It is not the environment which directly implants certain desires in individuals.[XXV-2] The environment sets up conditions which stimulate certain ways of acting. The child gets a real idea of a hat, not by seeing a hat, or by being told of its uses, but by actually using a hat. The social environment, in other words, forms “the mental and emotional disposition of behavior in individuals by engaging them in activities” that arouse various impulses, purposes, and produces certain consequences.[XXV-3] As society becomes exceedingly complex, it is essential that society provide a simplified social environment through which the child may pass, in order that he may adjust himself the more quickly and easily to the complex societal environment. To this end the school serves a valuable purpose. However, in order to function best, the school must be a replica in as many ways as possible of real society.[XXV-4] The special social environment, namely, the school, must simplify and arrange in an orderly way the dispositional factors it wishes to develop in children. It must present the existing social customs in purified and idealized forms. It must create a wider and better balanced environment for the young than they would have if they were not in school. Imitation, to Dr. Dewey, is a less useful term than many social psychologists believe. What objectively is a process of imitation is subjectively a process of like response to like stimuli. The term imitation does not explain; it simply describes--objectively. The fundamental fact that the sociological student needs to keep in mind is that “persons being alike in structure respond in the same way to like stimuli.”[XXV-5] This conception is similar to ideas that Professors Giddings and Cooley have elaborated. The societal significance of this interpretation can be stated best in terms of social control. The highest type of social control is that which plans for a common mental disposition, a common way of understanding objects, events, and acts, common sets of socially constructive stimuli. Professor Dewey argues for a school life which fully connects theory and practice. While pragmatic, he emphasizes the necessity for a correct theory, but more particularly the combining of theory and practice--in the school life itself. In other words, anything which sets school life apart from actual life is a disutility; it is educationally harmful. Hence school life must include the actual occupations, nature study, and the like. It must relegate formal education to a secondary position. The moral atmosphere of the schoolroom must change from one primarily of discipline, even formal discipline, to one of co-operation.