education Amendments of 1972

We spend a big part of our life in school, and our voices count. Join the student government! Attend school meetings! Petition your school administration! Talk about your rights with your friends! Let’s make a difference!

Produced by the ACLU Department of Public Education. 125 Broad Street, NY NY 10004. For more copies of this or any other Sybil Liberty paper, or to order the ACLU handbook The Rights of Students or other student-related publications, call 800-775-ACLU or visit us on the internet at https://www.aclu.org .

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Is Education a Fundamental Right?

By Jill Lepore

Before sunrise on a morning just after Labor Day, 1977, Humberto and Jackeline Alvarez, Felix Hernandez, Rosario and Jose Robles, and Lidia and Jose Lopez huddled together in the basement of the United States Courthouse in Tyler, Texas , the Rose City, to decide just how much they were willing to risk for the sake of their children, for the sake of other people’s children, and for the sake, really, of everyone. Among them, the Alvarezes, Hernandez, the Robleses, and the Lopezes had sixteen children who, the week before, had been barred from entering Tyler’s public schools by order of James Plyler, Tyler’s school superintendent. On the first day of school, Rosario Robles had walked her five children to Bonner Elementary, where she was met by the principal, who asked her for the children’s birth certificates, and, when she couldn’t provide them, put her and the kids in his car and drove them home.

This hadn’t been the principal’s idea, or even Plyler’s. In 1975, when Texas passed a law allowing public schools to bar undocumented immigrants, Plyler ignored it. “I guess I was soft-hearted and concerned about the kids,” he said. Also, there weren’t many of them. About sixteen thousand children went to the schools in the East Texas city of Tyler, which considered itself the rose-growing capital of America and was named for John Tyler, the President of the United States who had pushed for the annexation of Texas in 1844, which led to a war with Mexico in 1846. Of those sixteen thousand students, fewer than sixty were the children of parents who had, without anyone’s permission, entered the United States from Mexico by crossing a border established in 1848, when the war ended with a treaty that turned the top half of Mexico into the bottom third of the United States. Jose Robles worked in a pipe factory. Humberto Alvarez worked in a meatpacking plant. They paid rent. They owned cars. They paid taxes. They grew roses.

Nevertheless, in July of 1977 Tyler’s school board, worried that Tyler would become a haven for immigrants driven away from other towns, insisted that undocumented children be kicked out of the city’s schools unless their parents paid a thousand dollars a year, per child, which few of them could afford, not even the Robleses, who owned their own home. Turned away from Bonner Elementary, the Robleses sent some of their kids to a local Catholic school—Jose did yard work in exchange for tuition—but they were put in touch with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which sent an attorney, Peter Roos, who filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Eastern District Court of Texas. It was presided over by a judge whose name was Justice. “There were two judges in Tyler,” Roos liked to say. “You got Justice, or no justice.”

Participating in a lawsuit as an undocumented immigrant is a very risky proposition. In a closed-door meeting, Roos asked that the parents be allowed to testify in chambers and so avoid revealing their identities, which could lead to deportation. They had come to the courthouse knowing that, at any moment, they could be arrested, and driven to Mexico, without so much as a goodbye. Judge William Wayne Justice refused to grant the protective order. “I am a United States magistrate and if I learn of a violation of the law, it’s my sworn duty to disclose it to the authorities,” he said. Roos went down to the basement, near the holding cells, to inform the families and give them a chance to think it over. They decided to go ahead with the suit, come what may. Justice did make efforts to protect them from publicity, and from harassment, decreeing that the proceeding would start before dawn, to keep the press and the public at bay, and that the plaintiffs’ names would be withheld.

Roos filed a motion requesting that the children be allowed to attend school, without paying tuition, while the case unfolded, which was expected to take years. “An educated populace is the basis of our democratic institutions,” his brief argued, citing Brown v. Board of Education. “A denial of educational opportunities is repugnant to our notions that an informed and educated citizenry is necessary to our society.” The case was docketed as Doe v. Plyler. “This is one that’s headed for the United States Supreme Court,” Justice told his clerk. Five years later, the appeal, Plyler v. Doe , went to Washington.

Some Supreme Court decisions are famous. Some are infamous. Brown v. Board, Roe v. Wade. But Plyler v. Doe? It’s not any kind of famous. Outside the legal academy, where it is generally deemed to be of limited significance, the case is little known. (Earlier this year, during testimony before Congress, Betsy DeVos , the Secretary of Education, appeared not to have heard of it.) The obscurity of the case might end soon, though, not least because the Court’s opinion in Plyler v. Doe addressed questions that are central to ongoing debates about both education and immigration and that get to the heart of what schoolchildren and undocumented migrants have in common: vulnerability.

Plyler is arguably a controlling case in Gary B. v. Snyder, a lawsuit filed against the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, by seven Detroit schoolchildren, for violating their constitutional right to an education. According to the complaint, “illiteracy is the norm” in the Detroit public schools; they are the most economically and racially segregated schools in the country and, in formal assessments of student proficiency, have been rated close to zero. In Brown, the Court had described an education as “a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” But the Detroit plaintiffs also cite Plyler, in which the majority deemed illiteracy to be “an enduring disability,” identified the absolute denial of education as a violation of the equal-protection clause, and ruled that no state can “deny a discrete group of innocent children the free public education that it offers to other children residing within its borders.” Dismissed by a district court in June, the case is now headed to the Sixth Circuit on appeal.

Plyler’s reach extends, too, to lawsuits filed this summer on behalf of immigrant children who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. In June, the Texas State Teachers Association called on the governor of the state to make provisions for the education of the detained children, before the beginning of the school year, but has so far received no reply. Thousands of children are being held in more than a hundred detention centers around the country, many run by for-profit contractors. Conditions vary, but, on the whole, instruction is limited and supplies are few. “The kids barely learn anything,” a former social worker reported from Arizona.

Court-watchers have tended to consider Plyler insignificant because the Court’s holding was narrow. But in “ The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind ” (Pantheon) Justin Driver, a law professor at the University of Chicago, argues that this view of Plyler is wrong. “Properly understood,” Driver writes, “it rests among the most egalitarian, momentous, and efficacious constitutional opinions that the Supreme Court has issued throughout its entire history.”

Driver is not alone in this view. In “ No Undocumented Child Left Behind ” (2012), the University of Houston law professor Michael A. Olivas called Plyler “the apex of the Court’s treatment of the undocumented.” In “ Immigration Outside the Law ” (2014), the U.C.L.A. law professor Hiroshi Motomura compared Plyler to Brown and described its influence as “fundamental, profound, and enduring.” Even people who think the case hasn’t been influential wish it had been. “Plyler v. Doe may be irrelevant in a strictly legal sense,” the legal journalist Linda Greenhouse wrote last year, “but there are strong reasons to resurrect its memory and ponder it today.” Because, for once, our tired, our poor, our huddled masses—the very littlest of them—breathed free.

Laura Alvarez, ten years old, rode in the family’s battered station wagon to the courthouse in Tyler, for a hearing held on September 9, 1977, at six in the morning. (During a related Texas case—later consolidated with Plyler—a nine-year-old girl spoke to the judge in chambers and told him that, since being barred from school, the only learning she was getting came from poring over the homework done by a younger sibling—an American citizen.) In Tyler, the assistant attorney general for the State of Texas showed up wearing bluejeans. She’d flown in late the night before, and had lost her luggage. After an attorney from the Carter Administration said that the Justice Department would not pursue the litigants while the trial proceeded, during which time the students would be able to attend school, Judge Justice issued the requested injunction.

Witnesses presented testimony about economies: educating these children cost the state money, particularly because they needed special English-language instruction, but not educating these children would be costly, too, in the long term, when they became legal residents but, uneducated, would be able to contribute very little to the tax base. The Judge had a policy preference: “The predictable effects of depriving an undocumented child of an education are clear and undisputed. Already disadvantaged as a result of poverty, lack of English-speaking ability, and undeniable racial prejudices, these children, without an education, will become permanently locked into the lowest socio-economic class.” But the question didn’t turn on anyone’s policy preferences; it turned on the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, guarantees certain rights to “citizens” and makes two promises to “persons”: it prohibits a state from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and prohibits a state from denying “any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Before Plyler, the Supreme Court had established that the due-process clause applied to undocumented immigrants, who are, plainly, “persons,” but it had not established that the equal-protection clause extended to them, and the State of Texas said that it didn’t, because undocumented immigrants were in the state illegally. Judge Justice disagreed. “People who have entered the United States, by whatever means, are ‘within its jurisdiction’ in that they are within the territory of the United States and subject to its laws,” he wrote.

But how to apply that clause? The courts bring a standard known as “strict scrutiny” to laws that abridge a “fundamental right,” like the right to life, liberty, and property, and to laws that discriminate against a particular class of people, a “suspect class,” like the freed slaves in whose interest the amendment was originally written—that is, any population burdened with disabilities “or subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment, or relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process.”

Is education a fundamental right? The Constitution, drafted in the summer of 1787, does not mention a right to education, but the Northwest Ordinance, passed by Congress that same summer, held that “religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” By 1868 the constitutions of twenty-eight of the thirty-two states in the Union had provided for free public education, open to all. Texas, in its 1869 constitution, provided for free public schooling for “all the inhabitants of this State,” a provision that was revised to exclude undocumented immigrants only in 1975.

Justice skirted the questions of whether education is a fundamental right and whether undocumented immigrants are a suspect class. Instead of applying the standard of “strict scrutiny” to the Texas law, he applied the lowest level of scrutiny to the law, which is known as the “rational basis test.” He decided that the Texas law failed this test. The State of Texas had argued that the law was rational because undocumented children are expensive to educate—they often require bilingual education, free meals, and even free clothing. But, Justice noted, so are other children, including native-born children, and children who have immigrated legally, and their families are not asked to bear the cost of their special education. As to why Texas had even passed such a law, he had two explanations, both cynical: “Children of illegal aliens had never been explicitly afforded any judicial protection, and little political uproar was likely to be raised in their behalf.”

In September, 1978, Justice ruled in favor of the children. Not long afterward, a small bouquet arrived at his house, sent by three Mexican workers. Then came the hate mail. A man from Lubbock wrote, on the back of a postcard, “Why in the hell don’t you illegally move to mexico?”

“The Schoolhouse Gate” is the first book-length history of Supreme Court cases involving the constitutional rights of schoolchildren, a set of cases that, though often written about, have never before been written about all together, as if they constituted a distinct body of law. In Driver’s view, “the public school has served as the single most significant site of constitutional interpretation within the nation’s history.” Millions of Americans spend most of their days in public schools—miniature states—where liberty, equality, rights, and privileges are matters of daily struggle. Schools are also, not incidentally, where Americans learn about liberty, equality, rights, and privileges. “The schoolroom is the first opportunity most citizens have to experience the power of government,” Justice John Paul Stevens once wrote.

