One of the more long-standing and commonly held views among educational theorists maintains that schools are one of the primary sites of social and cultural reproduction--sites where students are corralled and organized for the reproduction of the existing social arrangement. In this article author Gregory Bourassa argues that if this understanding of schools proves to be accurate, then we can begin to recognize schools as important instruments for the maintenance of a social order buttressed by what bell hooks (2003) has aptly referred to as "imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal values." Although many conventional narratives adopt a celebratory stance regarding the democratic origins and aims of public schooling, hooks resists the temptation of nostalgia for an enterprise that has, from its inception, been tethered to and reinforced "dominator values.". hooks' analysis is important not only because it carries with it a sobering view of a pathological social order but also because it unveils, and thus attempts to demystify, the operations of one of its primary instruments of domination and social control. Bourassa begins the discussion by saying here that such an understanding of schooling certainly has damning implications and offers a sinister insight to accompany consideration of John Dewey's (1916) assertion that the "conception of education as a social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind of society we have in mind." Bourassa warns that education is in the midst of an extraordinary moment in which youth are collectively calling into question the achievement ideology and the efficacy of schooling. He argues that educators should be responsive to this questioning and listen to the grievances of youth.