The common school movement of the early 19th century was the initial effort to use educational institutions to preserve social order on a mass scale. Children were enrolled from all economic, ethnic, and religious groups to inculcate shared values and attitudes. In sharp contrast to the era of the common schools, educational reformers in the early 20th century sought to differentiate, categorize, and segregate various groups of deviant and otherwise defective or abnormal children into specialized programs. The efforts of educational and social welfare professionals to identify and exploit new markets for their elaborate technical capabilities accelerated the differentiation process. During the 1960's critics charged that the practices of labeling children enrolled in special programs provided insufficient social integration and exacerbated youthful rebelliousness. Public authorities have since become increasingly skeptical of the schools' ability to socialize potential delinquents and are demoralized by the extent to which schools have become criminogenic environments which must be defended from the children they had hoped to save. The inevitable failures that lie in the wake of preoccupation with motivation and socialization have obscured the necessity of clarifying the precise context of serious delinquent events and the role that technical procedures might play in their reduction. Sixty-four references are listed.