The paper examines a debate in the history of Australian education between historians G. V. Portus, A. G. Austin and J. B. Hirst, concerning explanations of the centralized organization of Australia's public education systems. It is argued that the historians have defined the problem of centralization in education as part of a wider problem of explaining the interventionist nature of the state in nineteenth century Australia. W. K. Hancock's explanation of the origins of the “interventionist” state is presented to show the limits of the problematic within which Portus, Austin and Hirst are writing. A consensus among the historians is revealed in the construction of historical problems, in methodology and, most particularly, in assumptions about the nature of the nineteenth century Australian state. A critical examination of the organizing presuppositions of the historians' work, that is, of their problematic, questions its adequacy and points to what might be a more adequate problematic predicated on a different concept of the state.