Abstract

Transmitting knowledge or skills from one person or group to another has traditionally been understood as a merely proximate goal of education, the ultimate end being the lives students spend in pursuit of those learned ideals that keep our societies’ traditions alive. It is only by the life lived by the educated person or the collective life shared by an educated society that any account of educational success could properly be taken.1 Beliefs, attitudes, and habits appropriate to the society for which a child is educated take priority over the facts a student acquires as a result of her time in school, yet facts, skills, and methods dominate the curriculum that schools set about teaching. The simple fact that we...