This essay addresses the issue of the theory of the structure of class and education. The authors, who label themselves "activists in education," perceived a dichotomy in the understanding and practice of those with whom they work. Education studies reproduce this dichotomy, and people working in the field of education have a variety of ways of constituting what is termed here as a "gap" in understanding of the social world. The work of three people--Derek Toomey, Bob Connell, Don Edgar--is examined to understand the progress they have made and the obstacles they have met in understanding a "continuous" social reality. Four principles are offered in summary as a guide for the process of understanding a "continuous" social variety. First, social reality is essentially relational; there is no "gap." Second, a continuous reality is constituted by production and reproduction which is nothing but the interactions of people in and through their material world. Third, that production and reproduction is fundamentally and pervasively ordered by the capitalist mode of production. Fourth, in attaching the term "capitalist" to the relations of production, the marxist schema attributes meanings to the concept of "class" which are quite distinct from those of bourgeois social science, notably in the insistence on the constitutive and generative character of contradictions and conflict throughout social life and experience. Finally, the primary test of sound social theory is its ability to direct the political action. (MM)