What Is the Good of Education?

This book argues that education is thrown badly off course by dominant tendencies of late industrial societies that are now deeply embedded in the practices and policies of schools and universities. Dunne identifies and offers a critique of these tendencies, while arguing for a radically different conception of education. He argues for an education that attends closely to the nature of learning and teaching, and is buttressed by sustained philosophical reflection on ethical and political issues pertaining to childhood, citizenship, and the kind of practices that can support human flourishing across a whole life-time. Dunne engages with a range of philosophers including Arendt, Gadamer, Habermas, Latour, MacIntyre, Murdoch, Plato, Rousseau, Taylor and Wittgenstein. At the core of the book is a concern about the potential and pitfalls of human personhood, a concern that deepens through reflection in the final chapters on the challenges and fulfilments opened by the spiritual dimension of human life.