What a fuss everyone is getting into about the funding of universities! If ministers would only sit back with their Aristotle and Plato and think about results, all would become clear.
Aristotle is very keen on the telos – the goal or end of things – and when he discusses the state, he decides its telos is ‘the sharing by households and families in the good life, for the purpose of a complete and self-sufficient life’. This result being of supreme importance, state control over education is required. As he says in his Politics, ‘Since the whole city has one goal, it is evident that there must also be one and the same education for everyone, and that the superintendence of this should be public and not private…. Public matters should be publicly managed.’
So far, so Blairite.
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