The Supreme Court paid relatively little attention to public schools until after the Second World War, but, since then, it has ruled on a slew of cases. Do students have First Amendment rights? In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), the Court said yes. Three students had sued when they were suspended for wearing black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War. In a 7–2 opinion, the Court sided with the students, affirming that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” and that public schools, though not democracies, “may not be enclaves of totalitarianism,” either. Justice Hugo Black issued a heated dissent. “It may be that the Nation has outworn the old-fashioned slogan that ‘children are to be seen not heard,’ ” he wrote, but he hoped it was still true that we “send children to school on the premise that at their age they need to learn, not teach.” A still more strident version of Black’s position was taken by Justice Clarence Thomas, in Morse v. Frederick (2007), a case involving a student who, when a parade passed in front of the school, waved a banner that read “ BONG H i TS 4 JESUS .” Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts marked an exception to the free-speech rights established in Tinker: students are not free to endorse drug use, but Thomas, concurring, used the occasion to wax nostalgic: “In the earliest public schools, teachers taught, and students listened. Teachers commanded, and students obeyed.”

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Just because the courts have recognized students’ First Amendment rights, it doesn’t follow that students have other rights. Do students have Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures”? Do they have Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination? Do they have Eighth Amendment protections against “cruel and unusual punishment”? In Goss v. Lopez (1975), the Court ruled that students cannot be suspended or expelled without at least some form of due process, but, two years later, in Ingraham v. Wright , it said that schools could punish children, physically, and without any procedure at all. This shift took place amid a growing conservative reaction that viewed the Court’s schoolhouse opinions as an example of judicial overreach, as a violation of states’ rights, and as part of the rise of permissiveness and the decline of order. Lopez had extended to students a Fourteenth Amendment right to due process, partly on the back of the argument that granting students rights is a way of teaching them about citizenship, fairness, and decency. “To insist upon fair treatment before passing judgment against a student accused of wrongdoing is to demonstrate that society has high principles and the conviction to honor them,” the legal scholar William G. Buss wrote , in an influential law-review article in 1971.

Plenty of teachers and school administrators think that students don’t have any rights. “I am the Constitution,” Joe Clarke, the principal of a high school in Paterson, New Jersey, liked to say, roaming the hallways with a Willie Mays baseball bat in the nineteen-eighties. This was an era that Driver describes as marking a Reagan Justice Department campaign for “education law and order.” The era produced a 1985 decision, T.L.O. v. New Jersey , in which the Court ruled that schools require only reasonable suspicion, not probable cause, to search students and their backpacks and lockers and other belongings.

Together, the education law-and-order regime and the rise of school shootings, beginning with Columbine in 1999, have produced a new environment in the nation’s schools, more than half of which, as of 2007, are patrolled by police officers. It was a police officer’s closed-door questioning of a seventh grader, taken out of his social-studies class in Chapel Hill, that led to the Court’s 2011 decision, in J.D.B. v. North Carolina , establishing that only in certain circumstances do students have Fifth Amendment rights. Do students have Second Amendment rights? Not yet. But last year a Kentucky congressman introduced a Safe Students Act that would have repealed the 1990 Gun-Free School Zones Act, and allowed guns in schools. Meanwhile, more and more schools are surveilled by cameras, and bordered by metal detectors. If the schoolhouse is a mini-state, it has also become, in many places, a military state.

Few discussions of Plyler are more keenly sensitive to its ambiguities than Ana Raquel Minian’s “ Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration ” (Harvard), a revealing study that, because “undocumented lives” are nearly impossible to trace in the archives, relies on hundreds of oral histories. For Minian, Plyler, by its very casting of undocumented children as innocents, underscored the perception of undocumented adults as culpable—criminals to be arrested, detained, prosecuted, and deported.

As Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit, Woodrow Seals, a district judge in Houston, ruled for the children in a related case. Seals didn’t agree that the undocumented children were a suspect class, but he didn’t need to, because he believed the Texas statute was not rational, and, in any case, he thought that absolute denial of an education was so severe a harm that, on its own terms, it required strict scrutiny. Public school is “the most important institution in this country,” Seals wrote, and “the Constitution does not permit the states to deny access to education to a discrete group of children within its border.” Seals handed down his opinion in July, 1980, just months before the Presidential election. He wrote in a letter, “I hate to think what will happen to my decision if Governor Reagan wins the election and appoints four new justices to the Supreme Court.”

Carter’s Justice Department had supported the plaintiffs. Reagan’s did not. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Plyler v. Doe on December 1, 1981. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund considered the case to be as important as Brown v. Board of Education, which, in 1954, Thurgood Marshall, then the head of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, had argued before the Court. Marshall had presented Brown as a Fourteenth Amendment, equal-protection case. The plaintiffs in Plyler were making, essentially, the same argument. Conceivably, their case could realize the promise of Brown by establishing a constitutional right to an education. They could even press the claim that undocumented immigrants were not only persons under the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment but also, doctrinally, a suspect class. None of these objectives were politically within their reach, however, given the makeup of the bench.

During oral arguments, Marshall peppered John Hardy, representing Plyler, about what the State of Texas did and did not provide for undocumented immigrants:

M arshall : Could Texas deny them fire protection? H ardy : Deny them fire protection? M arshall : Yes, sir. F-i-r-e. H ardy : Okay. If their home is on fire, their home is going to be protected with the local fire services just— M arshall : Could Texas pass a law and say they cannot be protected? H ardy : —I don’t believe so. M arshall : Why not? If they could do this, why couldn’t they do that? H ardy : Because . . . I am going to take the position that it is an entitlement of the . . . Justice Marshall, let me think a second. You . . . that is . . . I don’t know. That’s a tough question. M arshall : Somebody’s house is more important than his child?

Later, Marshall came back at him, asking, “Could Texas pass a law denying admission to the schools of children of convicts?” Hardy said that they could, but that it wouldn’t be constitutional. Marshall’s reply: “We are dealing with children. I mean, here is a child that is the son of a murderer, but he can go to school, but the child that is the son of an unfortunate alien cannot?”

Three days later, the Justices held a conference. According to notes made by Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Chief Justice Warren Burger said, “14A applies as they are persons but illegals are not entitled to E/P.” Marshall said, “Children are not illegals. . . . E/P means what it says.” Five Justices wanted to uphold the lower court’s opinion, four to reverse it. Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., volunteered to write the majority opinion. He circulated a draft that called for strict scrutiny, deeming the children “a discrete and historically demeaned group.” Powell said that he couldn’t sign it.

Powell, appointed by Nixon in 1971, had been, for a decade, the chair of the school board of Richmond, Virginia. Sometimes known as “the education justice,” he was deeply committed to public schools. But, because he was also committed to judicial restraint, he was opposed to declaring education to be a constitutional right. “It is not the province of this Court to create substantive constitutional rights in the name of guaranteeing equal protection of the laws,” he had written in 1973, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez , a case that was widely seen as having shut the door on the idea. For Powell, establishing education as a fundamental right invited claims: are health care, food, and shelter fundamental rights, too?

Powell was unwilling to sign Brennan’s first draft, not only because it went against his opinion in Rodriguez but also because the draft contained language “that will be read as indicating that all illegal aliens, adults as well as children, may be ‘discrete and insular minorities for which the Constitution offers a special solicitude.’ ” Brennan wrote a second draft; Powell once again asked him to narrow his opinion. But other Justices, who wanted to uphold the lower court’s decision, sought to move Brennan further to the left. After reading a draft of Burger’s dissent (“The Constitution does not provide a cure for every social ill,” the Chief Justice wrote, “nor does it vest judges with a mandate to try to remedy every social problem”), Justice Harry Blackmun circulated a proposal for issuing a different opinion, arguing that education has a special status because it’s foundational to all other political rights, being necessary “to preserve rights of expression and participation in the political process, and therefore to preserve individual rights generally.” Marshall, Brennan, and Stevens were prepared to join that opinion. But Blackmun needed Powell to make five. And Powell wouldn’t sign on. “As important as education has been in the life of my family for three generations,” he wrote to Blackmun, “I would hesitate before creating another heretofore unidentified right.”

In the end, Brennan crafted a compromise. Education is not a constitutional right, he wrote, “but neither is it merely some governmental ‘benefit.’ ” Undocumented migrants are not a suspect class, but their children are vulnerable, and laws that discriminate against them, while not subject to strict scrutiny, deserved “heightened scrutiny.” Powell wrote to Brennan after reading the draft, “Your final product is excellent and will be in every text and case book on Constitutional law.”

And yet its interpretation remains limited. “Powell wanted the case to be about the education of children, not the equal protection rights of immigrants, and so the decision was,” Linda Greenhouse remarked in a careful study of the Court’s deliberations, published a decade ago. For many legal scholars, Plyler looks like a dead end. It didn’t cut through any constitutional thickets; it opened no new road to equal rights for undocumented immigrants, and no new road to the right to an education. It simply meant that no state could pass a law barring undocumented children from public schools. But that is exactly why Driver thinks that Plyler was so significant: without it, states would have passed those laws, and millions of children would have been saddled with the disability of illiteracy.

In 1994, when Californians were contemplating Proposition 187, which would have denied services to undocumented immigrants, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times was able to track down thirteen of the original sixteen Plyler children. Ten had graduated from high school in Tyler. Two worked as teacher’s aides. Laura Alvarez and all six of her brothers and sisters stayed in Tyler after Judge Justice issued his opinion in Plyler. She became a legal resident of the United States under the terms of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, graduated in 1987 from John Tyler High School, and spent a decade working for the Tyler school district. “Without an education, I don’t know where I’d be right now,” she said.

“I’m glad we lost,” James Plyler said in an interview in 2007, when he was eighty-two, and long since retired, and enjoying his grandchildren, who are themselves of Mexican descent.

Lewis Powell retired from the Court in 1987. He was replaced by Anthony Kennedy. In another opinion, Powell had written that children should not be punished for the crimes of their parents. “Visiting this condemnation on the head of an infant is illogical and unjust,” because “legal burdens should bear some relationship to individual responsibility or wrongdoing.” It’s hard to know what Kennedy’s likely replacement, Brett Kavanaugh, would say about whether the Constitution guarantees undocumented migrant children the equal protection of the law. He’s never cited Plyler in his scholarship and, in opinions issued from the bench, has cited it only once. He hasn’t written much about equal protection, either, though he has said, in passing, that he finds the equal-protection clause ambiguous. As for undocumented migrant children, he has issued one important opinion, a dissent in Garza v. Hargan, last year, that, while not citing Plyler, described the plaintiff in the case, an undocumented immigrant minor in Texas, as particularly vulnerable.

