870.6 | NIg .- RO. Hamilton College Library BULLETIN OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS Issued four times a year: January, March, May, and October MARCH, 1927 Entered as second-class matter, December 29, 1925, at the post office at Berwyn, Illinois, under the Act of August 24, 1912 BULLETIN NUMBER 15 Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the National Association of Secondary-School Principals ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI February 24, 25, and 26, 1927 Published by NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS H. V. CHURCH, Secretary 3129 Wenonah Avenue, BERWYN, ILLINOIS J. Sterling Morton High School CICERO, ILLINOIS NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS ‘ a ~— fe —d : Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the National Association of Secondary-School Principals at ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI on February 24, 25, and 26, 1927 Edited by H. V. CHURCH Secretary of the Association Published by the Association, 1927 te M4 $+ ee ¢ oo a) 4 $+ CONTENTS PAGE OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION... ccc cee ccc ec ec cs ceeseeees PROCEEDINGS OF THE ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING, 1927..... “What is in the Mind of Modern Youth,” Joseph K. Hart, Associate Editor of The Survey, New York City.......... “Who Shall Make the Curriculum?” George S. Counts, Pro- fessor of Secondary Education, University of Chicago..... “The Achievements Which the First Nine Years of Schooling Should Produce,” Otis W. Caldwell, Lincoln School of Teachers College, Columbia University................06- “A Plea for More Play in Our Program of Physical Educa- tion,’ Mr. V. K. Froula, Principal of Roosevelt High School, Seattle, Washington..............ecccceeeeeeees “Class Size in High Schools,” Earl Hudelson, Professor of Education, University of Minnesota...............000005 “Criteria for Judging the Efficiency of a Junior High School,” James M. Glass, Winter Park, Florida.................. “Character Education in the Junior High School,” FE. H. Fishback, Principal, Junior High School, Anderson, Indiana “Discussion of the Six Year High School,’ W. H. Bristow, Department of Public Instruction, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania “Is There a National System of Secondary Education?” Charles H. Judd, University of Chicago...............4% “A Constructive Policy for High School Publications,” Elbert K. Fretwell, Associate Professor of Education, Teacher’s College, Columbia University.............ccceeeceeeeeee ix 1 Go ~ 14 20 33 47 67 86 PAGE “The Place of the Junior College in Our Educational System,” Merton E. Hill, dialpnvesit Chaffey Junior College, Ontario, California . ECE Sets SN “The Problems of the Ninth Year,” Milo H. Stuart, Principal of the Arsenal Technical Schools, Indianapolis, Indiana.... “Nothing To Be Done About It,” W. W. Haggard, Principal, Senior High School, Rockford, Illinois................46- Report of Commission on Standard Blanks.................. Report of the Committee on Guidance in Secondary Schools... “The Junior High School Curriculum,” a Critique of the Fifth Yearbook of the Department of Superintendence of the National Education Association, Philip W. L. Cox, Ph. D., Professor of Secondary Education, New York University. . “The Organization of the Reconstruction of the Junior High School Curriculum,” Walter D. Cocking, Director of Cur- CE a Is i 6 44 45k 0 8050444 decdnsetawens “Examples of Progressive Curriculum Practices in Junior High School,” Mrs. Helen Watson Pierce, Assistant Superintend- ent of Schools, Los Angeles, California................+.. “What About the ‘Sub-Merged One-Tenth’?” Mr. Eugene S. Briggs, Superintendent of Schools, Okmulgee, Oklahoma... “Curriculum Revision and College Entrance Requirements,” William Martin Proctor, Professor of Secondary Education, Sanford University, CORGOtiR. ..occccccccvscecvevessese “To What Factors of Instruction Shall the Principal Give At- tention?” Thomas J. Kirby, Professor of Secondary Educa- Cine, CIN OE BIN 5 5 0:6 60 690000050940 008esesereen “Curricular Activities in the High School,” Burton P. Fowler, Headmaster, Tower School, Wilmington, Delaware......... vi 115 125 132 138 147 148 163 173 184 191 202 PAGE “Report of Commission on Teaching International Under- standing in Secondary Schools,” L. W. Brooks, Principal, High School, Wichita, Kansas............0eee eee eeeeee 209 “Report of the National Committee on Research in Secondary Education ‘to Co-operating Organizations,” presented by Wm. A. Wetzel, Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Urban BE CN so oo ke ueneenewevesceveccerceescensceses 217 “A Study of the Value of Certain Tests in Forecasting the Academic Achievements of High-School Pupils,” W. C. Reavis, School of Education, University of Chicago....... 222 “The Higher Citizenship,” Henry Turner Bailey, Director of the Cleveland School of Art.........ccccccccccccccccece 228 PEE eT TTT Tr reer err TT 239 TNs 0550.00 es 242 Report of Committee on Improving Scholarship (Not presented at Convention) ...............00. e9kisetisseaxnanneuses 246 Constitution of the National Association of Secondary-School DR 648% ev 00Rsb eee ei aha veneraaranereeees ~~ a ae THE OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION 1927-1928 President: F. L. Bacon Principal of Newton High School Newtonville, Massachusetts First Vice-President: Jesste M. HAMILTO? Principal of Morey Junior High School Denver, Colorado Second Vice-President: CHARLES F. ALLEN Principal of West Side Junior High School Little Rock, Arkansas Secretary-Treasurer: H. V. CHurRcH Principal of J. Sterling Morton High School Cicero, Illinois THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE M. R. McDANIEL Principal of Oak Park and River Forest Township High School Oak Park, Illinois L. W. Brooxs Wichita High School Wichita, Kansas WILLIAM E. WING Deering High School Portland, Maine ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION The eleventh annual meeting of the National Association of Secondary-School Principals was. held in St. Louis, Missouri, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, February 24, 25, and 26, 1927. First SESSION The first session of the eleventh annual convention was held in the auditorium of the Theodore Roosevelt High School, St. Louis, Missouri, Thursday evening, February 24, 1927. The Rev- erend Father C. H. Cloud, President of St. Louis University, gave the invocation. Hosmer Hall Glee Club under the leadership of Mrs. Alice Widney Conant sang four numbers. In the address of introduction by the President of the Association, M. R. Mc- Daniel, Principal of Oak Park and River Forest Township High School of Oak Park, Illinois, the following letter of greeting was read: The Warden’s Lodgings New College, Oxford 8th February, 1927. My dear Mr. McDaniel: I wish I could be present at the meeting of the High School Principals of the United States. The task upon which they are engaged is of vital importance to the civilization of their country. It is no exaggeration to say that the American nation is made in the American schools. Indeed the task which is accomplished by the Public Schools of the United States transcends in one particular the work accomplished by the Public Educational system of any other country in the globe, for your schools have to give to a large number of the children whom they instruct a language which is not that of their parents and an outlook upon political institutions which is equally foreign to their traditions. It is upon the High Schools that the further duty devolves of training the leaders of the nation and of creating a deeper and wider sense of culture among them. In Britain there is no quarter of the.educational field 'in which so much progress has been made in the last generation as in secondary 2 National Association of Secondary-School Principals education. I believe that this proposition is true, though perhaps to a lesser extent in the United States, and the Principals of the High Schools of the United States have my best wishes for their success in the important work which they are undertaking. Yours very truly, H. A. L. FisHer. In his address of welcome, John J. Maddox, Superintendent of Schools, St. Louis, Missouri, told of the genesis of the work on the curriculum by the teachers of the public school of St. Louis. Walter Damrosch, Director of New York Symphony Orches- tra, gave an address on Music, the Universal Language, in which he made the assertion that music as a language of the emotions could and should be understood by the entire world, young and old. At the end of his discourse during which he illustrated his own methods of interesting children in music of the higher order, he said: Thirty-three years ago, I started orchestral concerts for young people in New York, and twelve years ago, I added another series for children between six and twelve years of age. At these con- certs, audiences of three thousand delighted youngsters hear Beethoven and Wagner and Mozart. They already know more of these composers than their fathers and grandfathers learned in a whole lifetime. My concerts and lectures over the radio this winter for which I have had weekly audiences of millions have given me the hope that some day I might be permitted to broadcast weekly orchestral afternoon concerts for school children with simple explanatory comments and thereby reach every public school and high school all over our country. If I could carry on a work like this and on such a gigantic scale for the next three years, and thus plant the seed for the finer things of life in the hearts of so many millions of youngsters in our country, I could guarantee to. make our people the most musical in the world. To some of you this may seem a fantastic dream, but I con- sider it well within the range of possibility. It would only mean that every school in the country should be equipped with a good Eleventh Yearbook 3 radio and a loud speaker, and as the radio is bound to become an important educational agent not only for music, but to transmit lectures by experts on every conceivable subject of science and culture, generous souls would readily be found in every city to contribute a radio to every school that does not possess one. For every musical program played by me, I would forward to the teachers a set of questions relating to the music and my explana- tory comments, together with the proper answers. The pupils could be examined and rated according to their answers. Such examination papers could even be sent to the parents who desired them and the proper answers published in the newspapers a day or two later. In this way a great interest in music could be aroused in the smallest towns and villages as well as in the larger cities. I should consider it a great honor to be associated with so splendid a movement during my last years of public work as a musician and educator. Dr. Joseph K. Hart, associate editor of The Survey, gave the following address on the subject: What Is In the Mind of Modern Youth? WHAT IS IN THE MIND OF MODERN YOUTH Josern K. Harrt,, AssociATE Epiror oF The Survey, NEw York City I could have wished for no finer introduction, for what I have to contribute to this program, than this presentation of music in education which has been given us by Dr. Damrosch. My only excuse for taking your time in this way is that I do not intend seriously to change the theme. That does not mean that I am going to sing. I was told early in youth that there would be more music in the world if I kept still. What I do mean is that my subject, as I see it, is closely related to the theme of music as developed by Dr. Damrosch. I am going to speak about the mind of youth in its deeper significance; and music comes out of the same deeps. The Greeks understood this and celebrated it in the legends of the muses. The muses were first nymphs of wild places, wild places of nature and equally wild places of the spirit of the man. After that they became spirits of song and later goddesses of the 4 National Association of Secondary-School Principals arts and sciences. Their names range all the way from Calliope, Muse of epic poetry to Urania, Muse of astronomy. Moreover, this same word is the root of one of our words for thinking, and in the French is the actual word for thinking. That is to say, that which begins in the deeps of life and in the wild places of the soul becomes eventually art and science and the profoundest expres- sions of the reasonable life. Among modern peoples, the Danes seem the only ones who remember these ancient facts. Certain of them hold that the chief business of education is to teach young people to sing. Of course, this means more than merely teaching the technique of singing. It means helping young people to find something worthy of being sung. But all these things seem to suggest something about mind that we have either never known or have forgotten in our modern surrender to intellectual psychology. I should like to remind you of some of these fundamental factors underlying education. In the adolescent years, it seems to me obvious that there are three levels of mind that must be taken into account. On the upper