The nature of educational change is explored with a view to stressing its importance in the matrix of recent trends. It is argued a) that educational change has as its primary impetus some social, political, economic, or scientific need or dissatisfaction conflicting with the status quo, b) that educational reformers in the 60s and 70s failed to change the public schools because they ignored the experiences of the past, and c) that since the early 80s, a new synthesis appears to be forming as a reaction to the disappointment that the techniques of the "Age of Aquarius" failed to instill basic skills standardized as elements of general literacy.