It is difficult for us today to imagine that equal educational opportunity, with which we are so deeply preoccupied, was at one time considered to be if not an evil at least a futile objective, and that those who held such an opinion were completely insincere and even disinterested. For a vertically stratified society equality of education had to be opposed be cause it would disturb an equilibrium as vital as that of a building. In the Middle Ages only the Church was able to look for new members at the bottom of the social ladder, since ecclesiastical office was not inherited by birth. But...