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Meir Levinson has had an unusual career for an Ivy League professor.

She spent many years teaching in high school.

Now at Harvard, she specialises in a woefully neglected topic

in contemporary academia.

The Philosophy of Education in contemporary academia, the philosophy of education.

Meera Levinson, welcome to philosophy bites.

Thank you very much, I'm really pleased to be here.

The topic we're going to focus on is the aims of education.

And it's really strange because we've recorded hundreds of philosophy by its

interviews and we've never done one specifically on education.

Yet historically in philosophy it's one of the most important questions.

What is education?

What's it for?

Yeah, that's right.

I'm really glad that you're doing one now.

The history of philosophy, at least of Western philosophy, so far as it started with

Plato, I mean the republic is essentially about education. It's a question about how you educate the soul in order to create a well-ordered city and Aristotle treated education.

You go through the history of Western philosophy.

...