surface of mind there is a certain frothy, frivolous quality. This has no great significance, but it has been over-emphasized by cer- tain fearful people in our times who have felt that this frothy quality represented all that was real in the mind of youth. There is a second level, however, underneath this frothy surface. It is that level which is most supposed to be active in our schools. It is supposed to be concerned with knowledge, with the organized life of the world, with science and creeds and institu- tional attitudes. It is held by some, especially by teachers, that this is the real mind. As a matter of fact, however, there is normally no great amount of this in the adolescent personality. The adolescent years are primarily years of emotion, and the great problem of education in these high-school years is not that of developing a solid amount of information and organized knowledge. It is rather that of trans- lating these youthful emotions into patterns of conduct that should become the substance of the adult years. This makes of these high-school years probably the most important period for educa- tion. It is in the later adolescent years and the years of early maturity, say from sixteen to twenty-one, that the great patterns e Eleventh Yearbook 5 of adult life are largely formed. Naturally these experiences de- velop out of the third level of mind, the level that lies under the surface of common experience, the roots of mind that are deep in the soils of life and experience. In this address, I am not greatly concerned with what is in the upper frothy level of the mind of youth to-day; nor am I greatly concerned with what is in this second level of intellectual knowl- edge. I am addressing myself primarily to the things that are in the third level, because in this third level are to be found the actual roots of that eventual mind which shall make life significant in the new age and the new individual; or, failing, shall leave life dull and flat. I have been studying the content of this third level of the mind of youth among the Danes, and recently there has come my way a similar study of this same level of mind, worked out by a college teacher in California. These two studies agree remarkably in de- tail, They show that in this third level of mind of youth four great and fundamental issues are surging for expression, for exer- cise, for illumination, and for guidance. The first of these is an interest in work. Youth wants to know what share it is to have, if any, in the work of the world. This interest is profoundly significant for the future of civilization. If youth finds its work, the future is secure. If youth does not find its work, there is no future. We play with this interest, we blunt it and confuse it, and even destroy it thoughtlessly, not knowing that thereby we are destroying ourselves. The second of these interests is sex. This interest is causing the youthful generation more obvious concern than has been true of any other generation for ages. Youth wants to know what sex means and what it is to do with this hunger that gnaws at its body and its mind. If we have any experience of life that can give youth honest understanding of these deep-lying emotions, we should be able to serve youth well. But some of us seem to act as if we wished we could legislate all emotion out of existence. The third of these interests is in the community life. Youth wants to know whether it is to have a real share in the civic life or whether it is to be merely bound down to ancient subordination. 6 National Association of Secondary-School Principals If youth is allowed to have a share in the making of the community, it will carry its share. If it is allowed no share, the future of our civic life must be, at best, problematical. The fourth of these interests: Youth gains notice particu- larly to-day by reason of a cumulative story that has been running through the papers recently. To-day, the paper lists the nineteenth suicide by a college student since the Christmas holidays. I do not lay too much stress on this fact, but our papers are making much of it; and it is certainly true that youth is asking to-day whether life has any value. This is the fourth interest—youth is asking whether life is worth living. Some of us seem to hold that this is an impudent question and should not be asked. Our attitude may merely mean, however, that we have no real answer to give to youth. We may merely be living because it is easier to go on living than it is to quit; but youth wants some assurance. Now, on the roots of these four interests—work, sex, civic interest, and the values of living—we might, if we were wise, create a great civilization. But, of course, we have little faith in youth, or in nature, or in life itself. We have faith primarily only in our established institutions. We do not like to think of letting the world’s work rest upon youth’s interest in work. We prefer that youth should be subordinated to the jobs that already exist. We do not like to have young people think too much about sex for fear they may question some of our established customs. We do not want youth to ask too much about the civic life and the com- munity, lest they become aware of corruption and the failure of our own adult attitudes. We impose upon them the deadening pat- terns of the past. They escape. The automobile has given them the chance to escape from the immediate censorship of our adult demands. We may never succeed in getting them back under adult dominance. The history of the future may be written in the com- plete escape of youth; but, if we are wise, it may better be written in a partnreship between youthful energies and adult experiences, each contributing some part to the making of the wise future. Eleventh Yearbook 7 SECOND SESSION The second session of the Association was divided into two sections: the junior high school section at the auditorium of Hotel Missouri, and the senior high school section in the ballroom of Hotel Statler. The meeting of the senior high school section opened with community singing led by Director of Music of the St. Louis Schools, Eugene Hahnel. Second Vice President, Armand R. Miller, Principal of Roosevelt High School, St. Louis, Missouri, presided. WHO SHALL MAKE THE CURRICULUM GEORGE S. Counts PROFESSOR OF SECONDARY EpUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO In view of conditions prevailing in the field of secondary edu- cation to-day the importance of this question as to who shall make the curriculum can hardly be over-emphasized. Evidence is accu- mulating from many sources to indicate most emphatically that the entire high-school program is in a state of flux and that high-school curricula are being made to-day all over the country. In large institutions and in small institutions, in the industrial city, and in the rural community, the process of curriculum making is under way. The very conception of secondary education is undergoing radical change. The problem therefore cannot be evaded. _Some- one is going to make the curriculum of the public high school and it is altogether obvious that the character of that curriculum must in the last analysis depend upon the character of the curriculum makers. Up to the present time the profession of secondary-school teachers and administrators has developed no satisfactory technique of curriculum making. In fact, until quite recently we have hardly been curriculum conscious. We have either had great faith in the conventional program or we have assumed that the problem would solve itself. The large changes in that program which have ap- peared in past generations are not the reasoned product of critical study of human life and institutions on the part of our profession. 8 National Association of Secondary-School Principals They are rather the unanticipated fruit of contending social groups’ and forces. Agencies outside the school have been able to add new subjects to the program; but the vested interests within the school have ordinarily opposed with success any general attack upon the curriculum. Only as subjects have displaced one another without seriously disturbing the balance of power among these interests, or as society, because of popular passion or shifts in the foci of attention, has refused longer to patronize the elements of the traditional program, have subjects been dropped from the cur- riculum. In other words, after a subject has once established itself in the curriculum it tends to remain as long as society per- mits, or until it dies of old age. To a very large degree we have pursued a policy of laissez faire. This does not mean that we have not interested ourselves in certain of the minor problems of curriculum making. As teachers of particular subjects we have constantly sought to keep abreast of the advance of knowledge and to perfect the organization of material. But most of this effort has been expended within the limits of the accepted divisions of subject matter. Our methods have not enabled us to attack the curriculum as a whole. We have become accustomed to the addition of particular subjects to the curriculum and we possess a technique for bringing about those minor changes which fall within the sphere of the subject-matter specialist. But for dropping subjects or for organizing the pro- gram as a unit the technique is lacking. As a consequence at the present time subjects are being added to the curriculum almost three times as rapidly as they are being dropped. This process has been going on for a generation, but it cannot go on forever. The present unintegrated and unwieldly high-school curriculum is a result of this process of accretion. And this situation will hardly be altered until some decision is reached regarding the persons who make the curriculum. Before considering this question, however, two characteristics of the task of curriculum making should be noted. These char- acteristics are so obvious that they would not deserve mention in this paper, if their implications were not so often disregarded. In the first place, this task is one of great difficulty. None of the older professions faces a task that is more arduous. Indeed the thesis might very well be defended that the curriculum maker has ig stn Eleventh Yearbook 9 a more difficult task than either the engineer, the lawyer, the physician, or the clergyman. If this contention be granted, then it naturally follows that the curriculum should be made by persons specially and intensively trained for the task. The job can be entrusted neither to the tyro nor the mountebank nor to the special pleader. In the second place, curriculum making is a task of great complexity. It requires the utilization of wide ranges of knowl- edge and experience and the service of many special abilities and forms of training. This means that the curriculum must be made co-operatively. No single individual or type of individual can carry the burden alone. - It cannot be borne by either the super- intendent, the principal, or the teacher, or even by all three work- ing together. The task of curriculum making must be recognized as a great co-operative undertaking in which the efforts of many different persons and groups are brought to focus upon a common problem. To whom, therefore, shall we turn to perform this difficult and complicated task? Perhaps the first approach to this question should be from the negative side. What persons should not be permitted to make the curriculum? What agencies, already inter- ested in the problem, lack the necessary qualifications? We need not deceive ourselves with the thought that this task is necessarily going to be left to us. There are literally hosts of persons and groups striving to-day, as they have striven in the past, to shape the educational program. Many of them are sincerely devoted to the public welfare and are convinced that they alone hold the key which will unlock the doors of social salvation. They are ready and eager to make the curricula of elementary school, secondary school, and college. Moreover, these forces feel no diffidence with regard to the matter, they have no doubts concerning their own competence, they are restrained by no traditions of professional courtesy, they are already at work. Among these agencies which are interesting themselves to-day in the curriculum and which are not qualified for this task are the following: state legislatures, boards of education, powerful minorities, the college, and persons interested in the defense of special subjects. Here are five agencies which should not make the curriculum. A word of comment re- garding the qualifications of each of them will be of interest. 