David, many thanks for your considered response, and especially for the useful diagram and pointers towards other contributors' posts. :-)

Regarding the orchestration of the debate, we were overwhelmed! We initially planned for two weeks of these posts, but had to cut off sign-ups at two months. Thankfully, the upcoming Purpos/ed event in Sheffield will allow more of the type of discussion and debate that you mention in your 'PS'!

A very helpful post David, thank you.

David, I'm the 39th of the fag end. I enjoyed this post, it's brought together a lot of other viewpoints throughout and has helped to shape a direction others may wish to tkae in their own posts that are ahead.
I agree that education has to shift it's perspective, our generation has really had it quite easy, the next will find it tougher but those that are born now will enter a world we know abolutely nothing about. Will education for them be that much different than what we have now? I certainly hope so. It better be.

Great post David, good follow on to James Michie's and the first work of synthesis on purpos/ed so should help Doug and Andy on the next phase of the project. Good points from someone living in the bottom right of London.
I agree that no one has addressed the targets and assessment dimension, we are all happier in the inspirational space. However that is what Nigel Ecclesfield and I try and do with the Architecture of Participation blog. These are what we think our targets for 2011 should be;
http://architectureofparticipation.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/public-value-2011/

All your synthesis of the previous contributions is doing is showing how narrow the range of scheduled contributors were. Is there even one of them arguing for a liberal education? Social engineering and personal fulfillment may be contradictory aims, but they are contradictory aims from within the progressive tradition.

Oldandrew, you may have a point there. In the latter stages of what I wrote, I tried to urge a focus towards one particular part of the spectrum of contributions. But maybe the spectrum isn't as wide as it could be — in which case I was wrong to assume that it would be impossible to say anything new.

So let's see what remains unsaid... Picking up on your "Is there even one of them arguing for a liberal education?", I guess some might say they had argued for that — but then definitions of "a liberal education" vary considerably. Can you say more about your definition, and/or what you think is missing from the contributions?