This article describes Basil Bernstein's theory of the pedagogic device as applied to school music instruction. Showing that educational practices are not personal choices alone, but the result of socio-political mandates, the article traces how education functions as a vehicle for social reproduction. Bernstein called this process the recontextualization of knowledge: From its point of inception, originally conceived knowledge undergoes changes through selection and filtration processes, eventually becoming curriculum--a relay for certain social and cultural values. Gaps in the recontextualization process allow teachers to place their own individual stamp upon the learning and teaching that occur in their classroom. Teacher-pupil interactions, guided by school-internal processes, lead to school knowledge that is further reproduced by the pupils in particular ways. A teacher's awareness of socially conditioned and habitual patterns of preference and behavior (habitus) may be key to making socially inclusive and emancipatory instructional choices. (Contains 2 figures.)