10 National Association of Secondary-School Principals The state legislature seems to be increasing its interest in the curriculum. The bills and laws prohibiting the teaching of evolu- tion reveal the temper and competence of these bodies. Flanders has recently reported on their activity from 1903 to 1923 in making the elementary-school curriculum. His study shows no tendency on the part of the ordinary legislator to make a modest appraisal of his own powers. Yet that the legislator is unqualified to make the curriculum goes almost without saying. He is totally lacking in the professional training and experience necessary for the dis- charge of his task. This deficiency, however, because he is una- ware of its existence, will not cause him willingly to forego the pleasure of expressing himself through the high-school curriculum. Boards of education should be classed in much the same category as the state legislatures. They are legislative bodies chosen to control the school, but their members are not qualified to perform the specialized educational tasks. Their legitimate function, in so far as the curriculum is concerned, pertains rather to the determination of general educational policy. Beyond this they should not go. But even with respect to this responsibility they are likely to exhibit an undesirable and even dangerous bias. To a very large degree the board of education is composed of representatives of the favored classes in American society. There- fore, in the formulation of policy and in the making of the cur- riculum they will be tempted to use the school to defend the in- terests of those classes. Perhaps a measure of this sort of bias is inevitable in any society, but it should be reduced to the lowest possible proportions. This discussion of the legislature and the board of education suggests the third type of influence at work on the curriculum, namely, the powerful minority in the community. The ordinary industrial city or state is literally alive with these highly organized and articulate groups. Miss Pierce has recently shown in schol- arly fashion how various groups have sought during the past one hundred years to influence the teaching of history and the social studies in our schools. According to her study the United Con- federate Veterans, the Grand Army of the Republic, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Knights of Columbus, the Steuben Society, the American Bar Association, the American Bankers As- sociation, the American Federation of Labor, the American Legion, Eleventh Yearbook 11 the National Security League, and many other organizations have endeavored to modify the curriculum. Every one of these groups is interested in pleading some special cause in the schools. If they are permitted to write our histories, it were better that our high schools close their doors. Regarding the role played by the college in making the high- school curriculum little needs to be said. We all recognize the power of this agency and the way in which this power has been used in the past. The college must be ranked among the most potent influences which have shaped the curriculum of the secondary school. For a generation the bonds with which the college has held the high school in servitude have gradually been loosened. But even this struggle is far from won. The fifth ageney of curriculum making which lacks the neces- sary qualifications is the person interested in the defense of some special subject. Because of the departmentalization of work and the emphasis in the training of high-chool teachers on a narrow allegiance to subject matter, the secondary school has been greatly hampered in its efforts to reconstruct its program. An intense loyalty on the part of a teacher to his subject has been a chief factor in the retention of obsolete materials in the curriculum. It has likewise constituted a major obstacle to an attack upon the curriculum as a whole. The work of the great national committees of subject matter specialists has revealed the limitations of this type of agency. A large proportion of the effort which is going into curriculum making in the secondary school to-day is rendered futile because of the protective behavior of these special vested interests. Unless definite safeguards are provided the ordinary program of curriculum revision is likely to degenerate into a con- flict among these vested interests. Increasingly we must have teachers who are more than specialtsts in subject matter. If they are to have a voice in determining the place of- their subjects in the curriculum, they must be students of secondary education. If, then, the making of the high-school curriculum is not to be entrusted to state legislatures, boards of education, powerful minorities in the community, college boards of admission, and persons interested in the defense of particular subjects, who should perform the task? To the present writer it would seem that the 12 National Association of Secondary-School Principals co-operative efforts of at least seven types of persons will be required. We shall have to secure the services of the psychologist, the sociologist, the philosopher, the specialist in the selection and organization of the materials of instruction, the classroom teacher, the expert in the appraisal of the curriculum, and the high-school administrator. The contribution of each of these persons will now be considered. That the services of the psychologist will be required no one would question. At every level education has to do with the na- ture of the learner. Consequently our knowledge concerning the adolescent and the factors that condition the learning process at this age can hardly be too complete. We must know much more than we do to-day regarding his abilities, interests and aptitudes, and the high-school curriculum must reflect this knowledge. Equal in importance to the psychologist and playing a corre- spondingly fundamental role is the sociologist. Whatever else it may be, education is the process whereby the individual is inducted into the life of society and into the use of its institutions. A knowl- edge of contemporary social life is therefore just as important to the curriculum maker as a knowledge of the nature of the learner. The high school must serve the adolescent in his efforts to adjust himself to the conditions of life. But it can perform this service only as its program reflects a thorough knowledge of Ameri- can civilization. The contribution of the philosopher is also of a fundamental character. His is the task of developing a coherent system of values and of formulating the purposes of society and of education. This task cannot be evaded. As soon as we make a choice among alter- native programs we face the problem squarely. We may not recog- nize the source or nature of our own formulations, but we all have them. One of the greaterst needs in the field of secondary educa- tion to-day is a restatement of purposes; but this restatement must not be derived by the arm-chair method. I must rather rest upon the most complete synthesis possible of science, aesthetics, and ethics. In this formulation of purposes no division of human experi- ence may be ignored. After the purposes of secondary education have been formu- lated we shall have to turn to persons expert in the selection of eat enn tres Eleventh Yearbook 13 the actual materials of instruction. The findings of psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers must be translated into materials to be used in the school. And in the choice of these materials the entire range of knowledge must be placed at our disposal. More- over, the character of these materials cannot be determined by inspection. They must rather be derived from actual experimenta- tion in the school. This suggests the need of securing the co-operation of the classroom teacher. Until it has become the possession of the teacher, the curriculum is just so much inert material whose educa- tional value is unknown. It is but pigment, brush, and canvas with- out the painter. Not only does the teacher make use of the mate- rials of instruction provided by others; he also throws these ma- terials into forms which are as necessary as the materials them- selves to the successful achievement of the purposes of the high school. Moreover, the teacher is much more than a specialist in some division of subject matter. At his best he is an artist in guiding the process of learning and in developing personality. A function closely related to that of teaching is the function of appraisal. We must have persons who are trained for the task of appraising the curriculum. As a matter of fact, we can go but little beyond the work of the psychologist, the sociologist, and the philosopher until we have devised ways and means of appraising the curriculum in terms of the accepted purposes of secondary edu- cation. At this point our technique of curriculum making is par- ticularly faulty. At the present time we must admit that our methods of appraisal are wholly inadequate. We know how to measure more or less well in terms of classroom procedure what goes on in the classroom. But at the high-school level a technique for measuring the influences of the school in terms of social life is almost wholly lacking. We can make guesses and draw infer- ences, but we do not know how the present high-school program ‘is affecting American society. If we did know, we might be fright- ened. This is perhaps one of the consolations of ignorance. We come finally to the work of the administrator, or, shall we say, the high-school principal. At least within the limits of a par- ticular high school someone must organize, co-ordinate, and inte- grate the efforts of these different types of specialists. Moreover, 14 National Association of Secondary-School Principals the work of these specialists must be made to live in the school and in the teaching staff. Then there is the additional task, and perhaps the most difficult of all, that of carrying the community along in the support of a program of curriculum reconstruction. The suc- cessful discharge of these several functions requires a high-school principal of unusual gifts. But there is no one else to whom we may turn. He is the logical candidate for the position. If a vigor- ous, scientific, and creative attack upon the curriculum is to be made, an attack that differs qualitatively from the numerous compromises of the past, the high-school principal must recognize this as his major responsibility. The more mechanical aspects of his job wili have to be delegated to others. He alone can supply that co-ordi- nating quality of leadership upon which the successful reconstruc- tion of the curriculum in terms of modern needs absolutely depends. THE ACHIEVEMENTS WHICH THE FIRST NINE YEARS OF SCHOOLING SHOULD PRODUCE Otis W. CALDWELL LincoLn ScHooL oF TEACHERS’ COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY The question set for this discussion cannot be adequately an- swered by data as yet available. There are, however, some things relative to the topic which should be recognized in the present stage of public education. The considerations to which I shall refer do not deal so much with the number of years with which the schools are concerned as with the types of educational achievements which it would seem reasonable to expect shall be required from the nine years of schooling now commonly made possible, or obligatory. Amidst many assertions as to new ideals for modern education, it may be appropriate to recall what seem to be the major things edu- cation should accomplish. I. The Change in School Population Has Produced Some of Our Most Difficult School Problems. A common practice is made of opening discussions of public education by citing the magnitude of the task we are undertaking. These references to magnitude continue to be pertinent, for not- withstanding the frequency of reference to numbers, it does not appear that we have clearly sensed and provided for the situations Eleventh Yearbook 15 into which our educational programs have led us. When my own personal connection with the public schools began as a first-grade pupil a little over fifty years ago, conditions were notably unlike those of to-day. Records show that during my first school year, there were approximately nine million pupils enrolled in the United States, with an average attendance of but little more than half of those enrolled. To-day there are more than 26 million pupils en- rolled, with an average attendance of over four-fifths of those enrolled. If our whole population had grown as rapidly during these fifty years as has the public school population we should now have nearly two hundred fifty million people in the United States. And if the whole population had grown during this period as rapidly as has public high-school enrollment, our whole population would now exceed seven hundred million people. We have not only offered education to everyone, but through encouraging and enforcing legislation, and through personal and family ambition, almost all have taken the matter seriously. The mass success of our educational venture has produced problems not foreseen a few decades ago. In certain ways, it is the very success of public education which brings us some of our most difficult problems. II. Growth and Refinement of Knowledge and Specialization of Personal Interests Have Made Selection of Subjects Necessary. As research and organization of knowledge have proceeded during the recent productive decades, it became evident that all pupils could not compass all the subject matter regarded as essen- tial even in all the elementary subjects. At the same time vocational interests of many kinds, ranging from carpentry and cooking to the vocation of getting into college, produced specialized types of instruction which have always been less specialized in actual use in human