Suppose you had complete freedom and an unlimited budget to create the perfect school. What would you do?

Great philosophers over the centuries have imagined ideal educations, and their inspired followers have put their visions into practice with wildly different results.

What should the curriculum be? What kind of teachers should one hire? Is one’s goal to produce independent thinkers—or obedient and dutiful citizens—or entrepreneurial innovators—or social-justice warriors? Should politicians or parents or the students themselves be making these decisions?

Education is a multi-year, strategic preparation of the young for adult life. Philosophers of education are the strategists.

In our Pocket Guide to Philosophies of Education, philosopher of education Andrew Colgan, Ph.D., compactly surveys Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Marx, Dewey, Montessori, Rand, Sartre, Skinner, Foucault and others—with special attention to the educational implications of their philosophies.