Those who today advocate limiting tax-supported education to the three R's have not advanced in their thinking much beyond the first two revolutions, These persons are, for the most part, I suspect. beyond middle life. Their school days date back to the Eighteen Nineties and the early Nineteen Hundreds, Such persons are tempted, if they are not very careful, to measure modern education by yardsticks that have long been abandoned. The public schools of those days, taken the country over, had scarcely felt the full force of the industrial revolution and had not been greatly influenced by it. No one is more aware of the importance of the three R's than the modern educator. He knows that the foundations of every culture are in its language, its number system, its religion and scheme of human relations, No one can function in any society without a knowledge of its language, as any traveller who has been to a foreign country knows full well. He also knows that the first thing to be learned in a foreign land is how to count. The three R's of any culture refer primarily io its language and number system.
In the transmission of culture from \one generation to another, which, broadly speaking, is what is meant by education, the basic patterns are taught first. The child must first learn io speak and to count before he can learn to read and to cipher. So the three R's are known among educators as the tool subjects. They are so designated for the reason that further educa-lion is impossible without them. They mark the beginning rather than the end of the educative process as it is now conceived. As the child goes up the educational ladder he is supposed to acquire an equipment of knowledge, skill, attitude and motives that will enable him to function as a useful citizen in his society.
As man marches on toward his destiny, whatever that may be, knowledge is sure to increase, cientifie discoveries will multiply, literature and art will be added to, civilization will become more complex and education will be extended to higher and higher levels for greater and greater numbers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.