Education and schooling have long been subject to popular criticism. Education has either been too pedantic, too unstructured or too experimental. Yet, for that matter it has been lauded for a time at each stage. Proponents have generally outnumbered opponents. The American public still supports education as one of its finer institutions (de­spite the 'encounter polities' on college campuses during the 1960's).

Schooling, on the other hand, has endured a different fate. It has been subject to both experimental and clinical analysis-ostensibly to ascertain the vital elements which make up its essential or substantive quality. A number of rather piercing volumes have appeared in the literature, accusing schooling of "murdering young minds," subverting critical thinking development, and fostering a high percent , of student uninvolvement.

None of these criticisms is without some point in fact. However, much of the frustration over education and schooling is probably due to a) the lack of clarity and definition about what education is in contemporary society, b) the inability to realistically strategize who is to get what education, where, when, and how, and c) the wholesale,, refusal to deal with the question of why the particular person or persons should be recipients of this education? Americans still verbalize an attitude of education for every­one, which is unsupported by assessment either of history or of contemporary circumstances.