'Intelligence' has long been a problematic concept for educational policy-makers. Sociologists of education concerned to explain social inequalities in educational attainment have suggested that, despite the through-going criticism of the classical IQ concept, teachers continue to maintain practices which ensure that their taken-for-granted ideas about the social distribution of 'ability' are realized in patterns of school attainment. The debate has seen the reintroduction of Dewey's concept of "collective intelligence". The argument presented accepts that this pragmatic idea may have a contribution to make in the struggle to replace the established individual reference of classical IQ theory, but argues that there may be something no less important to be gained for radical interests in education from the realist concept of cognitive "habitus". The case is made for this thesis, by means of an investigation necessarily concerned with the conceptual clarification of certain key terms, with reference to the guiding thought of Dewey and Bourdieu. The focus is on the concepts necessary for the construction of a coherent theory of the explanation of social disparities in education that attempts to incorporate reference to the effects of cognitive socialization on inequality of educational opportunity.