An hypothesis (with a tip of the hat to George Ritzer, *The Macdonaldization of America,* and Pierre Bourdieu, *Distinction*): After a brief democratic distortion in a few decades following WWII, education is returning to its traditional social function, to equip members of the ruling elite with the cultural capital and social networks required to play their class role in society. Moderate amounts of literacy and numeracy will be required for the masses employed as sales clerks, fast food restaurant staff, construction workers, etc., but the same polarization now affecting incomes and other signs of class distinction will affect all levels of education in the same way. A minority of the upper clerisy to be will receive excellent educations from k-12 on, thanks to parents with the will and income to provide them. For the rest, education will decline to a minimum commensurate with the social demands of physical labor and service industry employment. The middle-class myth that saw education as an endless stairway to upward mobility for all offered the opportunity to receive it will come to be seen as an historical aberration, interpreted along the lines of More's *Utopia*, a possibly beautiful but impossible dream. Feeling grim in Yokohama, John -- John McCreery The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN Tel. +81-45-314-9324 jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.wordworks.jp/