In his pioneering book: Of Human Potential (1985), Israel Scheffler - one of the founders of the analytical philosophy of education - introduces a new interpretation for the traditional concept of human potential. Scheffler's contribution highlights particular weaknesses of the traditional interpretation of potentiality and reconstructs the concept in the light of both philosophical arguments and its uses in educational practice. Scheffler specifies three myths commonly held about human potential; the myth of fixed potentials, the myth of harmonious potentials, and the myth of uniformly valuable potentials. Scheffler proposes that these myths derive from Aristotelian philosophy, and they should not be accepted as such in today's educational thinking. This Aristotelian essentialism may be simplified by saying that everyone (or even everything) ought to realize her or his potentialities simply for the reason that these belong to her or his fully realized essence and, therefore, to realize some particular potentiality is always better than not to realize it. In contradiction with the traditional view, Scheffler emphasizes that human beings have both desirable and undesirable potentials. In addition, as Scheffler says: "No magic bridge connects alleged facts concerning essences with the supposed values of their realizations." The viewpoint leading to educational practice in Scheffler's reconstruction of the concepts of human nature and potential is realized in a wider research project where the cross-cultural dialogue is sought anthropologically, with a view of giving voice to the wide variety of characterizing beliefs of different cultures concerning human development. The idea of elaborating educational theory, both from the viewpoint of philosophy and from the viewpoint of practice, bestows upon Scheffler's theory a significance which is worth noting in the contemporary dialogue on education. In my paper, I will present a critical examination of Scheffler's practical theory of education in light of educational challenges of pluralist and multicultural society.