“The minor is alone and without family or friends,” Kavanaugh wrote. “She is in a U.S. Government detention facility in a country that, for her, is foreign. She is 17 years old.” The reason for her vulnerability? “She is pregnant and has to make a major life decision.” She wanted to have an abortion; Kavanaugh had earlier joined a decision ruling that she must first leave detention and find a sponsoring foster family. When, in a further appeal, the D.C. court vacated that ruling, Kavanaugh dissented, arguing that the court had acted on “a constitutional principle as novel as it is wrong: a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. Government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.” Her name was kept out of the proceedings. She was another Doe. It is not clear whether she ever finished her education. ♦

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Philosophy of Education

Philosophy of education is the branch of applied or practical philosophy concerned with the nature and aims of education and the philosophical problems arising from educational theory and practice. Because that practice is ubiquitous in and across human societies, its social and individual manifestations so varied, and its influence so profound, the subject is wide-ranging, involving issues in ethics and social/political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and language, and other areas of philosophy. Because it looks both inward to the parent discipline and outward to educational practice and the social, legal, and institutional contexts in which it takes place, philosophy of education concerns itself with both sides of the traditional theory/practice divide. Its subject matter includes both basic philosophical issues (e.g., the nature of the knowledge worth teaching, the character of educational equality and justice, etc.) and problems concerning specific educational policies and practices (e.g., the desirability of standardized curricula and testing, the social, economic, legal and moral dimensions of specific funding arrangements, the justification of curriculum decisions, etc.). In all this the philosopher of education prizes conceptual clarity, argumentative rigor, the fair-minded consideration of the interests of all involved in or affected by educational efforts and arrangements, and informed and well-reasoned valuation of educational aims and interventions.

Philosophy of education has a long and distinguished history in the Western philosophical tradition, from Socrates’ battles with the sophists to the present day. Many of the most distinguished figures in that tradition incorporated educational concerns into their broader philosophical agendas (Curren 2000, 2018; Rorty 1998). While that history is not the focus here, it is worth noting that the ideals of reasoned inquiry championed by Socrates and his descendants have long informed the view that education should foster in all students, to the extent possible, the disposition to seek reasons and the ability to evaluate them cogently, and to be guided by their evaluations in matters of belief, action and judgment. This view, that education centrally involves the fostering of reason or rationality, has with varying articulations and qualifications been embraced by most of those historical figures; it continues to be defended by contemporary philosophers of education as well (Scheffler 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988, 1997, 2007, 2017). As with any philosophical thesis it is controversial; some dimensions of the controversy are explored below.

This entry is a selective survey of important contemporary work in Anglophone philosophy of education; it does not treat in detail recent scholarship outside that context.

1. Problems in Delineating the Field

2. analytic philosophy of education and its influence, 3.1 the content of the curriculum and the aims and functions of schooling, 3.2 social, political and moral philosophy, 3.3 social epistemology, virtue epistemology, and the epistemology of education, 3.4 philosophical disputes concerning empirical education research, 4. concluding remarks, other internet resources, related entries.

The inward/outward looking nature of the field of philosophy of education alluded to above makes the task of delineating the field, of giving an over-all picture of the intellectual landscape, somewhat complicated (for a detailed account of this topography, see Phillips 1985, 2010). Suffice it to say that some philosophers, as well as focusing inward on the abstract philosophical issues that concern them, are drawn outwards to discuss or comment on issues that are more commonly regarded as falling within the purview of professional educators, educational researchers, policy-makers and the like. (An example is Michael Scriven, who in his early career was a prominent philosopher of science; later he became a central figure in the development of the field of evaluation of educational and social programs. See Scriven 1991a, 1991b.) At the same time, there are professionals in the educational or closely related spheres who are drawn to discuss one or another of the philosophical issues that they encounter in the course of their work. (An example here is the behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner, the central figure in the development of operant conditioning and programmed learning, who in works such as Walden Two (1948) and Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1972) grappled—albeit controversially—with major philosophical issues that were related to his work.)

What makes the field even more amorphous is the existence of works on educational topics, written by well-regarded philosophers who have made major contributions to their discipline; these educational reflections have little or no philosophical content, illustrating the truth that philosophers do not always write philosophy. However, despite this, works in this genre have often been treated as contributions to philosophy of education. (Examples include John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education [1693] and Bertrand Russell’s rollicking pieces written primarily to raise funds to support a progressive school he ran with his wife. (See Park 1965.)

Finally, as indicated earlier, the domain of education is vast, the issues it raises are almost overwhelmingly numerous and are of great complexity, and the social significance of the field is second to none. These features make the phenomena and problems of education of great interest to a wide range of socially-concerned intellectuals, who bring with them their own favored conceptual frameworks—concepts, theories and ideologies, methods of analysis and argumentation, metaphysical and other assumptions, and the like. It is not surprising that scholars who work in this broad genre also find a home in the field of philosophy of education.

As a result of these various factors, the significant intellectual and social trends of the past few centuries, together with the significant developments in philosophy, all have had an impact on the content of arguments and methods of argumentation in philosophy of education—Marxism, psycho-analysis, existentialism, phenomenology, positivism, post-modernism, pragmatism, neo-liberalism, the several waves of feminism, analytic philosophy in both its ordinary language and more formal guises, are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Conceptual analysis, careful assessment of arguments, the rooting out of ambiguity, the drawing of clarifying distinctions—all of which are at least part of the philosophical toolkit—have been respected activities within philosophy from the dawn of the field. No doubt it somewhat over-simplifies the complex path of intellectual history to suggest that what happened in the twentieth century—early on, in the home discipline itself, and with a lag of a decade or more in philosophy of education—is that philosophical analysis came to be viewed by some scholars as being the major philosophical activity (or set of activities), or even as being the only viable or reputable activity. In any case, as they gained prominence and for a time hegemonic influence during the rise of analytic philosophy early in the twentieth century analytic techniques came to dominate philosophy of education in the middle third of that century (Curren, Robertson, & Hager 2003).

The pioneering work in the modern period entirely in an analytic mode was the short monograph by C.D. Hardie, Truth and Fallacy in Educational Theory (1941; reissued in 1962). In his Introduction, Hardie (who had studied with C.D. Broad and I.A. Richards) made it clear that he was putting all his eggs into the ordinary-language-analysis basket:

The Cambridge analytical school, led by Moore, Broad and Wittgenstein, has attempted so to analyse propositions that it will always be apparent whether the disagreement between philosophers is one concerning matters of fact, or is one concerning the use of words, or is, as is frequently the case, a purely emotive one. It is time, I think, that a similar attitude became common in the field of educational theory. (Hardie 1962: xix)

About a decade after the end of the Second World War the floodgates opened and a stream of work in the analytic mode appeared; the following is merely a sample. D. J. O’Connor published An Introduction to Philosophy of Education (1957) in which, among other things, he argued that the word “theory” as it is used in educational contexts is merely a courtesy title, for educational theories are nothing like what bear this title in the natural sciences. Israel Scheffler, who became the paramount philosopher of education in North America, produced a number of important works including The Language of Education (1960), which contained clarifying and influential analyses of definitions (he distinguished reportive, stipulative, and programmatic types) and the logic of slogans (often these are literally meaningless, and, he argued, should be seen as truncated arguments), Conditions of Knowledge (1965), still the best introduction to the epistemological side of philosophy of education, and Reason and Teaching (1973 [1989]), which in a wide-ranging and influential series of essays makes the case for regarding the fostering of rationality/critical thinking as a fundamental educational ideal (cf. Siegel 2016). B. O. Smith and R. H. Ennis edited the volume Language and Concepts in Education (1961); and R.D. Archambault edited Philosophical Analysis and Education (1965), consisting of essays by a number of prominent British writers, most notably R. S. Peters (whose status in Britain paralleled that of Scheffler in the United States), Paul Hirst, and John Wilson. Topics covered in the Archambault volume were typical of those that became the “bread and butter” of analytic philosophy of education (APE) throughout the English-speaking world—education as a process of initiation, liberal education, the nature of knowledge, types of teaching, and instruction versus indoctrination.

Among the most influential products of APE was the analysis developed by Hirst and Peters (1970) and Peters (1973) of the concept of education itself. Using as a touchstone “normal English usage,” it was concluded that a person who has been educated (rather than instructed or indoctrinated) has been (i) changed for the better; (ii) this change has involved the acquisition of knowledge and intellectual skills and the development of understanding; and (iii) the person has come to care for, or be committed to, the domains of knowledge and skill into which he or she has been initiated. The method used by Hirst and Peters comes across clearly in their handling of the analogy with the concept of “reform”, one they sometimes drew upon for expository purposes. A criminal who has been reformed has changed for the better, and has developed a commitment to the new mode of life (if one or other of these conditions does not hold, a speaker of standard English would not say the criminal has been reformed). Clearly the analogy with reform breaks down with respect to the knowledge and understanding conditions. Elsewhere Peters developed the fruitful notion of “education as initiation”.

The concept of indoctrination was also of great interest to analytic philosophers of education, for, it was argued, getting clear about precisely what constitutes indoctrination also would serve to clarify the border that demarcates it from acceptable educational processes. Thus, whether or not an instructional episode was a case of indoctrination was determined by the content taught, the intention of the instructor, the methods of instruction used, the outcomes of the instruction, or by some combination of these. Adherents of the different analyses used the same general type of argument to make their case, namely, appeal to normal and aberrant usage. Unfortunately, ordinary language analysis did not lead to unanimity of opinion about where this border was located, and rival analyses of the concept were put forward (Snook 1972). The danger of restricting analysis to ordinary language (“normal English usage”) was recognized early on by Scheffler, whose preferred view of analysis emphasized

first, its greater sophistication as regards language, and the interpenetration of language and inquiry, second, its attempt to follow the modern example of the sciences in empirical spirit, in rigor, in attention to detail, in respect for alternatives, and in objectivity of method, and third, its use of techniques of symbolic logic brought to full development only in the last fifty years… It is…this union of scientific spirit and logical method applied toward the clarification of basic ideas that characterizes current analytic philosophy [and that ought to characterize analytic philosophy of education]. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 9–10])

After a period of dominance, for a number of important reasons the influence of APE went into decline. First, there were growing criticisms that the work of analytic philosophers of education had become focused upon minutiae and in the main was bereft of practical import. (It is worth noting that a 1966 article in Time , reprinted in Lucas 1969, had put forward the same criticism of mainstream philosophy.) Second, in the early 1970’s radical students in Britain accused Peters’ brand of linguistic analysis of conservatism, and of tacitly giving support to “traditional values”—they raised the issue of whose English usage was being analyzed?

