On “the temptation to attack common sense” 1 Renia Gasparatou University of Patras Patras, Greece gasparat@upatras.gr Introduction Education happens all the time, in all places and during all our lives. We all know that. However, the moment we hear the word “education” our minds wander back to school. Schools and other educational institutions offer formal education; and thus formalize the concept, turning it into a quasi-technical term that goes well with “policy”, “criteria”, “evaluation forms” and all the rest of the modern educational vocabulary. The growing formalization of concepts is inline with a verificationist ideology that thrives in formal education: methods and outcomes need to be tested; we need a scientific language that measures what students learn in a scientific way; science is a priority anyway, for it informs us of what lies beyond our ordinary conception of the world. Among the goals of education after all is to teach us a more accurate way to describe the world, leaving vulgar common sense behind. Wittgenstein however, argues against the temptation to attack common sense. In the following sections the Wittgensteinian idea of common sense will be explored and then applied in education. Wittgenstein defends common sense as a guide for our thinking and as a relief from mental discomfort. It is the starting point and the final destination of our encounters; yet the process requires that people are able to walk their way through puzzlement. Such a defence of common sense might stand as a 1 Gasparatou R, 2016, On «the temptation to attack common sense». In M. A. Peters (ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory, DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_403- 1