the building up of a common experience. Informational statements
about things can be acquired in relative isolation by any one who
previously has had enough intercourse with others to have learned
language. But realization of the meaning of the linguistic signs is
quite another matter. That involves a context of work and play in
association with others. The plea which has been made for education
through continued constructive activities in this book rests upon the
fact they afford an opportunity for a social atmosphere. In place of a
school set apart from life as a place for learning lessons, we have
a miniature social group in which study and growth are incidents of
present shared experience. Playgrounds, shops, workrooms, laboratories
not only direct the natural active tendencies of youth, but they
involve intercourse, communication, and cooperation,--all extending the
perception of connections.

(ii) The learning in school should be continuous with that out of
school. There should be a free interplay between the two. This is
possible only when there are numerous points of contact between the
social interests of the one and of the other. A school is conceivable in
which there should be a spirit of companionship and shared activity,
but where its social life would no more represent or typify that of the
world beyond the school walls than that of a monastery. Social concern
and understanding would be developed, but they would not be available
outside; they would not carry over. The proverbial separation of
town and gown, the cultivation of academic seclusion, operate in
this direction. So does such adherence to the culture of the past as
generates a reminiscent social spirit, for this makes an individual feel
more at home in the life of other days than in his own. A professedly
cultural education is peculiarly exposed to this danger. An idealized
past becomes the refuge and solace of the spirit; present-day concerns
are found sordid, and unworthy of attention. But as a rule, the absence
of a social environment in connection with which learning is a need and
a reward is the chief reason for the isolation of the school; and this
isolation renders school knowledge inapplicable to life and so infertile
in character.

A narrow and moralistic view of morals is responsible for the failure to
recognize that all the aims and values which are desirable in education
are themselves moral. Discipline, natural development, culture