Third, criticisms of language analysis in mainstream philosophy had been mounting for some time, and finally after a lag of many years were reaching the attention of philosophers of education; there even had been a surprising degree of interest on the part of the general reading public in the United Kingdom as early as 1959, when Gilbert Ryle, editor of the journal Mind , refused to commission a review of Ernest Gellner’s Words and Things (1959)—a detailed and quite acerbic critique of Wittgenstein’s philosophy and its espousal of ordinary language analysis. (Ryle argued that Gellner’s book was too insulting, a view that drew Bertrand Russell into the fray on Gellner’s side—in the daily press, no less; Russell produced a list of insulting remarks drawn from the work of great philosophers of the past. See Mehta 1963.)

Richard Peters had been given warning that all was not well with APE at a conference in Canada in 1966; after delivering a paper on “The aims of education: A conceptual inquiry” that was based on ordinary language analysis, a philosopher in the audience (William Dray) asked Peters “ whose concepts do we analyze?” Dray went on to suggest that different people, and different groups within society, have different concepts of education. Five years before the radical students raised the same issue, Dray pointed to the possibility that what Peters had presented under the guise of a “logical analysis” was nothing but the favored usage of a certain class of persons—a class that Peters happened to identify with (see Peters 1973, where to the editor’s credit the interaction with Dray is reprinted).

Fourth, during the decade of the seventies when these various critiques of analytic philosophy were in the process of eroding its luster, a spate of translations from the Continent stimulated some philosophers of education in Britain and North America to set out in new directions, and to adopt a new style of writing and argumentation. Key works by Gadamer, Foucault and Derrida appeared in English, and these were followed in 1984 by Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition . The classic works of Heidegger and Husserl also found new admirers; and feminist philosophers of education were finding their voices—Maxine Greene published a number of pieces in the 1970s and 1980s, including The Dialectic of Freedom (1988); the influential book by Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education , appeared the same year as the work by Lyotard, followed a year later by Jane Roland Martin’s Reclaiming a Conversation . In more recent years all these trends have continued. APE was and is no longer the center of interest, although, as indicated below, it still retains its voice.

3. Areas of Contemporary Activity

As was stressed at the outset, the field of education is huge and contains within it a virtually inexhaustible number of issues that are of philosophical interest. To attempt comprehensive coverage of how philosophers of education have been working within this thicket would be a quixotic task for a large single volume and is out of the question for a solitary encyclopedia entry. Nevertheless, a valiant attempt to give an overview was made in A Companion to the Philosophy of Education (Curren 2003), which contains more than six-hundred pages divided into forty-five chapters each of which surveys a subfield of work. The following random selection of chapter topics gives a sense of the enormous scope of the field: Sex education, special education, science education, aesthetic education, theories of teaching and learning, religious education, knowledge, truth and learning, cultivating reason, the measurement of learning, multicultural education, education and the politics of identity, education and standards of living, motivation and classroom management, feminism, critical theory, postmodernism, romanticism, the purposes of universities, affirmative action in higher education, and professional education. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education (Siegel 2009) contains a similarly broad range of articles on (among other things) the epistemic and moral aims of education, liberal education and its imminent demise, thinking and reasoning, fallibilism and fallibility, indoctrination, authenticity, the development of rationality, Socratic teaching, educating the imagination, caring and empathy in moral education, the limits of moral education, the cultivation of character, values education, curriculum and the value of knowledge, education and democracy, art and education, science education and religious toleration, constructivism and scientific methods, multicultural education, prejudice, authority and the interests of children, and on pragmatist, feminist, and postmodernist approaches to philosophy of education.

Given this enormous range, there is no non-arbitrary way to select a small number of topics for further discussion, nor can the topics that are chosen be pursued in great depth. The choice of those below has been made with an eye to highlighting contemporary work that makes solid contact with and contributes to important discussions in general philosophy and/or the academic educational and educational research communities.

The issue of what should be taught to students at all levels of education—the issue of curriculum content—obviously is a fundamental one, and it is an extraordinarily difficult one with which to grapple. In tackling it, care needs to be taken to distinguish between education and schooling—for although education can occur in schools, so can mis-education, and many other things can take place there that are educationally orthogonal (such as the provision of free or subsidized lunches and the development of social networks); and it also must be recognized that education can occur in the home, in libraries and museums, in churches and clubs, in solitary interaction with the public media, and the like.

In developing a curriculum (whether in a specific subject area, or more broadly as the whole range of offerings in an educational institution or system), a number of difficult decisions need to be made. Issues such as the proper ordering or sequencing of topics in the chosen subject, the time to be allocated to each topic, the lab work or excursions or projects that are appropriate for particular topics, can all be regarded as technical issues best resolved either by educationists who have a depth of experience with the target age group or by experts in the psychology of learning and the like. But there are deeper issues, ones concerning the validity of the justifications that have been given for including/excluding particular subjects or topics in the offerings of formal educational institutions. (Why should evolution or creation “science” be included, or excluded, as a topic within the standard high school subject Biology? Is the justification that is given for teaching Economics in some schools coherent and convincing? Do the justifications for including/excluding materials on birth control, patriotism, the Holocaust or wartime atrocities in the curriculum in some school districts stand up to critical scrutiny?)

The different justifications for particular items of curriculum content that have been put forward by philosophers and others since Plato’s pioneering efforts all draw, explicitly or implicitly, upon the positions that the respective theorists hold about at least three sets of issues.

First, what are the aims and/or functions of education (aims and functions are not necessarily the same)? Many aims have been proposed; a short list includes the production of knowledge and knowledgeable students, the fostering of curiosity and inquisitiveness, the enhancement of understanding, the enlargement of the imagination, the civilizing of students, the fostering of rationality and/or autonomy, and the development in students of care, concern and associated dispositions and attitudes (see Siegel 2007 for a longer list). The justifications offered for all such aims have been controversial, and alternative justifications of a single proposed aim can provoke philosophical controversy. Consider the aim of autonomy. Aristotle asked, what constitutes the good life and/or human flourishing, such that education should foster these (Curren 2013)? These two formulations are related, for it is arguable that our educational institutions should aim to equip individuals to pursue this good life—although this is not obvious, both because it is not clear that there is one conception of the good or flourishing life that is the good or flourishing life for everyone, and it is not clear that this is a question that should be settled in advance rather than determined by students for themselves. Thus, for example, if our view of human flourishing includes the capacity to think and act autonomously, then the case can be made that educational institutions—and their curricula—should aim to prepare, or help to prepare, autonomous individuals. A rival justification of the aim of autonomy, associated with Kant, champions the educational fostering of autonomy not on the basis of its contribution to human flourishing, but rather the obligation to treat students with respect as persons (Scheffler 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988). Still others urge the fostering of autonomy on the basis of students’ fundamental interests, in ways that draw upon both Aristotelian and Kantian conceptual resources (Brighouse 2005, 2009). It is also possible to reject the fostering of autonomy as an educational aim (Hand 2006).

Assuming that the aim can be justified, how students should be helped to become autonomous or develop a conception of the good life and pursue it is of course not immediately obvious, and much philosophical ink has been spilled on the general question of how best to determine curriculum content. One influential line of argument was developed by Paul Hirst, who argued that knowledge is essential for developing and then pursuing a conception of the good life, and because logical analysis shows, he argued, that there are seven basic forms of knowledge, the case can be made that the function of the curriculum is to introduce students to each of these forms (Hirst 1965; see Phillips 1987: ch. 11). Another, suggested by Scheffler, is that curriculum content should be selected so as “to help the learner attain maximum self-sufficiency as economically as possible.” The relevant sorts of economy include those of resources, teacher effort, student effort, and the generalizability or transfer value of content, while the self-sufficiency in question includes

self-awareness, imaginative weighing of alternative courses of action, understanding of other people’s choices and ways of life, decisiveness without rigidity, emancipation from stereotyped ways of thinking and perceiving…empathy… intuition, criticism and independent judgment. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 123–5])

Both impose important constraints on the curricular content to be taught.

Second, is it justifiable to treat the curriculum of an educational institution as a vehicle for furthering the socio-political interests and goals of a dominant group, or any particular group, including one’s own; and relatedly, is it justifiable to design the curriculum so that it serves as an instrument of control or of social engineering? In the closing decades of the twentieth century there were numerous discussions of curriculum theory, particularly from Marxist and postmodern perspectives, that offered the sobering analysis that in many educational systems, including those in Western democracies, the curriculum did indeed reflect and serve the interests of powerful cultural elites. What to do about this situation (if it is indeed the situation of contemporary educational institutions) is far from clear and is the focus of much work at the interface of philosophy of education and social/political philosophy, some of which is discussed in the next section. A closely related question is this: ought educational institutions be designed to further pre-determined social ends, or rather to enable students to competently evaluate all such ends? Scheffler argued that we should opt for the latter: we must

surrender the idea of shaping or molding the mind of the pupil. The function of education…is rather to liberate the mind, strengthen its critical powers, [and] inform it with knowledge and the capacity for independent inquiry. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 139])

Third, should educational programs at the elementary and secondary levels be made up of a number of disparate offerings, so that individuals with different interests and abilities and affinities for learning can pursue curricula that are suitable? Or should every student pursue the same curriculum as far as each is able?—a curriculum, it should be noted, that in past cases nearly always was based on the needs or interests of those students who were academically inclined or were destined for elite social roles. Mortimer Adler and others in the late twentieth century sometimes used the aphorism “the best education for the best is the best education for all.”

The thinking here can be explicated in terms of the analogy of an out-of-control virulent disease, for which there is only one type of medicine available; taking a large dose of this medicine is extremely beneficial, and the hope is that taking only a little—while less effective—is better than taking none at all. Medically, this is dubious, while the educational version—forcing students to work, until they exit the system, on topics that do not interest them and for which they have no facility or motivation—has even less merit. (For a critique of Adler and his Paideia Proposal , see Noddings 2015.) It is interesting to compare the modern “one curriculum track for all” position with Plato’s system outlined in the Republic , according to which all students—and importantly this included girls—set out on the same course of study. Over time, as they moved up the educational ladder it would become obvious that some had reached the limit imposed upon them by nature, and they would be directed off into appropriate social roles in which they would find fulfillment, for their abilities would match the demands of these roles. Those who continued on with their education would eventually become members of the ruling class of Guardians.

The publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971 was the most notable event in the history of political philosophy over the last century. The book spurred a period of ferment in political philosophy that included, among other things, new research on educationally fundamental themes. The principles of justice in educational distribution have perhaps been the dominant theme in this literature, and Rawls’s influence on its development has been pervasive.

Rawls’s theory of justice made so-called “fair equality of opportunity” one of its constitutive principles. Fair equality of opportunity entailed that the distribution of education would not put the children of those who currently occupied coveted social positions at any competitive advantage over other, equally talented and motivated children seeking the qualifications for those positions (Rawls 1971: 72–75). Its purpose was to prevent socio-economic differences from hardening into social castes that were perpetuated across generations. One obvious criticism of fair equality of opportunity is that it does not prohibit an educational distribution that lavished resources on the most talented children while offering minimal opportunities to others. So long as untalented students from wealthy families were assigned opportunities no better than those available to their untalented peers among the poor, no breach of the principle would occur. Even the most moderate egalitarians might find such a distributive regime to be intuitively repugnant.

