Socrates favored instruction in music and gymnastics, but opposed the teaching of poetry.
John Locke believed a gentleman's education should start with cold foot baths and hard beds.
For centuries, the world's great minds have debated what to teach children, and still the issue isn't settled.
It recently emerged again in Anne Arundel County when school Superintendent Carol S. Parham introduced a $437 million operating budget to the county Board of Education. Dr. Parham, who appears to have listened to the criticism heaped on public education during last fall's election, proposed a spending plan that would cut administrative positions and add money for textbooks and computers.
That was welcome news. But the budget contained one small detail that was overlooked initially. In response to critics who contend the schools are spending too much time on "fluff" and not enough on academics, Dr. Parham proposed cutting a fifth-grade water safety program, which costs about $100,000 a year.
A number of parents were outraged. School officials may have considered the program unnecessary, but those parents considered it essential.
A compromise might be reached in which parents would pay for their children to take the course. That solution would quell this dispute, but the larger question of what the schools should teach is still burning.
For his part, Socrates opposed teaching children poetry because he believed it only filled their minds with lies. Locke believed children should be subjected to cold foot baths and hard beds to teach them self-discipline.
Socrates and Locke may have had narrow views of what ought to constitute an education, but at least they had a coherent philosophy. Today's school bureaucrats do not.
On the one hand, the experts say children ought to be taught "life skills." On the other, they say, students need more academics.
Maryland schools, hoping to have their cake and eat it too, offer an academic track to prepare kids for college and a vocational track to prepare kids for work. But both businesses and colleges still complain that students are unprepared.
The education experts have made some progress in defining the essentials of education. The state sets the minimum curriculum requirements in English, math, science, social studies, etc. and has performance tests to measure the students' competency. And yet even as the children struggle to meet these standards, most everyone would agree that these basic courses are not enough.
What no one can seem to agree on, however, is what more the schools ought to teach. Some parents think prayer is an essential part of education. Others support teaching children how to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.
Some parents back music classes or foreign languages, while others want more "practical" skills such as typing and accounting.
For the many Anne Arundel parents who testified at a budget hearing recently, the drown-proofing class is essential to their children's education. In this water safety course, nearly every county fifth-grader spends one hour a day for one week learning how to float, help someone who is drowning and what to do if they fall through ice.
Dr. Parham initially argued that teaching children water safety is not the responsibility of the schools. If parents want their children to learn how not to drown, they can enroll them in a class at the YCMA.
The school system reached a similar conclusion about driver's education a couple years ago. Forced by the state to make tough budget choices, Anne Arundel and many other schools decided driver's ed was not essential to the public school curriculum.
Perhaps my own public school education fails me, but I can't understand the reasoning behind these decisions.
Schools offer typing, auto shop and carpentry to prepare kids for work, but they've dropped driver's education to teach kids how to drive to the jobs they've learned to do. Why teach students what to do under the hood, but not behind the wheel?
The educators continue to raise the math and science requirements in order to impart a more rigorous academic education, but students are still required to take physical education and health to learn how to play volleyball, brush their teeth and abstain from drugs. But why is playing volleyball more important than learning how to float?
The educators say other opportunities exist for students to learn water safety and driving. That's true, but the availability of alternative instruction is not a valid consideration in curriculum development. If that were the case, then schools could drop reading because parents can buy "Hooked on Phonics" tapes.
Socrates and Locke didn't settle the education debate. Today's great thinkers probably won't either. But a little logic and consistency might help.
Liz Atwood is The Baltimore Sun's editorial writer in Anne Arundel County.