This study reports a preliminary investigation into the origins, assumptions, and practices of one of the most widespread innovations in schooling: the classroom system. Material for the historical study is drawn from sources in Glasgow, Scotland, where the combined influences of Calvinist theology, Scottish-French philosophy, and the industrial revolution created a solution to the emerging problems of mass schooling, which in the years that followed, was exported all over the world. The theoretical underpinning of the report is that the classroom system, like all educational systems, can best be studied as a form of production tied into the general productive systems of society. That is, it is a social and ethical mechanism for realizing, transforming, and distributing the cumulated experience of humanity. (Author/JM)