During the last 200 years, the educational system in Germany developed in recurrent spurts of growth in relative enrollment in the educational system, regularly followed, in turn, by phases of stagnation. On the basis of a systematic content-analysis of 2.370 articles published by teacher associations in the period from 1884 to 1993, it could be shown that teachers from secondary schools and elementary schools lead generation-specific discourses on educational selection. With the long waves of educational growth, pedagogical issues change in a specific manner, and with them the majority of the teacher generations' (possibly biased) attitudes regarding student selection. The generational patterns of interpretation change due to the persistent confrontation with the environment, in a mode similar to that observed with individual persons.