Repugnance might be mitigated somewhat by the ways in which the overall structure of Rawls’s conception of justice protects the interests of those who fare badly in educational competition. All citizens must enjoy the same basic liberties, and equal liberty always has moral priority over equal opportunity: the former can never be compromised to advance the latter. Further, inequality in the distribution of income and wealth are permitted only to the degree that it serves the interests of the least advantaged group in society. But even with these qualifications, fair equality of opportunity is arguably less than really fair to anyone. The fact that their education should secure ends other than access to the most selective social positions—ends such as artistic appreciation, the kind of self-knowledge that humanistic study can furnish, or civic virtue—is deemed irrelevant according to Rawls’s principle. But surely it is relevant, given that a principle of educational justice must be responsive to the full range of educationally important goods.

Suppose we revise our account of the goods included in educational distribution so that aesthetic appreciation, say, and the necessary understanding and virtue for conscientious citizenship count for just as much as job-related skills. An interesting implication of doing so is that the rationale for requiring equality under any just distribution becomes decreasingly clear. That is because job-related skills are positional whereas the other educational goods are not (Hollis 1982). If you and I both aspire to a career in business management for which we are equally qualified, any increase in your job-related skills is a corresponding disadvantage to me unless I can catch up. Positional goods have a competitive structure by definition, though the ends of civic or aesthetic education do not fit that structure. If you and I aspire to be good citizens and are equal in civic understanding and virtue, an advance in your civic education is no disadvantage to me. On the contrary, it is easier to be a good citizen the better other citizens learn to be. At the very least, so far as non-positional goods figure in our conception of what counts as a good education, the moral stakes of inequality are thereby lowered.

In fact, an emerging alternative to fair equality of opportunity is a principle that stipulates some benchmark of adequacy in achievement or opportunity as the relevant standard of distribution. But it is misleading to represent this as a contrast between egalitarian and sufficientarian conceptions. Philosophically serious interpretations of adequacy derive from the ideal of equal citizenship (Satz 2007; Anderson 2007). Then again, fair equality of opportunity in Rawls’s theory is derived from a more fundamental ideal of equality among citizens. This was arguably true in A Theory of Justice but it is certainly true in his later work (Dworkin 1977: 150–183; Rawls 1993). So, both Rawls’s principle and the emerging alternative share an egalitarian foundation. The debate between adherents of equal opportunity and those misnamed as sufficientarians is certainly not over (e.g., Brighouse & Swift 2009; Jacobs 2010; Warnick 2015). Further progress will likely hinge on explicating the most compelling conception of the egalitarian foundation from which distributive principles are to be inferred. Another Rawls-inspired alternative is that a “prioritarian” distribution of achievement or opportunity might turn out to be the best principle we can come up with—i.e., one that favors the interests of the least advantaged students (Schouten 2012).

The publication of Rawls’s Political Liberalism in 1993 signaled a decisive turning point in his thinking about justice. In his earlier book, the theory of justice had been presented as if it were universally valid. But Rawls had come to think that any theory of justice presented as such was open to reasonable rejection. A more circumspect approach to justification would seek grounds for justice as fairness in an overlapping consensus between the many reasonable values and doctrines that thrive in a democratic political culture. Rawls argued that such a culture is informed by a shared ideal of free and equal citizenship that provided a new, distinctively democratic framework for justifying a conception of justice. The shift to political liberalism involved little revision on Rawls’s part to the content of the principles he favored. But the salience it gave to questions about citizenship in the fabric of liberal political theory had important educational implications. How was the ideal of free and equal citizenship to be instantiated in education in a way that accommodated the range of reasonable values and doctrines encompassed in an overlapping consensus? Political Liberalism has inspired a range of answers to that question (cf. Callan 1997; Clayton 2006; Bull 2008).

Other philosophers besides Rawls in the 1990s took up a cluster of questions about civic education, and not always from a liberal perspective. Alasdair Macintyre’s After Virtue (1984) strongly influenced the development of communitarian political theory which, as its very name might suggest, argued that the cultivation of community could preempt many of the problems with conflicting individual rights at the core of liberalism. As a full-standing alternative to liberalism, communitarianism might have little to recommend it. But it was a spur for liberal philosophers to think about how communities could be built and sustained to support the more familiar projects of liberal politics (e.g., Strike 2010). Furthermore, its arguments often converged with those advanced by feminist exponents of the ethic of care (Noddings 1984; Gilligan 1982). Noddings’ work is particularly notable because she inferred a cogent and radical agenda for the reform of schools from her conception of care (Noddings 1992).

One persistent controversy in citizenship theory has been about whether patriotism is correctly deemed a virtue, given our obligations to those who are not our fellow citizens in an increasingly interdependent world and the sordid history of xenophobia with which modern nation states are associated. The controversy is partly about what we should teach in our schools and is commonly discussed by philosophers in that context (Galston 1991; Ben-Porath 2006; Callan 2006; Miller 2007; Curren & Dorn 2018). The controversy is related to a deeper and more pervasive question about how morally or intellectually taxing the best conception of our citizenship should be. The more taxing it is, the more constraining its derivative conception of civic education will be. Contemporary political philosophers offer divergent arguments about these matters. For example, Gutmann and Thompson claim that citizens of diverse democracies need to “understand the diverse ways of life of their fellow citizens” (Gutmann & Thompson 1996: 66). The need arises from the obligation of reciprocity which they (like Rawls) believe to be integral to citizenship. Because I must seek to cooperate with others politically on terms that make sense from their moral perspective as well as my own, I must be ready to enter that perspective imaginatively so as to grasp its distinctive content. Many such perspectives prosper in liberal democracies, and so the task of reciprocal understanding is necessarily onerous. Still, our actions qua deliberative citizen must be grounded in such reciprocity if political cooperation on terms acceptable to us as (diversely) morally motivated citizens is to be possible at all. This is tantamount to an imperative to think autonomously inside the role of citizen because I cannot close-mindedly resist critical consideration of moral views alien to my own without flouting my responsibilities as a deliberative citizen.

Civic education does not exhaust the domain of moral education, even though the more robust conceptions of equal citizenship have far-reaching implications for just relations in civil society and the family. The study of moral education has traditionally taken its bearings from normative ethics rather than political philosophy, and this is largely true of work undertaken in recent decades. The major development here has been the revival of virtue ethics as an alternative to the deontological and consequentialist theories that dominated discussion for much of the twentieth century.

The defining idea of virtue ethics is that our criterion of moral right and wrong must derive from a conception of how the ideally virtuous agent would distinguish between the two. Virtue ethics is thus an alternative to both consequentialism and deontology which locate the relevant criterion in producing good consequences or meeting the requirements of moral duty respectively. The debate about the comparative merits of these theories is not resolved, but from an educational perspective that may be less important than it has sometimes seemed to antagonists in the debate. To be sure, adjudicating between rival theories in normative ethics might shed light on how best to construe the process of moral education, and philosophical reflection on the process might help us to adjudicate between the theories. There has been extensive work on habituation and virtue, largely inspired by Aristotle (Burnyeat 1980; Peters 1981). But whether this does anything to establish the superiority of virtue ethics over its competitors is far from obvious. Other aspects of moral education—in particular, the paired processes of role-modelling and identification—deserve much more scrutiny than they have received (Audi 2017; Kristjánsson 2015, 2017).

Related to the issues concerning the aims and functions of education and schooling rehearsed above are those involving the specifically epistemic aims of education and attendant issues treated by social and virtue epistemologists. (The papers collected in Kotzee 2013 and Baehr 2016 highlight the current and growing interactions among social epistemologists, virtue epistemologists, and philosophers of education.)

There is, first, a lively debate concerning putative epistemic aims. Alvin Goldman argues that truth (or knowledge understood in the “weak” sense of true belief) is the fundamental epistemic aim of education (Goldman 1999). Others, including the majority of historically significant philosophers of education, hold that critical thinking or rationality and rational belief (or knowledge in the “strong” sense that includes justification) is the basic epistemic educational aim (Bailin & Siegel 2003; Scheffler 1965, 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988, 1997, 2005, 2017). Catherine Z. Elgin (1999a,b) and Duncan Pritchard (2013, 2016; Carter & Pritchard 2017) have independently urged that understanding is the basic aim. Pritchard’s view combines understanding with intellectual virtue ; Jason Baehr (2011) systematically defends the fostering of the intellectual virtues as the fundamental epistemic aim of education. This cluster of views continues to engender ongoing discussion and debate. (Its complex literature is collected in Carter and Kotzee 2015, summarized in Siegel 2018, and helpfully analyzed in Watson 2016.)

A further controversy concerns the places of testimony and trust in the classroom: In what circumstances if any ought students to trust their teachers’ pronouncements, and why? Here the epistemology of education is informed by social epistemology, specifically the epistemology of testimony; the familiar reductionism/anti-reductionism controversy there is applicable to students and teachers. Anti-reductionists, who regard testimony as a basic source of justification, may with equanimity approve of students’ taking their teachers’ word at face value and believing what they say; reductionists may balk. Does teacher testimony itself constitute good reason for student belief?

The correct answer here seems clearly enough to be “it depends”. For very young children who have yet to acquire or develop the ability to subject teacher declarations to critical scrutiny, there seems to be little alternative to accepting what their teachers tell them. For older and more cognitively sophisticated students there seem to be more options: they can assess them for plausibility, compare them with other opinions, assess the teachers’ proffered reasons, subject them to independent evaluation, etc. Regarding “the teacher says that p ” as itself a good reason to believe it appears moreover to contravene the widely shared conviction that an important educational aim is helping students to become able to evaluate candidate beliefs for themselves and believe accordingly. That said, all sides agree that sometimes believers, including students, have good reasons simply to trust what others tell them. There is thus more work to do here by both social epistemologists and philosophers of education (for further discussion see Goldberg 2013; Siegel 2005, 2018).

