Abstract

This chapter traces some of the shifting meanings of the public and private in educational thought from Plato to the present, with special reference to the United States and the idea of the common school. It identifies two distinct lines of debate: one concerning the nature of public educational goods and the other concerning the fate of individuation and self-cultivation. Reconstructing these debates side by side leads to a surprising conclusion. What looks like ‘public schooling’ can be shown to be the pursuit of merely overlapping private goods. At the same time, what looks like a system prioritizing the individual’s private purposes can be shown in fact to largely stifle individual self-formation. Modern schooling is best described as an expression of what Arendt calls the ‘social’ and thus falls short of cultivating either public or private life.