The Blackwell Companion and Blackwell Guide to the philosophy of education, edited respectively by Randall Curren and by Nigel Blake, Paul Smeyers, Richard Smith and Paul Standish, are potentially field-defining volumes. The present essay moves back and forth between the two books to assess the overall impression they provide of the "state of the art". Whilst both texts can be criticised for failing to engage sufficiently with non-philosophical work on education, these are otherwise estimable volumes, containing many fine essays that can be read with profit.