It is difficult for philosophers to write about educational studies without seeming either testy or despairing, because (as it seems to them) the crucial questions are hardly ever raised, let alone answered. For one thing, the time never seems to be right. Thus economic recessions and other utilitarian or political pressures are often said to encourage reflection upon the nature, value and justification of such enterprises, but that is at best a half-truth: what actually happens is that the pressures change or reallocate the criteria of judgement, stressing-unsurprisingly and sometimes rightly-the instrumental, the utilitarian, the 'practical' and the 'relevant' (whatever these terms may mean). Those who negotiate on behalf of the enterprises have also to engage in a lot of fast footwork, as well as display prudence and political foresight, if their negotiations are to be successful; and that, though necessary, does not conduce to calm and leisured reflection. Conversely, in periods of euphoric expansion, like the 1960s in the UK, few people are in a mood to think with any precision: they are too anxious to make hay while the sun shines, or not to get left behind in the gold rush. Even when some effort is made, talk about educational studies (together with any decisions and actions taken about them) suffers from a difficulty which is also endemic to educational studies itself. Briefly, there are many different kinds of questions involved-philosophical, sociological, historical, political, managerial, etc. To make any serious progress towards answering some such overall question as 'What ought educational studies to look like, and how can we get them like that?' we need the help of more than one discipline. Moreover, the lessons each discipline can teach us-the particular answers to the particular questions it addresses-cannot just be put side by side or somehow squeezed together (in the pages of a symposium, for instance): there is a proper structure required if our thinking is to be more than just intellectual amusement. Thus, we might reasonably suppose that we need to begin with some kind of conceptual or philosophical clarity about the particular nature of educational studies (as against other kinds of studies), and what that nature logically involves: then move to what the empirical disciplines can tell us about these studies, as practised by individuals and institutions: then turn to what, in the circumstances of the world as we now have them, we can actually do about improving matters. That is no more than a very broad outline of the required structure (the way in which what I have called 'the empirical disciplines' fit together, for instance, stands in need of much more investigation): but even this outline requires an effort of understanding and communication that we seem unable, or perhaps unwilling, to make. Hence, just as we talk breezily about 'integration' or 'interdisciplinary studies' in education itself but in fact make no coherent attack upon the problems involved, so in the enormous mass of literature on educational 3