A further cluster of questions, of long-standing interest to philosophers of education, concerns indoctrination : How if at all does it differ from legitimate teaching? Is it inevitable, and if so is it not always necessarily bad? First, what is it? As we saw earlier, extant analyses focus on the aims or intentions of the indoctrinator, the methods employed, or the content transmitted. If the indoctrination is successful, all have the result that students/victims either don’t, won’t, or can’t subject the indoctrinated material to proper epistemic evaluation. In this way it produces both belief that is evidentially unsupported or contravened and uncritical dispositions to believe. It might seem obvious that indoctrination, so understood, is educationally undesirable. But it equally seems that very young children, at least, have no alternative but to believe sans evidence; they have yet to acquire the dispositions to seek and evaluate evidence, or the abilities to recognize evidence or evaluate it. Thus we seem driven to the views that indoctrination is both unavoidable and yet bad and to be avoided. It is not obvious how this conundrum is best handled. One option is to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable indoctrination. Another is to distinguish between indoctrination (which is always bad) and non-indoctrinating belief inculcation, the latter being such that students are taught some things without reasons (the alphabet, the numbers, how to read and count, etc.), but in such a way that critical evaluation of all such material (and everything else) is prized and fostered (Siegel 1988: ch. 5). In the end the distinctions required by the two options might be extensionally equivalent (Siegel 2018).

Education, it is generally granted, fosters belief : in the typical propositional case, Smith teaches Jones that p , and if all goes well Jones learns it and comes to believe it. Education also has the task of fostering open-mindedness and an appreciation of our fallibility : All the theorists mentioned thus far, especially those in the critical thinking and intellectual virtue camps, urge their importance. But these two might seem at odds. If Jones (fully) believes that p , can she also be open-minded about it? Can she believe, for example, that earthquakes are caused by the movements of tectonic plates, while also believing that perhaps they aren’t? This cluster of italicized notions requires careful handling; it is helpfully discussed by Jonathan Adler (2002, 2003), who recommends regarding the latter two as meta-attitudes concerning one’s first-order beliefs rather than lessened degrees of belief or commitments to those beliefs.

Other traditional epistemological worries that impinge upon the epistemology of education concern (a) absolutism , pluralism and relativism with respect to knowledge, truth and justification as these relate to what is taught, (b) the character and status of group epistemologies and the prospects for understanding such epistemic goods “universalistically” in the face of “particularist” challenges, (c) the relation between “knowledge-how” and “knowledge-that” and their respective places in the curriculum, (d) concerns raised by multiculturalism and the inclusion/exclusion of marginalized perspectives in curriculum content and the classroom, and (e) further issues concerning teaching and learning. (There is more here than can be briefly summarized; for more references and systematic treatment cf. Bailin & Siegel 2003; Carter & Kotzee 2015; Cleverley & Phillips 1986; Robertson 2009; Siegel 2004, 2017; and Watson 2016.)

The educational research enterprise has been criticized for a century or more by politicians, policymakers, administrators, curriculum developers, teachers, philosophers of education, and by researchers themselves—but the criticisms have been contradictory. Charges of being “too ivory tower and theory-oriented” are found alongside “too focused on practice and too atheoretical”; but in light of the views of John Dewey and William James that the function of theory is to guide intelligent practice and problem-solving, it is becoming more fashionable to hold that the “theory v. practice” dichotomy is a false one. (For an illuminating account of the historical development of educational research and its tribulations, see Lagemann 2000.)

A similar trend can be discerned with respect to the long warfare between two rival groups of research methods—on one hand quantitative/statistical approaches to research, and on the other hand the qualitative/ethnographic family. (The choice of labels here is not entirely risk-free, for they have been contested; furthermore the first approach is quite often associated with “experimental” studies, and the latter with “case studies”, but this is an over-simplification.) For several decades these two rival methodological camps were treated by researchers and a few philosophers of education as being rival paradigms (Kuhn’s ideas, albeit in a very loose form, have been influential in the field of educational research), and the dispute between them was commonly referred to as “the paradigm wars”. In essence the issue at stake was epistemological: members of the quantitative/experimental camp believed that only their methods could lead to well-warranted knowledge claims, especially about the causal factors at play in educational phenomena, and on the whole they regarded qualitative methods as lacking in rigor; on the other hand the adherents of qualitative/ethnographic approaches held that the other camp was too “positivistic” and was operating with an inadequate view of causation in human affairs—one that ignored the role of motives and reasons, possession of relevant background knowledge, awareness of cultural norms, and the like. Few if any commentators in the “paradigm wars” suggested that there was anything prohibiting the use of both approaches in the one research program—provided that if both were used, they were used only sequentially or in parallel, for they were underwritten by different epistemologies and hence could not be blended together. But recently the trend has been towards rapprochement, towards the view that the two methodological families are, in fact, compatible and are not at all like paradigms in the Kuhnian sense(s) of the term; the melding of the two approaches is often called “mixed methods research”, and it is growing in popularity. (For more detailed discussion of these “wars” see Howe 2003 and Phillips 2009.)

The most lively contemporary debates about education research, however, were set in motion around the turn of the millennium when the US Federal Government moved in the direction of funding only rigorously scientific educational research—the kind that could establish causal factors which could then guide the development of practically effective policies. (It was held that such a causal knowledge base was available for medical decision-making.) The definition of “rigorously scientific”, however, was decided by politicians and not by the research community, and it was given in terms of the use of a specific research method—the net effect being that the only research projects to receive Federal funding were those that carried out randomized controlled experiments or field trials (RFTs). It has become common over the last decade to refer to the RFT as the “gold standard” methodology.

The National Research Council (NRC)—an arm of the US National Academies of Science—issued a report, influenced by postpostivistic philosophy of science (NRC 2002), that argued that this criterion was far too narrow. Numerous essays have appeared subsequently that point out how the “gold standard” account of scientific rigor distorts the history of science, how the complex nature of the relation between evidence and policy-making has been distorted and made to appear overly simple (for instance the role of value-judgments in linking empirical findings to policy directives is often overlooked), and qualitative researchers have insisted upon the scientific nature of their work. Nevertheless, and possibly because it tried to be balanced and supported the use of RFTs in some research contexts, the NRC report has been the subject of symposia in four journals, where it has been supported by a few and attacked from a variety of philosophical fronts: Its authors were positivists, they erroneously believed that educational inquiry could be value neutral and that it could ignore the ways in which the exercise of power constrains the research process, they misunderstood the nature of educational phenomena, and so on. This cluster of issues continues to be debated by educational researchers and by philosophers of education and of science, and often involves basic topics in philosophy of science: the constitution of warranting evidence, the nature of theories and of confirmation and explanation, etc. Nancy Cartwright’s important recent work on causation, evidence, and evidence-based policy adds layers of both philosophical sophistication and real world practical analysis to the central issues just discussed (Cartwright & Hardie 2012, Cartwright 2013; cf. Kvernbekk 2015 for an overview of the controversies regarding evidence in the education and philosophy of education literatures).

As stressed earlier, it is impossible to do justice to the whole field of philosophy of education in a single encyclopedia entry. Different countries around the world have their own intellectual traditions and their own ways of institutionalizing philosophy of education in the academic universe, and no discussion of any of this appears in the present essay. But even in the Anglo-American world there is such a diversity of approaches that any author attempting to produce a synoptic account will quickly run into the borders of his or her competence. Clearly this has happened in the present case.

Fortunately, in the last thirty years or so resources have become available that significantly alleviate these problems. There has been a flood of encyclopedia entries, both on the field as a whole and also on many specific topics not well-covered in the present essay (see, as a sample, Burbules 1994; Chambliss 1996b; Curren 1998, 2018; Phillips 1985, 2010; Siegel 2007; Smeyers 1994), two “Encyclopedias” (Chambliss 1996a; Phillips 2014), a “Guide” (Blake, Smeyers, Smith, & Standish 2003), a “Companion” (Curren 2003), two “Handbooks” (Siegel 2009; Bailey, Barrow, Carr, & McCarthy 2010), a comprehensive anthology (Curren 2007), a dictionary of key concepts in the field (Winch & Gingell 1999), and a good textbook or two (Carr 2003; Noddings 2015). In addition there are numerous volumes both of reprinted selections and of specially commissioned essays on specific topics, some of which were given short shrift here (for another sampling see A. Rorty 1998, Stone 1994), and several international journals, including Theory and Research in Education , Journal of Philosophy of Education , Educational Theory , Studies in Philosophy and Education , and Educational Philosophy and Theory . Thus there is more than enough material available to keep the interested reader busy.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

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autonomy: personal | Dewey, John | feminist philosophy, interventions: ethics | feminist philosophy, interventions: liberal feminism | feminist philosophy, interventions: political philosophy | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on autonomy | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on disability | Foucault, Michel | Gadamer, Hans-Georg | liberalism | Locke, John | Lyotard, Jean François | -->ordinary language --> | Plato | postmodernism | Rawls, John | rights: of children | Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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The authors and editors would like to thank Randall Curren for sending a number of constructive suggestions for the Summer 2018 update of this entry.

Copyright © 2018 by Harvey Siegel D.C. Phillips Eamonn Callan

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• Education Essay

Essay on Education

Nelson Mandela rightly said, “Education is the most important weapon to change the world.” Education plays an important role in the development of an individual and making him a knowledgeable citizen. It is the education that makes an individual self-reliant, helps to suppress the social evils and contribute towards the development of the society and nation as a whole.

Education helps in unravelling the mystery of nature. It enables us to understand and improve the working of our society. It creates conditions for a better life. Education brings out the capabilities to fight injustice happening in society. Every individual has the right to education.

Introduction

Education is a significant tool that provides knowledge, skill, technique, information and enables people to know their rights and duties towards their family, society and the nation. You can expand your vision and outlook to see the world around us. It changes our perception of life. Education builds up the ability to explore new things to enhance your creativity. Your creativity is a tool to develop the nation.

Importance of Education

People still don't realise what role education and being educated plays in our lives and society. So, before making people aware of education and working for their access, it is very important to understand the need and importance of education. Education includes traditional learning methods that include theories and modern methods that include practical implementation of the subjects.

In schools, education is categorised into four stages, and each stage is important for each student:

Primary 

Secondary 

Senior secondary

Education can be classified into Various Forms:

Formal education: teaches us the academic part of any course or class, skills, or theory.

Non Formal education: We learn from our community, culture, nation-based programs, and the society that we live in

Informal education: We learn from our life lessons, experiences, other people, their experiences, nature, surroundings, etc.

Education empowers everyone. It is an important aspect that shapes the modern and industrialised world. People need education to be able to cope up with the advancements in this competitive world. Following are some areas where education is needed:

Removing Poverty: Education helps in eradicating poverty from our society.  An educated person can secure a good job and take care of all the basic needs and requirements of his family.

Safety and Security against Crime: A well-educated person cannot be easily duped or become a victim of any crime. They can develop the ability to stand against injustice. 

Increases Productivity: Educated people are more productive. With the help of knowledge and skills, they can explore new ideas. 

Confidence: A good education doesn’t mean to go to schools and colleges only. Education helps to become self-dependent and build great confidence within them so that they are able to accomplish difficult tasks.

Improved Standard of Life: On getting an education, quality of life gets improved. Education helps you to secure good jobs by which you can fulfil your dreams of buying a house or car or other luxury things. 

