ABSTRACT
Education in modern societies is not a purely personal transaction between individuals but is conducted within institutions. The standard case of education is not the private music lesson nor the child educated otherwise at home, but the boy or girl going to school or the student to college. Such cases incidentally remind us that education is overwhelmingly something offered to the young, though. The education system is of course a bureaucracy, or set of bureaucracies, and despite its internal conflicts it can be regarded as an educational establishment inimical to fundamental reform. Changes are mediated through channels of control, influence, and persuasion on practitioners. Given the proposition that there are multiple functions for education and a wide variety of legitimate interests in its conduct, it is likely that change will be less swift and effective than any individual interest would like. This is not only inevitable but, provided that the widest.
