without the guidance and succor of others, they could not acquire
the rudimentary abilities necessary for physical existence. The
young of human beings compare so poorly in original efficiency
with the young of many of the lower animals, that even the powers
needed for physical sustentation have to be acquired under
tuition. How much more, then, is this the case with respect to
all the technological, artistic, scientific, and moral
achievements of humanity!

2. Education and Communication. So obvious, indeed, is the
necessity of teaching and learning for the continued existence of
a society that we may seem to be dwelling unduly on a truism.
But justification is found in the fact that such emphasis is a
means of getting us away from an unduly scholastic and formal
notion of education. Schools are, indeed, one important method
of the transmission which forms the dispositions of the immature;
but it is only one means, and, compared with other agencies, a
relatively superficial means. Only as we have grasped the
necessity of more fundamental and persistent modes of tuition can
we make sure of placing the scholastic methods in their true
context.

Society not only continues to exist by transmission, by
communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in
transmission, in communication. There is more than a verbal tie
between the words common, community, and communication. Men live
in a community in virtue of the things which they have in common;
and communication is the way in which they come to possess things
in common. What they must have in common in order to form a
community or society are aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge--a