Paideia and Politeia: Education, and the Polity/State in Comparative Education

Interest in the political relations of education/paideia, particularly in the relationships between education and the polity/politeia or the state, has been longstanding in the Western educational and political traditions. It has been especially evident in the texts of influential social thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, J. J. Rousseau, John Locke, Karl Marx, J. S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Cornelius Castoriadis, John Dewey and Paulo Freire. In his most famous political treatise, the Politics (Politika), Aristotle, for example, as a ‘comparative political philosopher/ scientist’, averred:

Now nobody would dispute that the education/paideia of the young requires the special attention of the lawgiver. Indeed, the neglect of this in ‘city-states’ is injurious to the polities; for one ought to be educated [and ‘habituated’] in accordance with the particular form of the polity/politeia, for the particular character/ethos of each polity both guards the polity generally and originally establishes it—for instance the democratic ethos promotes democracy and the oligarchic ethos oligarchy; and a better ethos always produces a better polity/politeia.