This article departs from a theoretical analysis of the characteristics of social interaction, and especially of face-to-face interaction. It elaborates on the difference between individual action and social interaction. In the second part, the analysis of social interaction is used to study the emergence of the mechanisms whereby the educational process goes on. The attention is focused on the social conditions of instruction and schooling, which are institutionalised in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in Europe. It is indicated that the predominant mechanisms of educational interaction determine how education takes place. The social function of education strongly depends on the interaction mechanisms that are used and institutionalised in schooling. In the concluding section, some consequences of these findings for conducting research on the relation between education and society are discussed.