Scottish education was, until quite recently, the conscious product of liberal tradition, of the belief by influential elites that the nation's educational history was strong, coherent, and progressive, a source of economic flexibility, of modernising ideas, and of liberal opportunity. In recent decades, however, it has become fashionable to decry or even to ignore this tradition, on the grounds that it is rigidly academic, competitively merit-selective, unable to respond to change, and a universalising threat to authenticity. The paper discusses the tradition and why it has now fallen into apparently terminal desuetude.