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This article distinguishes and compares the explanatory power of four types of cultural transmission: osmotic domestic transmission, strategic domestic transmission, peer-to-peer school transmission, formal school transmission by the teachers. In order to do this, it studies the way in which the pleasure of reading is transmitted among 15-year-olds from a secondary analysis of the PISA 2009 data. The results show that cultural transmission through school is much more effective than cultural transmission that takes place within the family. In examining the relative effectiveness of the four modes of cultural transmission among the upper middle classes, the survey shows that even in these environments, cultural transmission through osmosis is insufficient to ensure cultural reproduction. This traditional model of cultural transmission, defined here as the “inheritance model”, tends to be replaced by a new model of cultural transmission, passing sometimes through a strategic domestic transmission and sometimes through school transmission. The first strategy is favoured by the intellectual fractions of the upper middle classes, the second by their managerial fractions.