ABSTRACT
As we have seen, education as a social system has been the subject of constant innovation and change. It is only within recent decades, however, that the anatomy of the process has begun to be studied in anything like a systematic way. Whether the system has been involved in a new piece of legislation (such as the raising of the school-leaving age to sixteen in England and Wales), or in a new method of instruction (such as i.t.a. in reading), few changes seem to have been planned and organised in sufficient detail to predict or control the consequences. For example, it may be that the short-term effect at least of the raising of the school-leaving age will not be an improved level of general education for all children, but rather an increased resentment at keeping them from entering the world of work, and a greater amount of truancy and problems of a disciplinary nature. The long-term effect may, of course, be a resolution of all these more immediate problems and a better educational system generally.
