to master
them. They had to be taught; and the school thereby came into
existence. A second thing developed about the same time was the
complicated number system used by adults. It was too difficult for
youth to master through participation only. It too had to be taught,
and it offered a second task for the schools. In the early schools
this teaching of the so-called Three R's was all that was needed,
because these were the only adult activities that had become so
complicated as to require systematized teaching. Other things were
still simple enough, so that young people could enter into them
sufficiently for all necessary education.

As community vision widened and men's affairs came to extend far
beyond the horizon, a need arose for knowledge of the outlying world.
This knowledge could rarely be obtained sufficiently through travel
and observation. There arose the new need for the systematic teaching
of geography. What had hitherto not been a human necessity and
therefore not an educational essential became both because of changed
social conditions.

Looking at education from this social point of view it is easy to see
that there was a time when no particular need existed for history,
drawing, science, vocational studies, civics, etc., beyond what one
could acquire by mingling with one's associates in the community.
These were therefore not then essentials for education. It is just
as easy to see that changed social conditions of the present make
necessary for every one a fuller and more systematic range of ideas in
each of these fields than one can pick up incidentally. These things
have thereby become educational essentials. Whether a thing today is
an educational "essential" or not seems to depend upon two things:
whether it is a human necessity today; and whether it is so complex
or inaccessible as to require systematic teaching. The number of
"essentials" changes from generation to generation. Those today who
proclaim the Three R's as the sole "essentials" appear to be calling
from out the rather distant past. Many things have since become
essential; and other things are being added year by year. The normal
method of education in things not yet put into the schools, is
participation in those things. One gets his ideas from watching others
and then learns to do by doing. There is no reason to believe that as
the school lends its help to some of the more difficult things, this
normal plan of learning can be set