This book is organized around two themes - it examines the changing form and function of post-medieval schooling and it speculates about the place of schooling in the social evolution of human species. The book examines long-term changes in the form and function of schooling and is inspired by works written by two non-historians - Emile Durkheim"s "The Evolution of Educational Thought" (a course of lectures originally delivered in 1904-1905) and Maurice Dobb"s "Studies in the Development of Capitalism" (originally published in 1946).