Better Worlds: Education, Art, and Utopia provides a fresh examination of utopia and education. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on literature and the visual arts as well as traditional non-fiction sources, the authors explore utopia not as a model of social perfection but as the active, imaginative building of better worlds. Utopian questions, they argue, lie at the heart of education, and addressing such questions demands attention not just to matters of theoretical principle but to the particulars of everyday life and experience. Taking utopia seriously in educational thought also involves a consideration of that which is dystopian. Utopia, this book suggests, is not something that is fixed, final, or ever fully realized; instead, it must be constantly recreated, and education, as an ongoing process of reflection, action, and transformation, has a central role to play in this process.

Peter Roberts is professor of Education at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He teaches philosophy of education and educational policy studies.John Freeman-Moir is senior lecturer in the College of Education at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, where he teaches utopian social theory, sociology of education, and philosophy of education.

Introduction: Utopia, Dystopia, and EducationChapter 1: Crafting Experience: William Morris, John Dewey, and UtopiaChapter 2: Art for Dishonour, Utopian Inflection, Sympathys EducationChapter 3: Utopia, Dystopia, and the Struggle for Redemption: Iris Murdoch and Educative AttentionChapter 4: Pictures and Particularities: The Uncertain Creativity of ActionChapter 5: Education and the Dream of a Better World: The Pedagogy of Paulo FreireChapter 6: A Golden Age? Dostoevsky, Taoism, and UtopiaChapter 7: Technology, Utopia, and Scholarly Life: Ideals and Realities in the Work of Hermann Hesse