ABSTRACT
In 1932 an American sociologist Willard Waller wrote that there was universally a conflict between the parent's and the teacher's wishes concerning the education of a child. The school was 'vertically integrated', that is its classes operated a system of 'family grouping'. Each class contained children representing the whole age range of the schools: half-a-dozen 5-year-olds, half a dozen 6-year-olds, half-a-dozen 7-year-olds, half-a-dozen 8-year-olds — all together in the classroom. In whatever modern mass society people look, school is the child's first model of the kinds of institutions mass society generates. In it can be found all the parallels with government, places of work, and the institutions of the welfare and social services. To that end the parents' last words must be to ensure the right of participation in the education for freedom of their children. Technological advance, riches and greater personal freedoms have been accompanied by war, great poverty and the rise of totalitarianism and fundamentalism.
