The contemporary crisis in American Education that has resulted in Bush sponsored federal legislation for accountability and standardized testing is the setting for an essay introducing the work of French philosopher, Julia Kristeva. The comparison is between an "educated subject" that might well come to be constituted in schooling at present and a "subject-in-process." In a strikingly different vision of human potential, the latter individual, with open-ended, non-perfect development, entails the possibility of personal, societal and educational change. Kristeva's theory, based greatly in a reinterpretation of Freud, and incorporating the semiotic, abjection and love, and revolt is central.