要約問題/1984年

次の文を読み、その要旨を８０字から１００字の日本文で書け。ただし、句読点も字数に数える。

　If history is regarded as just the record of the past, it is hard to see any grounds for claiming that it should play any large role in the curriculum of elementary education. The past is the past, and the dead may be safely left to bury their dead. There are too many urgent demands in the present, too many calls over the threshold of the future, to permit the child to become deeply absorbed in what is forever gone by. Not so when history is considered as an account of the forces and forms of social life. Social life we have always with us; the distinction of past and present is indifferent to it. Whether it was lived just here or just there is a matter of slight moment. It is life for all that; it shows the motives which draw men together and push them apart, portrays what is desirable and what is hurtful. Whatever history may be for the scientific historian, for the educator it must be an indirect sociology --- a study of society which reveals its process of becoming and its modes of organization. Existing society is both too complex and too close to the child to be studied. He finds no clues into its labyrinth of detail and can mount no heights from which to get a perspective of its arrangement.
　（注）　labyrinth:迷宮