It was the attempt of democracy to educate all of its children which was the initial and important event that provoked large changes in our notions of the social function of education. As long as the school was for the few, and such it was in the less liberal periods of history, the school tended to be an authoritative institution with more or less rigid methods of procedure. With fixed ideas of truth and the means of acquiring truth, it was to a considerable degree unbending in its attitude toward youth. Even if freedom from economic toil and social regulation permitted, only the type of mind that could fit the school's established institutional ways could endure its discipline and achieve its rewards. Other types of mentality it would not receive or retain as students. Under such an organization the school was selective of a special kind of talent. It was not an instrument, so adjustable in its methods of appeal and instruction, that every manner of child could gain considerable of the wisdom of the world. But when a more democratic order was established, the function of the school underwent a considerable change. Democracy granted to all men freedom in manhood; to safeguard its privileges, it had to educate all men in childhood. The school for selected scholars had to be transformed into a school for every variety of citizen. With every child sent to school by order of the state, the teacher had to forego his traditional aloofness, and to adjust his methods of teaching so that every member of the enlarged school community could come into a knowledge of the civilization in which he lived. With the inclusion of the blind, the deaf, the slow of mind, and the restless of spirit,--individuals left out of the old scheme of education and now reverently educated by the new democratic order in spite of all their defects,--the school becomes more flexible and variable in its methods of transmitting truth. More of the knowledge of human life is brought within the comprehension of children; more men are brought into a large and sympathetic participation in the activities of our civilization. In the truest sense the school becomes an instrument of adjustment between childhood and society. _Evolutionary thought interprets childhood_