Tins PAPER Will limit itself to problems of the function and structure of primary and secondary education, for it is at the junction of primary and secondary education that the principal issues in national educational policy have arisen. Here is to be found the major dysfunctionality of certain educational systems, including the German-in the lag in training qualified personnel and in democratizing education.' title of this paper demands some explanation. It is not meant to be polemic but to indicate that, in contrast to some other European countries, the adjustment of the educational system to the socio-economic and cultural developments of the mid-twentieth century has not yet really taken place in Germany. authors do not consider certain changes in the organization of schooling and instruction which have occurred during the post-war years to have altered the system of West German education in any important degree. It is significant that a high official of the Bavarian Ministry of Education after enumerating a number of internal reforms, such as the participation of primary school teachers in deciding on selection for secondary schools, a concentration of subjects in the upper secondary schools, the introduction of social studies, the organization of study groups, and certain changes in the organization of the time-table, declared: The secondary school has completed its reform; and concluded: peace experience of total disruption after the Nazi period led many within the leading groups in Germany to look for security in old and trusted traditions. conservatism which has prevailed in post-war Germany is a product of the overwhelming desire to recapture material well-being and social stability and a distrust of new beginnings and experiments. Most of the leading university scholars rejected proposed reforms of the German secondary school and recommended