Promoting social cohesion is a key policy challenge in current social theory: how societies cooperate and hold together. Global factors have caused millions of people to migrate to the West, many of whom may belong to traditions other than those previously associated with Western Europe. Governments increasingly look towards education to advance social cohesion or national identity through teaching citizenship and/or national values: something to bind us together. However, the conflicting market metaphor and commodification of education, with the emphasis on the private goods acquired through education, has made this more difficult to achieve. The liberal democratic society is caught between two incompatible demands. The first, that public schooling should be provided for all children and that the state has a justified interest in the content and form of education in view of its capacity to create the future citizens. The second, that individuals should be permitted to choose educational options that best express and support their preferences and goals. The movement towards a more individualistic choice, whether between schools or school systems, assumes an idea of education as having mainly instrumental value and can neglect the social value of education. Schools and education systems are the most systematic way to impart citizenship values and commitments: they are the only institutions with both the capacity and mandate to reach most children in a country. Schools have the capacity to bring together young people from a variety of backgrounds and belief systems, going beyond both family and kinship commitments, to interact and cooperate together through common lessons. Schools are one of the first public experiences of children, and are ideally placed to enable the development of the civic relationship. Both UNESCO and AERA have in recent years urged for education to be seen as a form of public good. This paper is offered as a contribution towards a philosophical basis for the creation of a rich account of the public good. I will argue that the tension between concepts of public and private goods of education results in an impoverished model of the civic relationship. I will argue that democracy requires a particular type of education that is profoundly social: part of its remit is concerned with making a public that can work and make decisions together. Education can thus be viewed as a specific type of good: the making of a public.

I propose to apply a philosophical perspective to this problem to consider what sort of a good education is and how it is produced. I shall approach my work within the “analytic” tradition in philosophical research, usually known as “connective analysis” – investigating interconnections between concepts within education. I also draw on the contribution that can be offered by the study of metaphor as the method we use to conceptualise our world, to govern our ways of perceiving and acting, and thus shape educational practice whether we are aware of it or not.

The public sphere has a responsibility to nurture the private life of citizens, but first there must be a 'public'. School systems are the cornerstone of democracy and play a significant role in forming 'the public'. Drawing on the work of Ball, Labaree and Barber, this will lead to a re-evaluation of the social and public good of education. This paper will finally argue that some goods should be seen as belonging outside of the private domain of ownership because these goods are so fundamental to the development of the common life that their ownership cannot, nor should not, be entertained.