The relation between ‘freedom’ and ‘society of control’ in the current context of education reform is considered in five deliberations. In the first deliberation Foucault’s analysis of the disciplinary so-cieties is applied to the implementation of ‘soft disciplinary techniques’ in the context of the New Education program. In a second deliberation the crisis of the ‘enclosed environments’ is discussed in accordance with Deleuze’s famous postscript on the ‘society of control’. In the third deliberation, the perspective of the society of control is linked to the new forms of ‘governing the social’, which add the dimension of a ‘moral rearmament’ of the individual to the economic and social processes of deregulation. The fourth deliberation addresses the question of how the governmental strategies im-pact on the current educational reforms. Finally, the inherent contradictions and limitations of gov-ernmental steering practices and also the ‘governmentality studies’ are under scrutiny.