[originaltext] Let’s look back in history to an earlier way of life. At one

Let’s look back in history to an earlier way of life. At one time children didn’t have to learn any more than how to cope with their physical environment. They had to learn to be careful around moving objects, to draw back when they got to something dangerous. They didn’t need a special school to learn these things other than the school of experience, nor was the school necessary for them to learn how to survive because their parents taught them all they needed to know about how to hunt and to plow the soil. But as societies became more complex, people depended more on others who were living far away, so it became important for children to learn to read and write. When money was created, they needed to learn to count and calculate. Children had to know these things in order to survive in this new expanded environment. Because such skills couldn’t be learned simply through first-hand experience, schools became necessary, so the children could be taught what we now call the three R’s: reading, writing and arithmetic.