Women Empowerment: Education helps in empowering women. Women can voice out themselves in the society against the injustice done to them. They can be self-reliant and need not be dependent on anyone. Women empowerment will bring a lot of development in society as well as in the nation.

Upliftment of the Economically Weaker Section: Education is the most significant ingredient to change the world. Illiterate people suffer the hardships of discrimination, untouchability and injustice prevailing in the society. With the advancement of education, the weaker section can improve their quality of life. 

Communication: Communication is related to education. Good education helps to communicate better with others. It also improves our skills such as speech, body language, etc. 

Development of a nation: The countries that focus on educating their citizens and have a higher education level are considered more developed nations in every aspect of their lives.

  Individual growth: An educated individual always stands out in a crowd of uneducated people. They will be able to make better life decisions because with education comes knowledge. When an individual knows something, they will be able to understand things in a better manner.

 Independent: Education acts as a catalyst for a human being to be independent. If an individual is educated enough, they can manage their own life without being dependent on anybody.

  Success: Education helps in framing our mindset in a positive direction, and with this mindset, people can make their lives better. With education comes a degree, and with a degree comes a lot of opportunities. You just have to make a better choice for yourself, and everything will fall in place.

Talking particularly about India, education is a constitutional right of every citizen irrespective of caste, creed, race, religion, gender, etc. That’s the status given to education in India because educated people are always treated well and are well respected everywhere in the world.

Role of Education in Society

Education is the social institution through which the society provides its members with knowledge, facts, job skills and values. One of the most important roles of education is that it improves personal lives and helps society to run smoothly. As mentioned above, poverty can be eradicated and every individual can contribute towards the development of the country.

Education Creates a Better Society: An educated person is more likely to develop better moral and ethical values as compared to an uneducated person. Education brings equal opportunity for everyone and educated people will be able to create a better society. 

Education is the Backbone of Society: Education is an integral part of human society. Lack of education gives birth to numerous social problems like poor health, conflicts, and poor living standards. Education helps people overcome all problems by finding better solutions. 

Education Encourages Innovation and Creativity: Education leads to innovation. Innovation and creativity can only occur when skilled people know how to advance with different technologies. Educated people always can solve problems with the help of better techniques. 

Education Creates a Better Human Being: Education is the most powerful weapon by which the entire perspective of the world can be changed. Through education, a person can develop good moral values. It helps us to become a better person in life. 

Understanding the Responsibilities: As a social being, it becomes the responsibility of every individual to give something back to society and make it a better place for our next generation. An educated person is aware of his personal and social responsibilities.

Education helps in shaping the values of an individual. It helps individuals develop their moral values, humbleness, sympathy and empathy towards society, etc.

Students or any individual learn to express their viewpoints by reading, writing, learning. And these qualities or skills are taught with the help of education and nothing else.

Steps Taken to promote Education:

After discussing the importance of education, awareness is the next big step. People, especially those living in remote areas, should be aware and should have access to a better education system. The government has taken several steps for this purpose. It has started various initiatives to make education accessible to all and improve the quality of education for the betterment of every student. 

Some of the Prominent Steps:

The formation of the Right to Education Act, 2009 made education a fundamental right for every child belonging to 6-14 years.

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan

Adult education and national development scheme

Beti bachao, beti padhao

Midday meal scheme and many more.

Various other initiatives that the government has taken are Udaan, Saksham, Pragati, etc., to make education accessible to every part of the county.

Conclusion:

Education is the pathway for a nation’s progress. Education is the backbone of society. The government should take all measures to provide education to every individual of the country. This will bring equality among people and when people improvise their way of living, they become more responsible towards society.

The literacy rate of more developed nations is also high, and the literacy of every nation depends upon its education system. The government undoubtedly has made laws and formulated schemes, but implementing those schemes is a major task. 

The government, along with co-operation with the citizens, should make the society and nation a better place to live in. The growth of every nation depends upon the kind of population it has. A well-educated population will make a well-developed nation.

FAQs on Education Essay

1) Why is education important?

Education is important for the development of an individual. It is the most powerful weapon by which a person can contribute towards the development of the society and nation as a whole.

2) How is education a pathway to success?

Education provides job opportunities and also helps to expand your vision and change your outlook to see the world around us.

3) How can education help the economically backward people?

Uneducated or illiterate people do not have the ability to overcome hardships like discrimination, untouchability, and injustice. When these people get basic education, then they can become self-reliant and stand for their rights. With the advancement of education, they can improve their standard of living and poverty can be eradicated from the face of the Earth.

4) How are women empowered through education?

Education helps in empowering women. Women can voice out themselves in the society against the injustice done to them. They can be self-dependent. Women empowerment will bring a lot of development in society as well as in the nation.

5) What are the roles that education plays?

Education is vital in shaping the world and society. An educated society forms an educated nation. It is essential in creating a positive mindset and positive skills in an individual.

• Essay on Importance of Education

Importance of Education Essay

Education is one of the key components for an individual’s success. It has the ability to shape one’s life in the right direction. Education is a process of imparting or acquiring knowledge, and developing the powers of reasoning and judgement. It prepares growing children intellectually for a life with more mature understanding and sensitivity to issues surrounding them. It improves not only the personal life of the people but also their community. Thus, one cannot neglect the significance of Education in life and society. Here, we have provided an essay on the Importance of Education. Students can use this essay to prepare for their English exam or as a speech to participate in the school competition.

Importance of Education

The importance of education in life is immense. It facilitates quality learning for people throughout their life. It inculcates knowledge, belief, skill, values and moral habits. It improves the way of living and raises the social and economic status of individuals. Education makes life better and more peaceful. It transforms the personality of individuals and makes them feel confident.

Well said by Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon to change the world”. To elaborate, it is the foundation of the society which brings economic wealth, social prosperity and political stability. It gives power to people to put their views and showcase their real potential. It strengthens democracy by providing citizens with the tools to participate in the governance process. It acts as an integrative force to foster social cohesion and national identity.

In India, education is a constitutional right of every citizen. So, people of any age group, religion, caste, creed and region are free to receive education. An educated person is respected everywhere and well-treated in society. As a kid, every child dreams of being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, actor, sportsperson, etc. These dreams can come true through education. So, investment in education gives the best return. Well-educated people have more opportunities to get a better job which makes them feel satisfied.

In schools, education is divided into different levels, i.e., preschool, primary, secondary and senior secondary. School education comprises traditional learning which provides students with theoretical knowledge. However, now various efforts are being made to establish inbuilt application-based learning by adding numerous experiments, practicals and extracurricular activities to the school curriculum. Students learn to read, write and represent their viewpoints in front of others. Also, in this era of digital Education, anyone can easily access information online at their fingertips. They can learn new skills and enhance their knowledge.

Steps Taken By Government To Promote Education

Education is evidently an important aspect that no government can ignore in order to ensure the equitable development of a nation. Unfortunately, some children still do not have access to education. The Government has thereby taken initiatives to improve education quality and made it accessible to everyone, especially the poor people.

The Government passed the Right to Education Act 2009 (RTE Act 2009) on 4 August 2009. This Act came into effect on 1 April 2010, following which education has become the fundamental right of every child in India. It provides free and compulsory elementary education to children of the age group of 6-14 years in a neighbourhood school within 1 km, up to Class 8 in India. On similar lines, there are other schemes launched by the government, such as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan , Mid-Day Meal , Adult Education and Skill Development Scheme, National Means cum Merit Scholarship Scheme, National Program for Education of Girls at Elementary Education, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya, Scheme for Infrastructure Development in Minority Institutions, Beti Bachao , Beti Padhao, etc.

For our country’s growth, we require a well-educated population equipped with the relevant knowledge, attitude and skills. This can be achieved by spreading awareness about the importance of Education in rural areas. There is a famous saying that “If we feed one person, we will eliminate his hunger for only one time. But, if we educate a person, we will change his entire life”. Henceforth he will become capable of earning a livelihood by himself.

This essay on the Importance of Education must have helped students to improve their writing section for the English exam. They can also practice essays on other topics by visiting the CBSE Essay page. Keep learning and stay tuned with BYJU’S for the latest updates on CBSE/ICSE/State Board/Competitive Exams. Also, download the BYJU’S App for interactive study videos.

Frequently Asked Questions on Education Essay

How can the literacy rate in india be increased.

People in rural areas must be informed about the importance of providing education to their children. Also, with the COVID-19 situation, the government should take steps by providing laptops/phones for children to follow online classes.

Are girl children still denied their right to get educated?

Although awareness has now improved, there are still many villages in India where girl children are not provided with proper education or allowed to enrol themselves in schools. This mentality has to change for the betterment of the society.

Teaching subjects/academics alone is enough, or should students be introduced to other forms of educational activities too?

Extracurricular activities, moral value education, etc., are also as important as regular academic teachings.

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Counselling

Maya Angelou: a Trailblazer in Literature, Activism, and Education

This essay about Maya Angelou’s multifaceted contributions as a literary icon, civil rights activist, and educator. It highlights her groundbreaking memoir “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” her influential poetry, and her pivotal role in the civil rights movement. Angelou’s impact extended beyond literature, as she became the first African American woman to have a screenplay produced and used her voice to advocate for social justice. Additionally, the essay explores her legacy in education, mentoring aspiring writers and scholars. Angelou’s life serves as a testament to the transformative power of storytelling and activism in creating a more just and equitable society.

How it works

Maya Angelou, neé Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, emerged as a towering luminary in the annals of American literature, civil rights advocacy, and academia. Her odyssey from a tumultuous upbringing marred by trauma and racial bigotry to attaining eminence as a revered poet, author, and influential advocate for societal equity is nothing short of remarkable.

Angelou’s literary opus is as varied as it is profound. Her inaugural memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” unveiled in 1969, shattered conventional barriers and defied societal norms with its unflinching portrayal of race, identity, and fortitude.

The memoir, which chronicles Angelou’s formative years in the Jim Crow South, endures as a timeless masterpiece, captivating audiences with its unadulterated candor and melodic prose.

Beyond her memoir, Angelou’s poetry reverberates with a profundity of sentiment and perspicacity that resonates with the human soul. Her iconic verse, “Still I Rise,” stands as a clarion call for empowerment and perseverance in the face of adversity, galvanizing successive generations with its potent message of resilience and optimism.

Angelou’s creative acumen transcended the written word. She blazed trails in the realms of cinema and television, attaining the distinction of being the first African American woman to have a screenplay adapted into a feature film with “Georgia, Georgia” in 1972. Throughout her vocation, she persisted in breaking down barriers and challenging stereotypes, leveraging her platform to amplify marginalized voices and advocate for societal metamorphosis.

In tandem with her artistic triumphs, Angelou was an indefatigable proponent of civil rights and parity. Collaborating with luminaries such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, she lent her voice and influence to combat racial prejudice and discrimination. Angelou’s activism was deeply rooted in her personal encounters with oppression and adversity, propelling her commitment to engendering a more equitable and just society for all.

