This chapter argues that the Enlightenment's biggest success in the field of education has been in convincing future generations to make school and university education more accessible to vastly larger numbers of people. However, Enlightenment intellectuals' emphasis on education as a vehicle of intellectual, civic, and moral transformation has been de-emphasized in the contemporary world. Although certain aspects of Enlightenment intellectuals' faith in the transformative power of education to shape intellectual and moral character do not always survive scrutiny, their assumption that compatible internal, attitudinal changes need to accompany external, societal changes if the latter are to be freely adopted and made efficacious appears to be correct. This leads to an awkward conclusion: however numerous the external signs of a global civil society may be at present, most people still do not morally endorse it. To this extent, education — from an Enlightenment perspective — has failed.
Keywords: Enlightenment, education, schooled world, moral character