The problem I want to explore in this paper1 is whether the pedagogic practices of literacy in the classroom can be co-opted for bringing about social change of a specific kind, which in turn will raise questions about what change and why. The obvious sociological theory to which such issues can be usefully brought is Bernstein’s – but it needs to be added that I do so not as a sociologist manqué but as a linguist interested in understanding society because society is the condition for the maintenance and evolution of language.