This paper explores the concept of needs as a basis for curriculum development through the deliberations of the US educators associated with the Progressive Education Association's Commission on the Secondary School Curriculum of the Eight-Year Study (1933-1941). Noting how divergent views of "needs" influenced American educational thought from the 1930s to the life-adjustment movement of the late 1940s and 1950s, the importance of social philosophy is underscored as a pre-requisite for curriculum development and criticize the current standards-based reform movement in US education for the lack of concern with both student needs and social theory. (Contains 2 notes.)