This paper addresses the social context of curriculum construction and development to show the relationship between school curricula and patterns of social organization control. The first section traces the history of the concept of curriculum based on sequence, prescription, and differentiation and links this concept to the prevailing ideology of Calvinism and the social requirements of the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism. By the 20th century, the batch production rhetoric of the "classroom system" (lessons, subjects, timetables, grading, standardization, and streaming) had become so pervasive that it successfully achieved a normative status, creating standards against which all subsequent educational innovations came to be judged. This dominant epistemology was based on the trilogy of pedagogy, curriculum, and evaluation, creating a hierarchy of status and resources for academic subjects, academic examinations, and able students, with university knowledge and university scholars at the apex. The second section is a critique of this dominant epistemology and institutionalized system of state schooling, comparing it with antecedents and suggesting egalitarian alternatives based on the centrality of dialogue and flexibility in the learning process. (TE)