THE SCHOOLS ARE called upon to perform many roles in society, ranging from simple child care to the successful teaching of highly specialized cognitive and technical skills. Schools are also expected to socialize children into the prevailing societal norms, whatever they might be in a given context. In spite of these expectations, it is still problematic as to with what degree of success any or all of these roles can be performed. Presently, it is assumed in some countries that the schools can help create societies in which men would sooner devote themselves to the good of the community than to their own self-interest, and in which elitism would not exist. It is specifically to this utopian position that this article addresses itself. I intend to investigate both theoretically, and, insofar as it is possible, empirically, the relationship between this ideological position, and knowledge, schools, and social change. Whereas in most studies of education and schools in social processes, education is given a rather secondary role, if any, in influencing outcomes, my argument is that the organization of knowledge, as it appears in the schools, is based on necessary epistemological distinctions, related to the functions schools may be asked to perform, and that the basis of these distinctions carries with it certain value consequences which are dysfunctional for purposes of achieving certain other types of value orientation. In recent discussions of the problematic nature of the social organization of knowledge, it becomes evident that one can no longer take any traditional model of education as given, i.e., take without question the criteria of educational success and the related aspects of curricula, methods and evaluation.' Young, for example, criticizes absolutist conceptions of knowledge as a set of distinct forms which closely correspond to the traditional academic curriculum, as is argued by Hirst.2 Hirst takes as given that the primary function of secondary education is the development of the rational faculties of the mind. This development, he suggests, is a process of learning to discriminate elements in one's experience through the use of concepts and categories and for this purpose only certain concepts are helpful. Young objects that Hirst does not question the initial division of knowledge into distinct forms. Young does not claim that Hirst's position is wrong, but simply that it remains unexamined. Young writes: The point I wish to make here is that unless such necessary distinctions or intrinsic logics are treated as