Student Role in Educational Reform

The greatest of the philosophers are those who understood that the principal problems of human life are formulated and faced in the activity of education. Concern and affection for the young in a future society require a careful consideration of their proper moral and intellectual development. Philosophers who have been true to their name and really loved wisdom have also loved the young and, with them, have had a vision of a better world. They have reflected on the process of nurturing the child, the process the Greeks called paideia, by which society, through its leaders, its institutions, and its social structure, tries to influence or control its own future. That future gets its characteristic from society's intellectual capability (its "know-how" as well as its "know-what") and from the moral purposes toward which that capability is directed.