Liberal Values and Liberal Education

For most of the last thirty years, theoretical approaches to educational values have typically begun with an analysis of the concept of education. This chapter argues that the best way to come to understand the educational values of any society is to examine the broader framework of values in that society. It begins with an account of liberalism, which, it is argued, provides the theoretical framework of values that comes closest to the actual political and economic circumstances that prevail in Western societies generally. The chapter explores the influence of fundamental liberal values on the dominant concept of education in the West. It concludes with a brief discussion of some of the challenges to this dominant form of liberal education that have arisen both from within and from outside the fundamental framework of liberal values.