Curriculum as a field of study emerged in an intellectual climate in which the idea of social control was dominant. The intent of this paper is to look historically at the integration of the idea of social control into curriculum discourse, to indicate its dominant position as the underlying assumption of most early curriculum work, and to suggest the importance of this fact for contemporary curriculum thought. Section I marks the historical formulation of the idea of social control in American thought. Sections II and III outline the theories of Ross and Elwood, contenders of the two basic viewpoints of overt and covert social control. Section IV looks at the social context in which the idea of social control was developed, while Section V deals with influences in operation on curriculum such as developments in the field of psychology. Section VI presents the views of other formative theorists in the emerging field of educational sociology. Section VII considers whether that initial orientation toward social control still remains. It is observed that the idea of social control continues to dominate and that the function of this orientation historically and perhaps today has been to restrict certain segments of the nation's population in the name of social homogeneity. (Author/KSM)