ABSTRACT
For most of the last thirty years, theoretical approaches to educational values have typically begun with an analysis of the concept of education. However, I shall argue in this chapter that the best way to come to understand the educational values of any society is to examine the broader framework of values in that society. This chapter therefore begins with an account of liberalism, which, it is argued, provides the theoretical framework of values that comes closest to the actual political and economic circumstances that prevail in western societies generally. In the second section, the influence of fundamental liberal values on the dominant concept of education in the West will be explored. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of some of the challenges to this dominant form of liberal education that have arisen both from within and from outside the fundamental framework of liberal values.
