In the best of societies processing will be required to transmit selected values from the past. But the values from the past also include what we have learned about education and how behaviour changes. In a dynamic, creative and changing society we must know how to change our understandings and perceptions. In the static, class-structured society of today the schools emphasise processing to the almost complete exclusion of education. In the class-free and creative society of tomorrow the schools will find an effective balance between processing and education.
Processing reaches far beyond the schools.
Politicians never tire of trying to process us into accepting their worn-out and unworkable solutions. These society processors fail to see how their detailed blueprints of the future society are only veiled repetitions of the past. Their need to seize power, whether by bullets or by ballots, so they can process everyone into their blueprints, is another pattern of the past. Which suggests why revolutions, begun with eager enthusiasm for vital change, often end up with the old tyrannies under new names. As with educational change, significant social changes cannot be predicted or even planned.