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What are schools for? In very general terms, their aims are the same as those of a home with children. The task of both institutions is twofold and simplicity itself, to equip each child:

1. to lead a life that is personally flourishing 2. to help others to do so too.

What schools should do and what homes should do overlap in very many places, and it is a mistake to erect too clear a wall between them. At the same time, schools need a clear picture of what they in particular can best do, and it is the object of this book to provide this. If it is also helpful to parents in showing how what they can do meshes with what schools can do, then so much the better. The twofold aim may seem too bland and general to guide a country’s schools, but it is not. For the general unfolds into the specific, and what may seem empty will prove substantial. From this simply stated aim, all that a country ever needs in a school curriculum can be derived. It generates lesser aims of increasing specificity. Once the framework is in place at the centre, the remaining task of curriculum construction passes to the schools. It is they who fill out the general, nationwide scheme with activities suited to their students and their circumstances. The approach is very different from how a national curriculum is often planned. Successive ones for England and Wales are typical. They do not begin with overarching aims, then fill them out in greater specificity. Instead, they take for granted a dozen or so discrete school subjects. It is their requirements that get filled out.