affairs than in surface appearance and in school course an- nouncements. Thus, it may now be recognized that there is not so much difference as once was thought between courses in arithmetic for agriculture and for household arts and for those who do not yet think they know what their special arithmetical needs will be; nor so much difference between language instruction needed for effective work in carpentry, or in cooking and in further educational work in other school subjects. We have had certain subject differ- entiations which were more apparent than real. 16 National Association of Secondary-School Principals Not only have there appeared these many specialized courses with many common elements, but the elective plan of organization of each individual’s program has been widely adopted. While this has appeared chiefly in colleges and senior high schools, it has also entered largely into junior high schools. Those who have had experience in administration of high schools know the nature of election of subjects by high-school pupils, and therefore do not take the pupils’ alleged choices too seriously. Do we really know what types of educational results should be produced by the subjects and agencies used in education? Recommendations of subjects and methods are frequently made in a manner so positive as to indicate a certain knowledge of what the desired educational outcomes are. Do we really possess the basis for such certainty? Do we know enough of pupil psychology to guide adequately in determining a program of universal education as extensive as that upon which we are engaged? If so, do these criteria show us what things all should get, and what only part may get from the educational program? III. Are There Not Certain Achievements Which We Have a Full Right to Expect Shall Have Been Well-Mastered Before Pupils Arrive in High School. We constantly hear that beginning high-school pupils cannot read, cannot spell, cannot do computations with speed and accuracy, do not know the common facts which some adults assert they should know, do not have good habits of study. Two types of answers are to be made. It is a common experience to find that in new fields or when approached by new methods, the learning which has been acquired in unrelated fields or by different methods does not readily become available. Thus the high-school teacher of special subjects may be led to criticize the previous work of his pupils as ineffective whereas the high-school teacher may be the one who has failed to make proper connections with the achievements of pre- vious schooling. The second and more serious part of the situation rests upon a too broad and too indefinite achievement in elementary school work. Is it possible that in the recent efforts to secure vitality, indefiniteness has resulted? Experiments and tests have now shown that reading as a skill and as a habit must have been acquired with certain known and reasonable degrees of efficiency before pupils have completed the first six grades, else the pupils Eleventh Yearbook 17 may not thereafter hope to become really proficient in reading. We do not mean that poor readers or poor habits may not be somewhat improved after the sixth grade, but that the chances as shown by individual pupil records are very greatly against high achievement in reading, unless the normal standard of good achieve- ment is reached before the end of the sixth grade. Also, almost all types of further education whether in voca- tions or profesions, now regard reasonably good reading as indis- pensable to further progress. It is not so clearly proved but seems fairly well established that the four main computational processes, and spelling, are much like reading as regards the age levels in which they may be most certainly and most usefully acquired. Regarding the art of hand- writing, which we might call the “lost art” if we had possessed it to lose, it must be said that so far as any general practice is con- cerned we do not yet know its possibilities and requirements as we do for reading, arithmetic and spelling. Most educators believe, or hope perhaps, that all pupils should learn to write legibly and rapidly, but few persons think that there are known methods or standards by which to produce desirable achievements in hand- writing which will persist. Although no claim is made for newness of the foregoing state- ment of desired scholastic achievement, until more is done about it, attention must continually be directed to these and other needs. Sometimes the most obvious and most tritely stated needs are most commonly overlooked in practice. IV. What is now known of the general psychological founda- tions of elementary school work, seems to support the proposed emphasis upon such specific and. highly mastered achievements we are asking shall be assured before the end of the sixth grade. As one who accepts the modern educational philosophy which is based upon interest, attention, effort and achievement, I find nothing but consistency in the following series of ideas: Interest in the elementary school as in the high school is essential to learning since one cannot attend to anything in an educational sense when interest is absent. Interest is the dynamo without which there may not be the series of illumanat- ing sparks of attention. 18 National Association of Secondary-School Principals Attention must precede productive and intensive effort; interest and attention are essential to the continued flow of the vital current of effort; and the current, effort, is essential if work is done. The educational purpose of interest, attention and effort is that useful and worthy achievement may result. Such a philosophy does not preclude keeping up the growth and use of an inquiring mind, it does not preclude creative effort, nor organizations of subject matter about purposeful activities, nor helpful acquaintance and interest in one’s en- vironment nor group co-operation, nor individual initiative, nor any others of the highly useful methods which true pro- gressive education has produced. But it does squarely and clearly set before us the requirements which our citizenship must make and secure from our elementary education. As one engaged in experimental education, and as one who ac- cepts the philosophy of an interesting and meaningful school life, I wish again to emphasize that our tremendous elementary educational program needs to have a large growth in the quality of its achievement, an increase in quality which is in accord with what has been found possible through the re- search of the past 15 years. There is danger in mass growth of public education without an accompanying quality growth. V. Are Not Similar Questions to Be Asked of the Junior High School? When the administrative change to the junior high school was proposed it carried the idea that something new was about to be done in education. However, in some school systems less change has occurred with the pupils’ life in school and in their studies than would be inferred from the separate housing and new announce- ments. The biggest task is not just to build junior high-school buildings, but to discover, or to develop the subject matter and enterprises which are essential for junior high-school pupils. Many efforts are being made to try out new subjects of study in junior high schools with the hope of learning what the essentials are. The report of these efforts, made in their present stage of development, may or may not be indicative of valid results. One of the most recent of these reports is by Tryon, Smith, and Rood in the Feb- ruary number of the School Review. These authors asked three Eleventh Yearbook 19 hundred leading junior high-school centers to submit their pro- grams of studies. Programs were secured from 156 of the 300. Only 78, or one-half those received, which is a little over one-fourth those who were requested to submit programs, were used in the study reported by these authors. That wide variation in tryout courses exists is shown by the fact that under the heading of English there are 15 different courses listed; under Social Studies 23 courses are listed; under Mathematics, 6; under Science 8; In- dustrial Arts, 20; Home Economics, 19; Health, 8; Music, 9; Art, 10; Foreign Language, 5; Commercial Subjects, 10; Guidance, 3. They state that the majority, but do not give the percentage of the schools, do not offer elective subjects in the seventh grade. Neither do the authors indicate what percentage of the work is required in 8th or 9th grades, but the inference is made, and other studies show that many of the subjects are listed as elective in the eighth and ninth grades. The authors of the article referred to proceed to present a program of studies, and to assign the subjects for each year with time allotments for each. It needs to be noted that the program they present is based upon 76 cases of the 156 programs submitted from the 300 schools to which they wrote; also that those 76 schools reported a total of 131 courses which the authors merged under their 12 major headings. Upon this basis they propose a program which includes 21 constant subjects, and 9 variables as they term them. It is doubtful whether we may safely include or exclude subjects in a recommended program which is made up by merging 131 courses under 12 groupings. Also since those come from but 76 of the 300 schools we keenly desire to know the facts of the prac- tices in the 224 other schools which were accepted as basis for study. Also we need to know not mere frequency of appearance of courses since frequency of appearance may not really be depend- able evidence unless very large numbers of widely separated situa- _ tions are involved. Mere frequency of Ford or Chevrolet automo- biles does not of itself prove quality or standards as compared with desirability of other types of automobiles. What is really needed in junior high school studies is some pro- cedure or technique such as we have in reading, spelling and arith- metic by means of which to know what is being accomplished by 20 National Association of Secondary-School Principals different types of courses; then we can more safely recommend pro- grams. Since junior high school ages fall within the compulsory school ages in many states, and since in theory, and we hope in practice, the junior high school is to provide the most essential experiences, — knowledges and social, industrial and vocational contacts needed by all intelligent citizens, should we not develop toward an essentially required junior high school program, with election only to give household or shop courses where such separation is needed. It seems that the course should be required in so far as valid evidence may be produced as to service given. If the junior high school is for everybody’s boy and girl as we have virtually said by the laws of some states and by other definite encouragement in others, should it not require the subject contents which provide an.introduction to the major divisions of human knowledge, and also introductions to the leading types of modern social experiences which are commonly needed by all citizens. The elective system in junior high school as at present recommended is an apology for our lack of knowledge of what are the real requirements of the junior high school’s part of the nine years which are said to constitute our program of universal education. A PLEA FOR MORE PLAY IN OUR PROGRAM OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION Mr. V. K. Frovuta, PRINCIPAL OF RoosEvELT HicH ScHooLt, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON “Supreme regard for health” was enunciated twenty years ago as a paramount objective of education. Ten years later, the notable report on the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education properly placed health at the head of the list. During the recent world cata- clysm, and for a brief period thereafter, supreme regard for health became such a popular doctrine that its complete enthronement seemed to be secure. But the cessation of hostilities produced a new breed of “conscientious objectors.” Not entirely new, either, for they appear periodically. Whenever a platform of retrenchment is proposed, cutting of school costs is sure to be its principal plank. aneceneraantattes lh bo een nn Eleventh Yearbook 21 During the war the erection of school buildings was temporarily halted. Raising of liberty bonds, building ships, and turning out munitions were given the right of way in their demands on all avail- able resources. Naturally, this gave rise after the war to the neces- sity of unusual activity in construction and consequent unprece- dented expenditures of vast sums to house adequately the school children of the nation. On top of that was the remarkable increase in school enrollment. War experiences of the youth had given them a vivid realization of the importance of schooling. As a result, expenditures for education began to “mount by leaps and bounds,” to use the phrase of the well-known Pritchett report which struck a responsive chord in certain circles. A reprint of the famous find- ings was immediately sent to every chamber of commerce in the land, and many school boards were also favored with a free copy. School expenses, amounting