Not only philosophers of education but almost anyone who has thought about education at all seriously will have bumped into a genre of writing for which "theories of education" will serve as an initial, if deeply obscure, description. We mean, for instance, the writings of people like Plato, Rousseau, Montaigne, Dewey, and many others. Consideration of these writings still forms a large part, not only of philosophy of education in a narrower sense, but of our general thought abut education; and

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... not only our general thought, but also our practice in schools and elsewhere. The question arises of whether we actually need such theories of education, which, of course, necessitates the prior question or questions of just what these theories are supposed to be or to do, and how we are to evaluate them. We say "the question arises," but perhaps the first thing that ought to be said is that, for most people most of the time, the question is not actually raised at all. It is, largely, still taken for granted not only that these theories ought to form the subject-matter of debate, but also (and worse) that it is clear what the theories are about, what their logical status is. So one or both of two things happen. Either (a) a person has some kind of objective interest in