To be sure, there are some social historians who interpret the expansion of schooling as the result of rising popular demand for skills which would have found institutional expression with or without upper-class intervention. But for many of the new social historians, the significance of schooling history lies in its centrality to an evolving system of social relations. For the historian concerned first and foremost with the evolution in social relations, school reform usually appears as a harbinger of a new program to impose a different, subtler, and more effective style of discipline upon the working population.

— Schooling in Western Europe by Mary Jo Maynes (Page 34 - 35)