to such heavy “burdens” as to threaten completely to crush the taxpayer, must be cut, of course. Curriculum enrichments, for which noted educators had labored for two decades, received the first onslaughts. Physical education, even child welfare, came in for their share of criticism. If children and youth possess surplus energy that has to find an outlet, why not let them work it off in factories or in other useful employment? That would be more profitable and would not require gymnasiums and costly equipment. The passing of laws by state legislatures, calling for physical training in schools, so popular at the time, also came to a sudden halt. In one state, at least, such a law passed by the legislature was actually repealed at the very next session. Are we to understand that physical education and good health are needed more in war time than in peace? Were the Cardinal Principles, which placed health at the head of the list, enunciated for national emergencies only? Is not a good physique the very first requisite for steady occupation, good pay, and a contented mind? And, if physical vigor is needed for war, then why in the ’ name of common sense wait to lock up the barn door until after the horse has been stolen? Just what is preparedness anyway? Is not vigorous manhood the very first line of defense? But if the surplus energy theory for the justification of physical training has furnished the objector with argument against it, then what are some other motives for its vindication? In the light of 22 ~=National Association of Secondary-School Principals child and adolescent psychology and physiology what are the other sanctions for physical training? And here I am, of course, follow- ing a well-beaten path. I have no desire, even if I had the ability, to startle you with novelty. A discourse in I. Q.’s would be more up to date, but arguments on health education have the advantage of being almost axiomatic. Here, at least, we are on terra firma. Let us consider the economic phase first; perhaps that will make a hit with those who look at the investment side of the ques- tion. And here I want to be on safe ground so let me quote from accepted authority. A recent report of the Department of Labor, commenting on the physical defects and the rejection of one-third of the young men drafted for war, stresses our need of a more ade- quate program of physical education and health service. Estimating that the economic loss for a single year from preventable disease and death amounts to the stupendous sum of $1,800,000,000, the report makes this significant declaration: ‘There is experimental basis in the statement that this loss could be materially reduced and leave an economic balance in the working population alone over and above the cost of prevention of at least a billion dollars a year.” Furthermore, a distinguished physician says that “it would be economy from the standpoint of general education if schools opened August lst and the first sixty days were devoted to examination, removal of defects, and general health training.” Did not the United States Chamber of Commerce itself estimate that absence from school, largely due to sickness, is costing the nation $195,- 000,000 annually? “If we were to measure by no other standard than dollars,” says State Superintendent McConnell, “it might easily be cheaper to keep a group of children well than to cure one whose health was undermined.” Health has always been considered a national asset necessary to national prosperity and permanence. That is doubtless the rea- son why the Public Health Service was the first bureau to be established by our own government. To neglect the physical well- being of a people is to lay the foundation for a train of woes for which sooner or later the state must pay a heavy price. Hence the need of a positive health program to keep a nation from suffering _ a physical decline that is bound to discourage economic progress and pauperize the people. Eleventh Yearbook. 23 Now let us consider other aspects of the question. And I am well aware that in dealing with health education it is not approved pedagogy to consider the human body as divided into a certain number of parts. Indeed, in so far as we have made such a division we have lost ground, because health includes the physical, mental, moral, and social aspects of life. It is a synthesis of all these fac- tors. The intimacy of relationship between mind and body is so close that we have gone astray educationally when, under the spell of advancing civilization, we have yielded to the temptation of separating them. The restoration of that close kinship is now one of our chief concerns. For education, properly so-called, affects the whole of our being, all we have and all we are. A sound mind in a sound body is the message of biology, physiology and psychol- ogy. Of necessity, therefore, any attempt to treat physical apart from mental and moral training cannot be entirely successful. In one sense, you will grant, physical development is a most important part of the educational program for its implies activity,— and, at some stages, we learn mostly by doing. Bobbitt says: “The central principle of health education as well as of all education seems to be the fine old dictum that one learns to do a thing by doing it.” It was more than merely a clever statement when some one said that the brain of man is literally hand-made, and that correct education teaches the hand to join the head in a common effort. Physically, as well as mentally, man may be said to be the resultant of the activities of his ancestors. Purposeful and pleas- urable action has always been a tonic to the mind as well as a stimu- lant to the body. It is only when the body stops growing that physical activity ceases to play a part in education, but is still neces- sary as recreation. To quote Bobbitt again: “The work of the schools is finished as far as health education goes only when the individual can himself continually and continuously hold to whole- some methods of physical living.” G. Stanley Hall tells us that “in our day with its increasing nervous strain there are many new reasons to believe that the best nations of the future will be those that give most intelligent care to the body.” It is, therefore, a sad commenary on modern procedure that we have to go back to ancient Greece to find the most successful attempt at education with physi- cal development as a fundamental basis. And there we see that “it was when gymnastics had made each Athenian and Apollo in grace 24 National Association of Secondary-School Principals and strength that the feet of the Greek race ran most nimbly along the paths of Art and Literature and Philosophy.” The intellectual glory of the ancient Greeks was paralleled by an athletic glory that has never been surpassed. The rediscorevers of Greek literature have been satisfied to study what the Greeks thought; they failed to emulate what the Greeks did. Now, a few observations on the moral value of physical edu- cation. It was G. Stanley Hall who said that “the boy without a playfield is likely to become the man without a job.” That is another way of saying that normal boyhood is the best preparation for normal manhood. During the War mass sports were utilized to keep up morale, the fostering of which was then uppermost in our thoughts. “The relation of the spiritual attitude to the physical is, indeed, a fascinating consideration.” The attitude of mind is most significant in the determination of conduct. The proper utilization, therefore, of the drafted men’s spare time was the army officers’ absorbing problem. The relation of physical activity to leisure with all of its moral reference is also worthy of the school- master’s thoughtful consideration. City-life make a leisure class of our children and young folks. In 1790 only 3% of the population of America lived in cities. The last census showed an urban population of 53%. Legislation im- poses upon children only one occupation and that only a part of the day and part of the year. The schools are responsible for a pupil’s activities some thirty hours a week. What he does with the other 138 hours of the week at his disposal has a tremendous social reference and moral implication. Modern industry has been more zealous to organize work than to organize play. This has resulted in 90% of loafing to 10% of play on our city streets. Now, the stupidity of this practice is the failure to recognize that recreation is stronger than vice and that it alone can stifle the lust for vice. A recent writer* says: “A civilization that creates a leisure that it cannot rationally use may well be in greater danger of de- struction than one that has no leisure at all. A civilization that bores its beneficiaries is perhaps even worse than one that over- works its slaves. A world fit for democracy is a far easier aim than a world fitted for leisure. Democracy can stand the test of war. *“The Education of the Modern Boy.”—Stearns and others. LPS O TONE + eed SO Eleventh Yearbook 25 Whether it can stand the test of uninspired leisure and survive is quite another matter.” In our day many an unwary youth finds the soft cushion of the automobile and the hair-raising thrills of the picture show an inviting method of using up his leisure hours. But the country lad of a generation ago found the family wood-box a hardier and more invigorating pastime with a cogent moral training to boot. In the development of character one’s use of his spare time is momentous. In his regular employment he is under restraint of authority, but the employment of his leisure is regulated by him- self. What he does when he is his own boss, then, in an index of his power of self-control and self direction. On this point, like- wise, Bobbitt makes an important observation: “Health education should provide the conditions for the greatest possible amount of self-direction and self management on the part of the pupils.” Self- directed activity in spare time, therefore, may be regarded as the very keynote to character. Now, in spite of all the accumulated testimony to the effect that physical training inspires health and gives the body skill in executing the commands of the will, adequate provision in the curriculum for such training and health knowledge has nowhere been made. Here we have been slow to make practice harmonize with theory. But modern conditions of living make the building of habits of exercise more imperative than ever. Muscular activity is receiving greater and greater check by modern inventions. Walk- ing, the most feasible of all forms of exercise, is becoming almost a lost art. The future physical salvation of our people will depend on the adequacy of the health program provided by school and society for our youth. For forty years the late Chas. W. Eliot was a recognized power in American education. Whenever that great leader spoke it was always with judgment and authority and sometimes with prophetic vision. His views on this subject, therefore, uttered only a short time before his death, should command our respect. In his plea for “Protection Against Ignorance,” he recommends as “the first step, universal physical training from the age of six to eight. It is to include the means of remedying defects and malformations as well as develop normal bodies. It is to consist of drills and setting- 26 National Association of Secondary-School Principals up exercises, but more especially of games and sports. Whenever possible it is to be carried on out-of-doors. It is to cover carriage, posture, gait, rhythmical movements, and team play. This univer- sal physical training is to be accompanied by the universal employ- ment of physicians and nurses for incessant diagnostic and preven- tive work in schools of every description. Furthermore, since the question of health is intensely national, the whole program should be prescribed by the Federal Bureau of Education or some other national board.” Now, with its implications such a program constitutes a large order. But, if we may agree with this modern seer, it will be worth the price. He assures us that with such a health service in operation, “within twenty years an immense improvement will be seen not only in the aspect of the population as affecting posture, relation of weight to height, and muscular development, but also in the comfort, health and productiveness at daily labor.” Is that too optimistic? Not if we read the signs of the times correctly. In a single generation, on account of child welfare laws, the advancement of medical science, the progress of the playground movement, and even such inadequate physfcal training as has al- ready been introduced in many cities, the span of life has been appreciably lengthened and the health of our urban population has been rendered superior over that of rural communities. “The natural advantages which the rural districts possess in favor of healthful existence seem to be more than offset by the protection which the city dweller is given.” Furthermore, we have it on good authority that the number of freshmen with curable defects has dropped from 30% to 10% in Columbia University since the move- ment for remedial work has gone into effect in the public schools of New York. But those of us who are familiar with public school administra- tion know that such adequate health education as Dr. Eliot advo- cates is not going to be realized all at once. Progress in the funda- mental things of life is slow. It required a generation of temper- ance teaching in the schools to bring about national prohibition. “The grown-ups of 1900 would never have passed the Eighteenth amendment, but their children did. The grown-ups of. 1926 are doing a poor job of enforcing this amendment, but their children —————— SRR Eee =e — \ f | 9 eo Eleventh Yearbook 27 will rise to the occasion. The university president who advises people to violate the prohibition statutes will be succeeded by a youth who will know better.”