THE PARADOX OF FREEDOM IN R. S. PETERS' ANALYSIS OF EDUCATION AS INITIATION.

The article focuses on professor R. S. Peters' notion of "education as initiation" and to suggest that it involves a paradox of freedom for both teachers and pupils. The apparent modification of his criteria as more applicable to a concept of "the educated man" rather than to the concept of "education" may not have done more than suggest that his criteria are rather elitist or at least irrelevant to the majority to be educated. Knowledge and understanding of a subject at particularly deep levels do not necessarily have to do with a sense of personal appreciation or satisfaction. The concept of a good life is a present rather than an ultimate goal. The notion of initiation as into a form of life which emphasizes the process as an end state rather than getting started on some thing, whether the talk is about "education" or the nature of "the educated man," has inbuilt limitations for sorting out the range of questions related to practical curriculum problems. Peters in introducing the idea of education as initiation sees it as a Social Process. It is to be understood as a concept which, although it marks out no particular transaction between teacher and taught, nevertheless, states criteria to which such transactions have to conform.