Childhood and the Philosophy of Education An Anti-Aristotelian Perspective

Philosophical accounts of childhood have tended to derive from Plato and Aristotle, who portrayed children as unreasonable and incomplete in terms of lacking formal and final causes and ends. Despite much rhetoric concerning either the sinfulness or purity of children (as in Puritanism and Romanticism respectively), the assumption that children are marginal has endured. Modern theories, including recent interpretations of neuroscience, have re-enforced this sense of children's incompleteness.

Andrew Stables is Professor of Education and Philosophy in the Department of Education at the University of Bath. He has written over 150 books, chapters and articles in the field.