Why and how people should be educated has, throughout history, preoccupied some of civilization's greatest minds. This unique work summarizes and analyzes the thinking on education of fifty individuals drawn from a time span covering 500 BC to the nineteenth century. Among those included are:

* Confucius * Plato * St. Augustine * Eamus John Wesley * Immanuel Kant * Mary Wollstonecaft * Nietzche * John Dewey * Rudolf Steiner

Together with Fifty Contemporary Thinkers on Education, this book provides an intellectual history of educational thinking, through the ages. Each essay gives biographical information, an outline of the individual's principal achievements and activities, an assessment of his or her impact and influence, a list of their major writings and suggested further reading. Joy Palmer is Pro Vice-Chancellor of Durham University. She is a member of the IUCN Commission on Education and Communication, and is the author of numerous books on education and the environment. She is the editor of two other titles in Routledge's Key Guide series: Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment and Fifty Contemporary Thinkers on Education.