This work addresses concerns about educational and moral standards in a world characterized by a growing nihilism. On the one hand there is widespread anxiety that standards are falling; on the other, new machinery of accountability and inspection to show that they are not. The book argues that we cannot avoid nihilism if we are simply laissez-faire about values, nor can we reduce them to standards of performance, nor must we return to traditional values. It further states that we need to create a new set of values based on a critical assessment of contemporary practice in the light of a number of philosophical texts that address the question of nihilism, including the work of Nietzsche.