The ideal school situation is one in which the spirit of inquiry and investigation is constantly encouraged and in which children are developing ideals of service by virtue of their _activity_. A high school class in English literature in which children are at work in small groups, asking each other questions and helping each other in the solution of their problems, seems to the writer to afford unusual opportunity for the realization of the social aim of education. A first grade class in beginning reading, in which the stronger children seek to help those who are less able, involves something more significant in education than merely the command of the tool we call reading. A teacher of a class in physics who suggested to his pupils that they find out which was the more economical way to heat their homes,--with hot air, with steam, or with hot water,--evidently hoped to have them use whatever power of investigation they possessed, as well as to have them come to understand and to remember the principles of physics which were involved. In many schools the coöperation of children in the preparation of school plays, or school festivals, in the writing and printing of school papers, in the participation in the school assembly, in the making of shelves, tables, or other school equipment, in the working for community betterment with respect to clean streets and the like, may be considered even more significant from the standpoint of the realization of the social aim of education than are the recitations in which they are commonly engaged.