Are disciplines the best means of meaningful learning? Are there basic disciplines that prepare a person to be a modern citizen of the world?

Who Needs Disciplines? Alternatives to Conventional Teaching in the Schools presents the long-running argument between those who consider the division by discipline as a conceptual necessity and those who see it as an inequitable division of knowledge, as part of a mechanism for creating social stratification.

In contrast, others emphasize the importance, from a pedagogical perspective, of the teaching method that prefers to construct meanings than to receive meanings.

The papers in the book, by leading pedagogical philosophers, offer an original approach to alternatives to conventional teaching and the relation between thought and teaching, and lay the foundation for dialogue on education, which should have begun long ago.