This paper argues that Christopher Winch's contribution to the debate on the aims of education contains some significant errors and omissions. His definition of work is problematic and leads to the conclusion that education should be directed towards very narrow vocational targets. His argument makes unstated and contestable assumptions about the source of educational aims. Lastly, he underplays the implications of the economic aims of education for the achievement of liberal aims. His programme would lead to less pluralism than the (...) liberal alternative. (shrink)

This paper examines and rejects two normative justifications for low-fee private schools, whose expansion throughout the Global South in recent years has been significant. The first justification – what I shall call the ideal thesis – contends that LFPS are the best mechanism to expand access to quality education, particularly at the primary level, and that the premise of their success is that they reject educational equality and state intervention in educational affairs, traditionally associated with public schools, embracing instead educational (...) adequacy and unregulated markets for education. Against this thesis, the paper argues that an ideal educational arrangement must not do away with educational equality and some degree of state interference. The other justification for LFPS – the secondbest thesis – contends that although LFPS do not represent the ideal state of affairs, they nonetheless bring us a step closer to the ideal of universal primary education; they are a ‘realistic’ approximation to that goal. Against the second-best thesis, the paper argues that this justification commits the approximation fallacy: by deviating from the ideal educational arrangement LFPS may obstruct rather than facilitate its achievement. (shrink)