The year 2016 marked the tenth anniversary of the death of John McGahern (born 1934), the widely acclaimed Irish author. There is a shared temper of mind and several common strands in the work of McGahern and that of the English philosopher, Michael Oakeshott (1900-1990). Despite the very different cultural environments in which they grew up and wrote, both writers exhibit a similar commitment to education as initiation into the pleasures of the mind, although they differ in their responses to the social context in which formal learning takes place. This paper examines the commonalities and differences in their visions of education.