Reflects on the basic conditions of social and educational interaction in the world, drawing on writings in the field of sociological theory and social philosophy, most notably those of Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann, using these insights to analyze the elementary problem of establishing a social relationship with educational purposes. Both Parsons and Luhmann developed their theorem of the so-called "double contingency in social interaction" after Mead. (SM)