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An attempt is made to raise some preliminary implications of recognizing the ‘political’ character of education and definitions of educational knowledge in particular, by taking the Schools Council as a case study. Following a brief review of some existing approaches to the politics and control of education, and a specification of the possible significance of the Schools Council as a critical case, a more detailed critique of current orthodoxies is presented as exemplified in Manzer's study Teachers and Politics. This leads to an alternative perspective in which three critical issues are examined: I. teacher control and autonomy; 2. legitimation of knowledge; 3. types of child and the differentiation of curricula. The links between the issues and their implication for treating the separation of ‘politics’ from both ‘education’ and ‘educational research’ as themselves sociological questions, are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]