In this article, I try to make sense conventional notions of "premodernism", "modernism" and "postmodernism" as ways of relating to reality, and apply them to education. I argue for the additional notion of "neo-premodernism" to make sense of recent attempts to engineer social reality. Each of these four approaches coexists and constitutes the four ages: the age of prayer (premodernism), the age of reason (modernism), the age of social engineering (neo-premodernism) and the age of responsibility (postmodernism). I try to trace these ages in modern schooling and critically analyze their consequences and the power relations between teachers and students.