(1) it is the first general treatment in English of the neglected political dimensions of Aristotle's educational thought, and unusual in attempting to place his educational thought within the larger context of a unitarian reading of the Politics; (2) it is the first attempt to systematically reconstruct and assess Aristotle's defense of public education, and the first attempt to bring classical arguments of this sort to bear on contemporary educational policy debates; (3) it sheds important light on Aristotle's accounts of friendship, law, and responsibility, by examining them in the context of his political thought; (4) it explores important connections between Aristotle's Politics and Plato's Laws, and makes use of those connections in reconstructing Aristotle's arguments for why education should be publicly sponsored and controlled.