Assimilation through acculturation is a central aim of education within all societies. If the society is over-assimilated, and if education fails to preserve individual creative powers, it will perish. The school, the institutionalized educational process, is assigned two central tasks: (1) the assimilation by acculturation of the neophytes within the society, and (2) the preservation of the autonomy of the individual in a mode reflective of the ideal of individualism. Two forms of alienation can thus occur: (1) alienation resulting from the failure of assimilation or sociological alienation, and (2) alienation resulting from the loss of an individual's autonomy or psychological alienation. Sociological alienation may be found in immigrants, the American Indians, the American Negroes, the poor, and possibly those physically or emotionally handicapped; artists, and intellectuals. Sociological and psychological alienation cannot always be separated. Among those who might be psychologically alienated is the worker, due to possible fragmentation of self and a search for stability. For some of the psychologically alienated, the schools attempt special programs to work with these maladjustments. (KJ)