* There is hope, then, though perhaps not in the immediate future. Something more than we are doing is possible even in spite of retrenchment tendencies. I am pleading for the more gen- eral introduction of intra-mural sports, already in favor in many schools, not as a complete system of physical education, but as a step that promises large returns with a minimum of expense. Nor am I ready to offer them as a substitute for interschool athletics which as an agency for welding the school into a social unit have no equal. They are carried on, however, more for the glory of the school, let us frankly admit, than for the bodily benefit of the students as a whole. “The great value of the so-called major athletics does not consist in their worth as exercise,” says Dr. Curtis, “but in their effectiveness in creating school spirit and loyalty. Their effect on the spectator is much more significant than their effect on the team.” In other words, the emotional ap- peal so completely dominates the situation that our fundamental instincts for emulation and rivalry find complete gratification in merely looking on and yelling vociferously. Again, the trend of physical education at present is away from the more formal work of the gymnasiums which does not contain enough mental relaxation and inspiration, and is often referred to as “physical torture.” Such formal exercises and gymnastics are good body builders, but they make no contribution to the building of character and citizenship. Group games and play, on the other hand, have a hereditary sanction; they furnish absorbing interest, afford joyous and self-forgetting enthusiasm, which fosters a driv- ing power unequaled by any other form of activity. “We ought never to forget that, after all, human beings, whether children or adults, do things because of certain satisfaction which they get from so doing.” Play is a spontaneous expression of enjoyment in activity; it tends to deprive even work of its drudgery. All work, then, should be part play and all play should be large part work. Absorbing interest and pleasure, not unlike play, has probably led many a *Joy Elmer Morgan. 28 National Association of Secondary-School Principals great man to the accomplishment of his life work. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance to encourage such play and recreation as the youth may carry over into adulthood as something that can be used in the fulfillment of his life purpose. ‘The final test of value for any activity,” says Dr. Curtis, “is how far it carries over into life, how many months or years it is practiced after it has been taught at school.” This test is particularly applicable to physical education. Furthermore, co-operation is also an essential element in games and that is another one of the tests of the value of physical train- ing. Group play, therefore, which furnishes a sense of belonging to something that is larger than oneself becomes a co-operative project. It develops a devotion that is symbolic of the patriotism of a citizen to his state and nation. In the interest of a group and because of a sense of his obligation to its ideal, man is often raised to uncommon spiritual heights and sometimes, as in the case of Wellington, the playground may be the beginning of his super- human achievement. All the factors that help to form the habit of co-operative conduct are to be found in a group guided by a com- mon purpose and working for a common end. Playfields are, in- deed, laboratories for the development of co-operative democratic action; they have rightly been called decocracy’s moral arena. “In team play there are needed,” says Dr. Sargent, “quick judgment in unforeseen exigencies, alertness, quick perception, prolonged atten- tion, and self-sacrifice,” qualities, you will agree with me, that de- velop a type of character that is prized in co-operative democratic life. Now, intra-mural sports have many of the advantages claimed for interschool athletics without the objectionable features of the latter. Take, for example, the inborn desire to be a winner. That is a primitive trait. Selfishness was essential to life in prehistoric days. Now, in the joyous spirit of co-operation and service of the group, this perfectly natural desire finds its normal expression, but does not degenerate into an abnormal craze to win at any price by subordinating individual honor to partisan passion fomented by thousands of frenzied followers. The players quickly sense the attitude of the spectators which in these great contests is generally not wholesome. It is then readily and, more or less unconsciously, translated into action on the field. — nN Eleventh Yearbook 29 Again, recreation is uppermost in the minds of intramural players. The loser has had as much spontaneous fun as the winner and leaves the field refreshed and moderatly invigorated. In the interschool contest, on the other hand, the loser goes off the field utterly downhearted, and completely exhausted. Furthermore, intra-mural sports furnish a year-round program, rather than an intensive seasonal campaign followed by prolonged lull. Participation is encouraged in at least one of a variety of each season’s sports, and this gives the player during the year a fair first-hand experience in several different activities no one of which he follows as an exclusive specialty. He learns the important les- son that he does not have to excel in any sport, or go through a grueling grind of training to enjoy participation therein. This enjoyment of and experience in several different kinds of sports is more likely also to furnish him in adult life with incentive to continue their enjoyment. Learning the rudiments of sports in early youth provides the essential condition for a carry-over in- terest. The excessive exertion of the specialized athlete, on the con- trary, is too often brought to an abrupt end after the season and especially after graduation. One of the main criticisms against our present athletic systems is that they do not create a lasting interest in participation. Enlarged heart and lung capacity is fraught with grave danger to the athlete suddenly forced into sedentary indoor life as is so often the case. There are instances on record where such a condition has shortened life or impaired the athlete’s use- fulness. For some years one of our gymnasium instructors had been carrying on voluntarily a limited intra-mural program of athletics. The wholesome results of his efforts were brought to the attention of the school board who had been interested in wider student par- ticipation. The matter appealed to them and accordingly, on recom- mendation of the superintendent, the board established intra-mural sports for boys as a part of the physical training in all of the high schools of Seattle. In addition to the physical director and athletic coach, an instructor in each of the high schools was elected to the position of intra-mural sports director with a small increase in salary. As a result, a salutary system of intra-mural sports for 30 §=©National Association of Secondary-School Principals boys has now been in operation for two years. The girls have an athletic director of their own, but their program is more limited. You will understand that this was not intended to take the place of interscholastic athletics of which we have our full quota. The only change in inter-school participation was the requirement of more rigid eligibility rules, calling for higher scholarship and lowering the upper age limit. The hardship thus imposed on the school athletes was easier to bear by opening up a new field for them. In fact, the seasoned athletes, thus rendered ineligible, found new opportunities to serve their schools as leaders, officials and managers, positions in which they are rendering valuable serv- ice and incidentally gaining experiences in leadership that are quite remarkable. Indeed, without their help the scheme would be im- possible. One of the most inspiring sights is the number of games played simultaneously on the athletic field before school in the morning, at noon, and after school. Twice a year, in September, and again in February, managers are elected. Each applicant when signing up indicates his first and second choice of sports. The director, the boys’ adviser and the vice president of the Boys’ Club constitute the election board. These two men together with the student repre- sentative have a pretty good line on the applicants and choose man- agers to serve for five months. It is the duty of the managers to take care of all equipment, make the schedules, post notices on a special bulletin board located on the second floor of the building, make out reports of the games and participants and, sometimes, officiate. They wear “Official” jerseys when on duty. It is their business to keep their schedules moving and how well they do this is one of the sources of gratifi- cation. Officiating, which in inter-school contests is one of the difficult tasks to perform satisfactorily, offers no problems here whatever. The decisions of the student officials are accepted with- out a murmur. Here there is no intense partisanship to express itself in a feeling of hostility or discourtesy toward opponents. Furthermore, the question of eligibility is entirely subordinated. No temptation to load the dice is ever manifested. On the con- trary, a mutual respect and good will is the outcome of the meeting of teams in such friendly rivalry. re ee Eleventh Yearbook 31 Schedules for basketball are rather complicated and more diffi- cult to carry out on account of the limited floor space of the two gymnasiums. Three leagues are organized: the “Coast League” exclusively for freshman session-rooms, whose teams play against each other until the winner is determined. The “American League” is organized for sophomores, and the “National League” for juniors and seniors; the two latter leagues play against each other until their champions are pitted against the freshman winners. The finals are then played off and the champion league is awarded a banner to be displayed in their room. The school calendar has to be studied at the beginning of each season to determine the possible number of games in the several sports. The schedule of games is then drawn up and posted from week to week. These schedules are typed in triplicate, one for the bulletin board, one for the manager, and one for the director. The manager of each league notifies his respective teams by bulletins sent to the session room the day before the game to avoid the pos- sibility of a forfeit. It is interesting to note that only one game was forfeited during an entire season and that was due to the failure of a teacher to read the notice. Records of games are kept and posted regularly by managers or their assistants who also serve as timekeepers and sometimes as referees. Similarly, but somewhat more easily, schedules are drawn up for handball, tennis, golf, horseshoes, track, volley ball, and soccer. Before all of these games, the boys of the respective teams are called together and all important rules are explained to them. The managers make their drawings, have them typed in the office-train- ing class, and post them on the intra-mural bulletin, which is a constant source of interest to large numbers of boys. Results of matches are written in by the players themselves. In a number of these sports faculty men’s teams also are or- ganized. Thus the winning leagues or teams have an opportunity to take their teachers into camp, if they can. Sometimes the teach- ers demonstrate their superiority. This faculty participation in games with their students is one of the most enjoyable parts of the whole scheme. There is need of better examples of physical fitness in the teaching profession. Examples are always more effective than mere precepts in any kind of teaching. You will agree with 32 National Association of Secondary-School Principals me that it is a wholesome condition when in a school of about 1,622 boys, 950 actually participate in intra-mural sports in a single year. That means that most of them enjoy the spontaneous fun of sev- eral different sports, and are receiving training in genuine sports- manship. Just one more observation. Two years ago and again last year in this meeting an eighth objective, viz., international understanding, was urged upon us. The general fostering of certain identical games among the civilized nations of the world may be more signi- ficant in the promotion of world-understanding than appears on the surface. “Sportsmanship,” says Jas. F. Rogers, of the