ABSTRACT
The alternative might be to offer the majority of children a social education; one that might give them the social competences to examine the depressing reality of their world, in the hope that they might learn to repair or change it in ways agreeable and pleasing to them. Through a close investigation of their social environment, the children might be that much readier to understand their own needs with more clarity. From that standpoint, they might come to invent ways and means of satisfying those needs. This is the opposite of persuading children to resign themselves stoically to their lot. This is an attempt to make them think and act boldly and inventively about their lot. What it does not do is pretend the lot is necessarily a happy one. One hopes to replace resignation and negative rebelliousness with a positive reformist attitude.
