If we are to think in these terms, then the intellectual and practical agenda of education is no less than to explore the bases and pragmatics of human knowledge, becoming and identity. Education asks this ur -disciplinary question: How is it that we come to know and be, as individuals and collectively? If this is education’s central question, surely, then, we can argue that it is the source of all other disciplines? It is the means by which all other disciplines come into being.

Philosophy used to claim a metadisciplinary position like this. It was the discipline where students not only thought, but thought about thinking. However, for decades, philosophy has been making itself less relevant. It has become too word-bound, too obscure, too formal and too disconnected from practical, lived experience.

But philosophy’s metaquestions still need to be asked. Education should perhaps take the former position of philosophy as the discipline of disciplines, and do it more engagingly and relevantly than philosophy ever did. Education is the new philosophy.