Bureau of Education, “is only ‘playing fair’ expressed in one world. It has been the unwritten rule of play since play began. It is the moral code compressed and expressed in thirteen letters, and it applies to all social activities and not merely to athletics. For this reason its observance and practice in athletics leads to its observance and practice in other relationships of life . . .” Now, the fostering of sportsmanship through identical games among nations and the meeting of international representatives in athletic competition is a thoroughly wholesome tendency at present. Who will say that it was a mere coincidence that the Allies in the recent war were those nations which were most widely committed to international sports? Not a single one of the Central Powers, on the other hand, was devoted to the cause of sports, nationally or internationally. The seeds for mutual understanding are planted when two nations play the same games and meet in competition on a common playfield where good sportsmanship and fair play dominate. Among such nations the playfield tends to replace the battlefield. Racial jeal- ousies disappear where common enthusiasms nourish the spirit of tolerance. The representatives of small nations are received with the same enthusiasm and accorded the same honors when they win as representatives of big nations. Racial customs, religious beliefs, and provincial prejudices are forgotten there. To be sure, only seasoned athletes are honored with international participation, but whole nations share in the enjoyment made possible by the general appreciation of the rules of fair play and good sportsmanship. Eleventh Yearbook 33 CLASS SIZE IN HIGH SCHOOLS Eart HupDELSON PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA Significance of the Problem The question of class size is important for several reasons. The most obvious is cost. As schools are ordinarily administered to-day, class size is the greatest single determinant of educational expense. Larger classes make for fewer teachers and lower building costs. Increasing the size of classes, then, offers an obvious and tempting means to immediate educational economy. Economy, however, does not necessarily imply lower cost. It may mean a wiser expenditure of funds. The promise to lower educational expense is not implicit in any experiment with larger classes. If large classes prove successful in all subjects and with all teachers and pupils, then, obviously, total costs would be lowered. But larger classes in certain subjects may only release funds for departments in which large classes cannot be made to work. Or the funds may be used to attract better teachers or for more ade- quate facilities. Educators are morally bound not to waste public money; but most educators could find worthy ways of expending any surplus that might accrue from larger classes. A less obvious but, in my opinion, no less significant reason for investigating the question of class size is its relation to quality of instruction. There are not enough great teachers to go round, and no single school is able to corral and keep all of them. Most schools, like most theatricals, engage one or two stars and support them with mediocre talent. In schools, particularly in large schools, this means that a very small percentage of the pupils have an op- portunity to come under the influence of great teachers. This un- intentional favoritism is hardly consistent with our ideal of equal opportunity ; yet it appears to be inevitable where small classes pre- vail. If it could be proved that all, or even some, of these great teachers can handle large classes as effectively, or even nearly as effectively, as they handle small ones, a higher percentage of pupils could come into their rightful educational heritage. Even if only 34 National Association of Secondary-School Principals certain courses, or particular parts of courses, were found adaptable to large classes, the situation would be relieved to just that degree. A third respect in which the question of class size is of vital significance relates to the improvement of instruction. No school administrator can be or remain abreast of educational progress to- day who is not imbued with the attitude of scientific inquiry toward his professional problems. By long, relentless effort teaching has been made a profession; it must now be made a science. The cause of teacher-training has been won; training in educational re- search is the next objective. It is not enough that the adminis- trator himself has this spirit of scientific approach; he must imbue his promising teachers with a desire for it, give them every reason- able encouragement to acquire it, guide them in using it, and sub- stantially acknowledge the superior worth of them who practice it. The day is past when one teacher’s opinion delivered ex cathedra is accepted as a universal truth, however true it may have been as applied to his own teaching. We know enough about the complex process of education now to know that there is no panacea for anything. Instead of naively asking, “Professor, what is the best way of teaching?”, the scientifically-trained teacher asks herself, “Best for what, and for whom, and when?” Then, with the en- couragement and counsel of a scientifically-trained supervisor, she goes into her classroom laboratory and determines experimentally how she can best realize her aims with those pupils in that course. In our excitement over individual differences among children we have sometimes ignored the individual differences among teachers. The best method of teaching is best only for those teachers who can use it best. The teacher with an inquiring attitude will, if per- mitted, determine experimentally her best teaching procedures. She will teach better, not worse, and more, not less, because she has learned how to teach best under the given conditions. Now, this kind of teaching takes time. Just as the medical specialist devotes more time to research than he does to practice or consultation, so must the teacher have time to digest and interpret her objective evidence on best ways of teaching. Many a teacher, fervid with a vision of higher service, is too busy more tlian to behold the vision. Many a school stockroom is piled to the ceiling with invaluable educational data which the teachers are too busy to utilize. It may well be that the direct losses that could possibly Eleventh Yearbook 35 accrue from larger classes would be more than compensated for by giving competent teachers a part of each day for modest research. A fourth reason for studying the question of class size is plainly a humanitarian one. Granting that many teachers are not as busy as they think they are, that is no solution of the problem of the many superior, conscientious, zealous teachers who really are overworked. The best teachers do not have to be made to work; they have to be protected from overwork. The sweat-shops seems to have been abandoned in all activities except conscientious school teaching. Larger classes offer one possibility of relief from this situation, provided they do not result in merely a heavier pupil load with its attendant increase of paper-reading and clerical duties. In view of these considerations and of the rather disturbing evidence on class size obtained by Stevenson and others before him, your Commission on Class Size proposed, among other things, to encourage and guide all principals or teachers who might desire to study experimentally the relative effects of large and small classes in their own high schools. Now, all previous investigations have either been confined to conventional small-class teaching procedures or have involved only random, haphazard attempts to adapt small- class techniques to large-class situation. Neither will ever solve the whole problem. They will merely show whether large classes or small classes do better under teaching conditions and procedures primarily designed for small classes. The other half of the prob- lem is: can techniques of teaching and classroom management be evolved which will enable pupils to do as well in large classes as they are now doing or can be taught to do in small classes? In other words, are there peculiar large-class techniques, and, if so, to what aims, pupils, subjects, and teachers are they adaptable? Can a sufficient number of teachers master these techniques to war- rant administrators in planning school buildings with big classes? In a Missouri village there stands to-day a palatial home, built twelve years ago but never occupied. It was erected by an eccentric old bachelor who had visions of needing every room in the house. He took for granted that there would be plenty of spinsters willing to make his house a home. But no candidates applied; so Jim’s Folly stands tenantless while Jim rusts out in a shanty nearby. If you plan large classrooms can you find teachers competent and willing to utilize them? You, as an Association or as individuals, 36 National Association of Secondary-School Principals may repent at leisure if you determine upon any permanent class- size policy in the mere hope that it will prove to be sound. There is no convincing evidence that the present empirical prevailing stand- ard of class size is the right one; but as long as teachers are trained with that standard in mind it is probably better than any other guess. Your Commission, therefore, felt that at least some experi- ments should incorporate the most successful large-class techniques. If anyone knows what these are, obviously it should be the teachers who have had experience with large classes. Consequently the names of over six hundred of these teachers were secured and a questionnaire sent to them asking them to describe the teaching and classroom management techniques which they had found most suc- cessful in classes of forty or more pupils. Considerable allied in- formation was also requested to aid in interpreting their testimony and in devising future experiments which will isolate some of the many, many factors involved in the problem of class size. Two hundred and forty replies have been received to date from teachers experienced in handling large classes, but only 192 of them arrived in time to figure in the tabulations. These 192 came from 37 school systems in 21 states. While at least one response came from a town of less than 2,000 population, practically all came from large cities. If big classes constitute an offense, large school systems are the chief offenders. Several metropolitan superintend- ents wrote to me saying that practically all, if not all, of their teachers had found it necessary at one time or another to teach classes of forty or more pupils. One teacher of long experience reported that he has taught 500 such classes. When asked how their large classes came to be established, several teachers replied, “Cus- tomary here.” One answered, “Why not? Everybody has them.” Another said, “It never occurred to me before that there might be any question about the desirability of large classes.” Two teachers reported that in their long careers they had never had experience with any but large classes. I shall not now report the detailed results of the inquiry; you have been given mimeographed copies of a condensed preliminary form of the report, and the complete report will be delivered to your Secretary soon. In order to get on to a consideration of some of the implications of the findings, I shall give you only a snapshot, Eleventh Yearbook 37 as it were, of the existing class-size situation. This birdseye view will be merely a majority report, in that my statements will repre- sent either central tendencies or majority judgments. The minority reactions, though omitted here because of their fewness, were not necessarily less suggestive or less vociferous. You may be able to follow in the condensed report which you hold, my rapid overview. The number in parentheses immediately following the question indicates the number of teachers whose re- ponses figure in the data on that item. The apparent discrepancies in several of the totals are due to the fact that often more than one response was made to a question or that, on the other hand, certain responses were too indefinite to be interpreted. Several of the tabu- lations, (e. g., Nos. 31, 32, 65, and 66) which here are general, will in the complete report be analyzed and recorded separately for each subject. Though it was our intention to confine this inquiry to teachers of academic and commercial high-school subjects, a few teachers of special subjects (music, drawing, art, and physical edu- cation) responded. Where these special teachers also taught academic subjects and did not specify to which subject their replies pertained, the full data were recorded. The symbols Q1, M, and Q3 mean first quartile, median, and third quartile, respectively. Where percentage is not stipulated, the data represent numerical frequency. Condensed Report of Results of Questionnaire The median number of years that these large-class teachers have taught in elementary schools is 2; in high schools, 12. They had taught a median of 5 years before they had a class of more than 40 pupils. They have taught a median of 15 large high-school classes. Most of them were in the social sciences; then follow, in order, English, commercial, natural sciences, foreign languages, and mathematics. The median size of the largest class that they ever taught is 50. Most likely it was in social science or English. Their large classes have been pretty evenly divided over the six high-school years and have usually consisted of both boys and girls heterogeneously grouped. These teachers have had large classes at all hours of the day. Most of their pupils have had previous ex- perience with both large and small high-school classes and were in other large classes at the time. The average size of class in these schools was 35. 