The need to find ways of ameliorating a number of what seemed to be gross abuses of 'science', logic, and authority in relation to educational policy emerged as a priority whilst revisiting writings on early childhood and elementary education. In the current paper, it is argued that many of these abuses stem from the uncritical acceptance of reductionist science on the one hand and authoritarian, single-factor, attempts to remediate social problems on the other. Two questions then present themselves: 'What are the social forces which have led to this situation?' And 'How could we, as the British Psychological Society, and the Education Section in particular, intervene in this network of social forces?' The primary aim of this paper is to provoke a quest for answers to these questions.