Democracy, civic virtue and liberal education

Obstacles face those who aspire teaching a curriculum spurred by liberal education since the concept "liberal education" itself is ambiguous while the diversity that exists in contemporary Western societies translates into multiple demands on public education assembled upon beliefs that individual and/or group interests should determine public education's purposes. Taken together such hurdles seemingly render impossible the adoption of a narrative about public education that would sustain the establishment of a common core of education conceived upon an understanding that public education's overriding purpose in a democracy is in the preparation of the young for entry into, and eventual participation, in that democracy.;This study opens by analysing narratives of schooling which submit claims for determining the intents of public education. It continues by exploring the ambiguity of "public interest" and by investigating the impact of individual and group interests on the goals of public education. Various educational narratives are rejected and the viewpoint offered instead that public education ought to be a political education for democratic citizenship.;The work proceeds by exploring liberal education as understood by Greek thinkers of the fifth and fourth centuries in their efforts to provide an education for leadership in newly democratic city-states, and suggests that in their efforts three interrelated elements can be identified as determining the foundations of such an education: the individual, the individual in relation to the society and the nature of knowledge. It is from these that arose the oratorical and philosophical traditions of liberal education.;Consideration is given to an attempt to rejuvenate the philosophical tradition traced to Plato and constructed on an understanding of forms of knowledge and public objectivity, a position rejected on the grounds that the explication of knowledge so presented is unable to survive in "the age of the hegemony of language". An argument to explicate the concept "liberal education" incorporating the realms of meaning is rejected too, but it, nevertheless, contains ideas which may be applied to liberal education in terms of practical knowing necessary for pursuing the purpose of a political education of individuals in a participatory democracy.