John Dewey's prescriptions for education are generally grounded in assumptions about schools as transmitters of culture that can be critiqued for taking insufficient account of interpretive difference. Such a critique can be undertaken from a position of general acceptance of Dewey's philosophical and psychological premises. Nevertheless, a Deweyan pragmatism that problematises cultural transmission via schooling poses a challenge to the whole social democratic project of pursuing equality of opportunity through compulsory education.There have been tensions at least since the Enlightenment between the valorising of individual freedom and the necessity for social constraint, and, relatedly, the needs both to protect and to respect the individuality of children within such an overall settlement. Both sets of tensions are apparent in the differing conceptions of the 'social contract' offered by early liberal philosophers including Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. Nevertheless, at present, the official policy drift is towards ever more emphasis on compulsory schooling. British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has pledged Britain to help developing countries achieve universal schooling, thus cementing the commitment to schooling on the overseas development as well as the domestic agenda. However, while increased, even compulsory schooling, may well be welcomed as an uncontroversial step forward for many countries at certain points in their histories, this does not amount to rendering such schooling an unqualified good. The situation in countries lacking basic material provisions, social infrastructure and widespread literacy and numeracy may be considered very different from that in largely affluent, pluralistic states, where future thriving in the global market place depends on an initiative-taking, autonomous (while socially aware) citizenry with a commitment to lifelong learning. The paper will, therefore, reconsider the role of compulsory formal education from a pragmatic perspective that accepts Dewey's major premises with the exception of some of his assumptions concerning the werkings and effectiveness of schools. Focusing on social actors as individual sense-makers, it will argue for approaches to research and policy grounded in a view of living as semiotic engagement, and of institutions as imagined communities in semiotic space.philosophical See above. The paper problematises the assumption that compulsory schooling is an unconstrained social good and invites reappraisal of widely held assumptions about both policy and research. Dewey, J. (1896) The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology, Psychological Review 3, 357-370, retrieved from http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/Dewey/Dewey_1896.html 11/14/2006 Dewey, J. (1897) My Pedagogic Creed First published in The School Journal, Volume LIV, Number 3, 77-80 retrieved from http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/e-dew-pc.htm 11/16/2006 Dewey, J. (1915/1944) The School and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and Education (Toronto: Macmillan) Dewey, J. (1925) Experience and Nature (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court) Dewey, J. (1929) Impressions of Soviet Russia and the Revolutionary World, Mexico-China-Turkey (New York: New Republic) Dewey, J. (1940) Education Today (New York: Putnam) Dworkin, M. (1959) Dewey on Education: selections (New York: Teachers College Press) Savery, W. (1951) The Significance of Dewey's Philosophy, in Schilpp, P.A. (ed.) The Philosophy of John Dewey (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court), 479-514 Stables,A (2003) School as Imagined Community in Discursive Space: a perspective on the school effectiveness debate, British Educational Research Journal 29/6, 895-902… (2005a) Multiculturalism and Moral Education: individual positioning, dialogue and cultural practice, Journal of Moral Education 34/2, 185-197 … (2005b) Living and Learning as Semiotic Engagement: A New Theory of Education (Lewiston, NY: Mellen) …(2006a) Sign(al)s: Living and Learning as Semiotic Engagement, Journal of Curriculum Studies 38/4, 373-387 …(2006b) Semiosis and the Myth of Learning, in Proceedings of International Network of Philosophers of Education10th Biennial Conference: Philosophical Perspectives on Educational Practice in the 21st Century. (Malta: Allied Newspapers) Also electronically published at http://www.educ.um.edu.mt/INPE/proceedings.html …(2006c) From Semiosis to Social Policy: The Less Trodden Path, Signs Systems Studies 34/1 (in press) Stables, A. and Gough, S. (2006) Towards a Semiotic Theory of Choice and of Learning, Educational Theory 56/3, 271-285to be confirmed