The history of philosophy is examined, and what the practice of philosophy may portend for the future of education is discussed. The traditional prohibition of philosophy being taught to children is much indebted to citations from Plato's "Republic." Plato thought that the dialectic would subvert and corrupt children. But just as Socrates thought that philosophy should be studied by people of all ages, there are many educators who are open to the teaching of philosophy at the K-12 levels. These educators believe that philosophy paradigmatically represents the education of the future. The reform of education must take shared philosophical inquiry in the classroom as a heuristic model; philosophy should be injected into all academic disciplines. For this reform movement to work, discovery learning must be used in the classroom, students must be taught the conceptual tools necessary for true inquiry, the curricula must be rationally sequenced, primary sources must be used, emphasis must be placed on classroom discussions, curriculum fragmentation must be eliminated, skill acquisition and concept development must reinforce one another, the importance of the metacognitive must be recognized, and teacher education must be changed. (RM)