Angelou’s impact extended beyond the spheres of literature and activism into the realm of pedagogy. She occupied various teaching positions at institutions of higher learning across the United States, imparting her sagacity, experiences, and ardor for narrative to budding writers and scholars. Her dedication to education and mentorship empowered countless individuals to pursue their aspirations and effect positive change within their communities.

Throughout her lifespan, Angelou garnered myriad awards and commendations for her literary contributions, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Arts, and three Grammy Awards for her spoken word recordings. Yet, her most enduring legacy perhaps resides in the hearts and minds of those she touched with her prose, her sagacity, and her resolute commitment to justice and parity.

As we reflect on the life and legacy of Maya Angelou, we are reminded of the potent capacity of storytelling to bridge chasms, cultivate empathy, and instigate transformation. Her odyssey from a silenced young girl ensnared by trauma to a venerable literary luminary and advocate for societal equity stands as a testament to the indomitability of the human spirit and the transformative potential of art and activism. Though Maya Angelou departed this realm in 2014, her verbiage reverberates through the corridors of history, serving as an enduring reminder of the timeless virtues of courage, compassion, and hope.

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When I was a student, school choice benefited me and it will help Tennessee children too

Education freedom scholarships, with their decentralized approach, promotes a more nimble and responsive educational system than traditional public schools..

• Walter Blanks Jr. is a spokesperson for American Federation for Children and is a member of the Beacon Center of Tennessee Impact Board.

Gov. Bill Lee's bold proposal for  Education Freedom Scholarships  in Tennessee is a beacon of hope for parents, families, and education reformers, ushering in what would be the next evolution in the state's approach to learning and educational attainment.

The scholarships offer a groundbreaking alternative, empowering parents with the ability to tailor their children's education, while demonstrating a level of accountability that outshines traditional public schools.

During the governor’s State of the State,  Lee doubled down on his plan  to give parents and students the opportunity and access to choose the best school that works for their own personal needs.

Lee stated, “The premise behind education freedom, and the one thing that most all of us agree upon, is that parents know what’s best for their child’s education.”

Lee then went on to say, “There are thousands of parents in the state who know their student would thrive in a different setting, but the financial barrier is simply too high. It’s time that we change that. It’s time that parents get to decide — and not the government — where their child goes to school and what they learn.”  

While the battle for school choice rages on, it’s extremely important not to forget the students who would actually benefit from such a program.

School choice benefited me and my family

Growing up in Ohio,  school choice became my lifeline , rescuing me from the clutches of a failing educational system.

The traditional public school I attended was struggling to provide quality education, leaving me disheartened and uninspired. The principal of the school told my mother, “If you give us five years, we will have the middle school and the high school turned around.”

My mother responded with, “In five years, Walter will either be in jail or in a body bag.” When my family discovered the school choice program, it opened a world of possibilities. School choice was more than an alternative; it was a catalyst for change, sparking a transformative journey that continues to shape my life positively.

Since moving to Tennessee, I have quickly realized  the education outcomes  in the state are not where they should be, and many families could benefit from similar programs that are being passed across the country.

Existing education choice programs across the nation have demonstrated impressive accountability mechanisms. By allowing parents to use allocated funds for various educational expenses, such as private school tuition, tutoring, or educational materials, choice programs like Education Freedom Scholarships promote a dynamic and tailored approach to learning. 

More: Gov. Bill Lee delivers State of the State to Tennessee General Assembly

Public schools, while essential, often face bureaucratic challenges that can hinder adaptability and responsiveness.

In 2023, the state of Tennessee spent roughly $10 billion dollars on public schools with very little (if any) accountability to parents and students. In Nashville,  roughly 30%  of third grade students are proficient (or considered “on track”). Within the public school system, families without the resources to change schools are left with empty promises, little improvements, and ultimately, no other option.

Education Freedom Scholarships, with their decentralized approach, promotes a more nimble and responsive educational system. This agility allows for quicker adjustments to address the evolving needs of students, ultimately better preparing the next generation for the challenges it will face.

Gov. Bill Lee's Education Freedom Scholarship proposal offers hope for Tennessee's education system, fostering innovation and unlocking its full potential. By prioritizing students' interests, the state can deliver quality education, ensuring a brighter future and a more adaptable model. It's time for Tennessee to embrace this opportunity, ushering in an era of empowerment and accountability in education.

Walter Blanks Jr. is a spokesperson for American Federation for Children and a beneficiary of a private school choice program, driven by a lifelong commitment to improving educational access. Blanks is a member of the Beacon Center of Tennessee Impact Board.

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A level biology essay on diffusion

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This document includes a model essay on the topic of diffusion. Since the A-level biology essay accounts for ten percent of your final grade, it is imperative that you optimize your score by maximizing the number of marks you receive. This essay has been meticulously crafted for A-level students and serves as a model essay that achieved an exceptional score of twenty-two out of twenty-five. It is our sincere hope that you will draw inspiration from this essay by examining its structure and content, thereby propelling your academic performance to new heights.

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Is It Safe to Use Chat GPT for Essays

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has quietly crept into almost every part of our lives, and academia isn’t immune. Tools like ChatGPT are transforming the way students approach tasks like writing essays. These AI assistants offer impressive advantages – they brainstorm ideas, help refine the structure, and even generate entire paragraphs of text. 

But with all this convenience comes a burning question: Can I use ChatGPT for essays? Is it safe, or are there ethical lines we shouldn’t cross? The truth is that there are both benefits and risks with AI writing tools. They can be amazing for sparking creativity or breaking through writer’s block, but there’s a fine line between helpful assistance and simply outsourcing your essay. This raises issues about academic integrity and the authenticity of your work. 

In this article, we won’t simply give a yes-or-no answer about using AI for essays. We aim to present a balanced perspective, exploring the potential benefits and serious concerns you should consider before relying on AI to write academic writing. Let’s dive in!

AI Tools: Understand the Limitations

While AI writing assistants can be tempting, it’s essential to acknowledge their limitations before using them for academic work. Tools like ChatGPT, while impressive, aren’t replacements for thorough research and critical thinking. They lack the nuanced understanding needed to craft academically sound essays.

For concrete examples, look at MyEssayWriter.ai reviews since they often expose factual errors and misleading statements generated by AI. Relying on such unverified information undermines the quality of your essays and could even lead you to build arguments on a flawed foundation. Another critical risk is plagiarism. AI-generated text might inadvertently replicate existing online content, leading to unintentional plagiarism issues. This is another reminder that AI output can’t be used unchecked.

The key takeaway isn’t to abandon AI tools altogether. Instead, consider them tools to be used wisely and integrated with your research, analysis, and writing skills. If you want to understand how to ask ChatGPT to write an essay, focus on using it for idea generation, outlining, and overcoming writer’s block. 

The Ethics of AI in Essays: A Slippery Slope

The emergence of AI writing tools like ChatGPT has sparked serious ethical debates within academia. The question: Can ChatGPT write essays? is on the minds of students and educators alike. While these tools offer a semblance of convenience, relying on AI to write essays raises the risk of academic dishonesty. When students submit AI-generated work as their own, they circumvent the intended learning process and undermine principles of integrity.

This issue is making headlines. The Santa Cruz Sentinel’s article, AI vs Human Writing: The Enduring Value of Human Quality , explores how AI threatens developing essential writing skills. Similarly, the Jerusalem Post’s piece AI writing vs human: Short-term gains are deceiving argues against the long-term consequences of relying on such tools.

Over-reliance on AI creates serious dependency issues. Without engaging in research, constructing arguments, and forming original thoughts, students miss out on cultivating critical thinking and problem-solving abilities that are cornerstones of a meaningful education.

The long-term effects paint a concerning picture. If AI becomes a crutch, we risk a future with graduates lacking the fundamental skills needed for independent thinking and knowledge creation. To protect the integrity of education and prepare students for authentic intellectual challenges, we must use AI responsibly, not as a shortcut to avoid the hard work that true learning demands.

Need Help, But AI Feels Wrong? EssayService is the Ethical Alternative

The rise of AI writing tools raises valid concerns about the authenticity and integrity of student work. While the question how to use ChatGPT to write an essay might be tempting, serious downsides exist. If you want support with your essays but want to avoid the ethical pitfalls of AI, EssayService offers a safe, ethical, and personalized alternative.

Unlike AI, which generates generic text, EssayService provides tailored assistance based on your needs and requirements. Whether you’re struggling with a topic, need research guidance, or want feedback on your writing, their service connects you with experts for targeted support.  

Essays produced through EssayService are original works that showcase your understanding and critical thinking. They’re not pieced together from AI algorithms; instead, they benefit from the input of qualified writers who bring subject-matter expertise and academic rigor to the process.

EssayService is committed to ethical practices. This means focusing on collaboration and guidance to help you grow as a writer and scholar. They aim to enhance your work, not replace it, ensuring that every essay you submit is authentically yours and aligns with the highest academic standards.

The Risks of Overreliance on AI in Education

The ease of using AI tools for academic tasks, including essay writing, can be deceptively appealing. So, is using ChatGPT cheating? This is a complex question, but overreliance on this technology carries significant risks that can affect students in the long run. One major concern is the potential stunting of skill development. When AI tools replace independent research, critical thinking, and the writing process, students don’t get the practice to master these cornerstone academic skills.

While AI excels at tasks like pattern recognition and text generation, it lacks the nuanced understanding of complex subjects essential for true learning. Essays written predominantly by AI could be superficially sound but lack the depth of analysis and original thought that comes with genuine effort and engagement.

The long-term impact of this trend is worrying. Suppose AI becomes a primary crutch for learners. In that case, we risk a future where graduates are ill-equipped to handle independent reasoning, critical problem-solving, and deep intellectual work that drives innovation.

Using AI Responsibly in Education: Finding the Right Balance

The integration of AI into education requires a thoughtful and balanced approach. AI can potentially serve as a valuable supplement to traditional educational methods. It can help provide personalized feedback, generate ideas, and help students overcome writing obstacles. 

However, it’s equally important for educators to understand how to check if something was written by ChatGPT or similar tools. Services like EssayService offer a prime example of how technology can be used ethically to maintain academic integrity while supporting students’ progress.

The key is to ensure AI remains a tool used in the service of authentic learning. It should support the development of essential research, critical thinking, and independent writing skills. Educators and students must be aware of the ethical considerations, available detection tools and approaches that balance AI with the need for original work.

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Elektrostal Localisation : Country Russia , Oblast Moscow Oblast . Available Information : Geographical coordinates , Population, Area, Altitude, Weather and Hotel . Nearby cities and villages : Noginsk , Pavlovsky Posad and Staraya Kupavna .

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