38 National Association of Secondary-School Principals The median of the largest number of large classes that these teachers have ever taught at one time is 3. They probably had two small classes at the time. Their total pupil load (median) was 200, and they had 3 lesson preparations to make. This peak load of large classes gave them a median of 20 additional pupils. More- over, they seem to have had about all of the extra duties that teach- ing flesh is heir to. Ninety-five per cent of them had just as heavy an assignment of these extra duties as their small-class colleagues did. These duties required a median of five and a half hours per week. Neither their extra-duty nor their teaching schedule was lightened in 94% of the cases, and 80% of them had no assistance whatever in handling their peak-load of large classes. The 38 teachers who did have aid most likely had a pupil or pupils helping them with the roll, grading test papers, filling out records, inspecting notebooks, assembling illustrative material or preparing, distributing, and collecting mimeographed material. Most of the assistance was given outside of the classroom or at the beginning or end of periods. On the whole they had no more and no different assistance with their big classes than with their small ones. Most of their large classes were organized for economy, be- cause of a shortage of classrooms or teachers, or because of exigen- cies in program-making. The most successful large-class teaching methods and devices were written recitations, lectures, and written tests and examinations. The method which they found most poorly adapted to large-class teaching was oral testing. Opinion was rather evenly divided on the question-and-answer method, class discussion, topical reports and discussions, supervised study, the socialized reci- tation, and the project method.* When asked what methods of class organization and class- room management they had found most successful in large classes, 16 teachers categorically answered “None.” The prevailing pro- cedures mentioned were the monitorial system and an alphabetical seating plan. The majority of these teachers had consciously tried to adapt their teaching to large-class conditions in the following functions: conferences with pupils, getting acquainted with pupils, adapting the work to individual differences in pupils, tests and examinations, amount of pupil written work, routine, make-up *The responses to question 38 were not entirely consistent with those to question 31, Eleventh Yearbook 39 work, and teaching pupils to study. The majority of these teachers had made no conscious effort to adapt their procedures to large classes in the following functions: assignments, class organization, teacher preparation, discipline, and the amount of talking done by the teacher. There was no consensus of opinion among the few teachers who responded as to the physical outlay best suited to large classes. Almost every conceivable preference was shown as to the shape of the classroom, the position of the teacher’s desk, the best kind of seats and desks, the amount and position of blackboards, auxiliary equipment, etc. Plenty of seats, a clean classroom,* a wholesome environment, and adequate equipment constituted the prevailing sentiments. Most of these teachers believe that the more experience a teacher has with large classes the more likely he will be to succeed with the next one. They think that large classes are least un- adapted to realizing in pupils the social-civic aims such as co-opera- tion, citizenship, tolerance, etc., but thirty-one teachers maintained that large classes are not adapted to the realization of any aims. They were in considerably closer agreement that large classes are least adapted to developing pupil individuality, self-expression, masterly, originality, and habits of independent judgment. Three-fourths of these teachers experienced difficulty in getting their large classes over as much ground as their small classes ordi- narily cover; and, outside of definite minimum requirements, could offer few suggestions for overcoming this difficulty. The few who were able to keep pupils in large classes going at their optimum speed accomplished it chiefly by orfering a variety of assignments, by giving individual help, by having bright pupils help dull ones, by homogeneous grouping, by socializing their classroom procedure, by holding frequent contests between groups within the class, by daily written work, by short snappy tests, and by personal interviews. The majority of these teachers felt that large classes are unadapted, or at best poorly adapted, to developing pupil individuality, initia- tive, and leadership. They feel that the teachers’ influence is stronger in small classes and that pupils tend to be more responsive ~ *References to the importance of clean classrooms were tucked in at every possible point in the questionnaire by such a significant proportion of these teachers as to suggest almost a complex. 40 National Association of Secondary-School Principals in small classes. They believe that large classes are particularly a handicap to dull, backward, slow, timid, and inarticulate pupils. As to whether large classes are advantageous to any type of pupil, opinion is evenly divided. Half of them think that if any pupils profit from large classes, it is the progressive, aggressive, assertive, competitive, self-confident, ostentatious natural-born leaders with organizing ability and who are good speakers, fond of discussion, and thrilled by an audience. The majority of these teachers feel that homogeneous grouping on the basis of intelligence makes for success in large classes, and they have no better basis of grouping to suggest. Six teachers re- ported having made experimental, quantitative comparisons of their success with small and large classes. These will be summarized in the complete report. On the whole, from the meager data fur- nished, it appears that the large classes excelled in achievement in two of the experiments, and the small classes in four. One experi- ment was in 7B mathematics, one in algebra, and one in English. The others did not name the subject. The report of one of the experiments is available. Four-fifths of these teachers report that large classes decrease pupil opportunity for oral expression; and two-thirds of them say that large classes increase the percentage of pupil failures.* Nearly all reported that large classes increase the physical strain upon them, and two-thirds reported an increased emotional strain from large classes. Those who observed their pupils’ attitude toward the large classes at the beginning of the course found them either antagonistic or at best tolerant; and in the few cases where the attitude seemed to improve, the teachers felt that it was due to the pupils’ having become either acclimated or inured. The dislike for large classes was attributed mainly to crowded conditions, less chance for oral work, the pupils’ experience in previous large classes, lack of individual attention, and prejudices aroused in them by the teacher. The pupils who preferred large classes like them because of the opportunity they had of hiding behind someone when un- prepared. *In one of the experiments referred to above, the percentage of passing was invariably greater in the large classes (7B mathematics). Eleventh Yearbook 41 Everything else constant, 44% of these teachers would prefer to teach six classes of 25 pupils daily; 31% would rather teach three classes of 50 pupils; and 25% would choose 2 classes of 25 and 2 of 50 per day. ‘The majority of these teachers feel that the social sciences are best suited or, rather, the Jeast unsuited to large classes, with Eng- lish a poor second, and mathematics and commercial subjects fol- lowing in order. They feel that the natural sciences, particularly the laboratory courses, are least suited to large classes, with foreign languages a close second, and mathematics and English following. All subjects taken together, the median vote on the ideal class size was 25-30; the maximum size, 30-35. There was virtual unanimity that all teachers are not equally well adapted or qualified to teach large classes. Those most likely to succeed are firm disciplinarians ; teachers with strong and pleas- ing personalities ; experienced ; physicaly strong; good nerves; good natured, sense of humor; organizing ability; poise; and master of one’s subject.* Almost one-half of these 192 teachers had suggestions whereby the principal or superintendent can make it easier for teachers who have to teach large classes to do it less poorly. The leading sug- gestion was to provide adequate, hygienic, and suitable classrooms and environment, and adequate and suitable equipment. Then come the following recommendations in order of frequency: relieve large- class teachers of study halls, clerical work, and other non-teaching duties. Stand by teachers; support discipline in classrooms and halls ; maintain discipline in assemblies ; permit expulsion of annoy- ing pupils and dead-beats; establish a good working spirit in the school ; and insist upon regular attendance. Provide more teachers ; reduce teaching schedule; allow teachers time to prepare their les- sons. Provide large-class teachers with assistance. Visit frequently ; advise and encourage understandingly and sympatheticaliy. Group pupils homogeneously. Reduce the number of notices and visitors. Allow teachers freedom; keep nose out. Modify courses of study. Do away with principals and superintendents. Let the principal or superintendent take a large class occasionally for inspiration. *Query: which of these qualities would make for most success in teaching small classes? 42 National Association of Secondary-School Principals When these teachers were asked to sum up the inherent ad- vantages of large classes, 54 of them answered “none.” The pre- vailing positive reaction was: economy of teachers and time. Then followed: opportunities for pupils to develop their capacities for leadership; the stimuli of large groups; class spirit and interest; chances to hear many attitudes expressed; self control; co-opera- tion; courtesy ; competition ; and wider social contacts. By far the most frequently listed inherent disadvantage of large classes was: less opportunity to attend to individual pupil needs, progress, etc., through personal contact. Eighty-nine of the 192 teachers considered this a vital limitation of large classes. Then follow, with frequencies of 23 or less: disciplinary problems greatly increased, complicated, and intensified ; increased strain on teacher ; less daily oral testing per pupil; scoring of papers, keeping of rec- ords, etc., greatly increased; more pupil failures; more pupil in- attention ; brightest and dullest pupils in heterogeneous large classes lose hope and interest; lack of opportunity to develop leadership ; and less general instruction possible, harder to keep pupils together. These teachers did not discriminate between the inherent and the extrinsic advantages and limitations of large classes; for when they were asked to list the advantages and disadvantages which are evident but not inherent in large classes, they named practically the same ones that they had listed as being inherent. The final question was, “What, in brief, is your attitude toward class size? In the light of your experience, what would you advise a principal who is thinking of organizing large classes in his school?” Each teacher’s reaction to this question was listed under that class size with which he had had most experience. Thus (see table under question 71 on the mimeographed report which you hold) 70 is the largest number in the “Against” column because more teachers had had experience with large classes of 40-49 pupils than of any other size. With this in mind, it is doubtful whether the data show anything significant. Probably the reasons behind these reactions would be more illuminating. I have therefore boiled down their statements into the most representative brief sentiments (1) in favor of large classes; (2) for large classes, with reserva- tions; and (3) against large classes. The frequencies upon which these sentiments are based can be noted in Table I. ee Eleventh Yearbook 43 TABLE I (QUESTION 71) Size For For Against of No Large with Large Class Response Classes Reservations Classes Total 40-49 ~—s_ ... . we ss 6 + 13 70 93 §0-59 wwe ee +t 3 9 47 63 60 and over....... 3 6 2 25 36 TORE ceccces 13 13 24 142 192 Most Representative Sentiments For large classes: I prefer large classes because they are more interesting. For, with reservations: The only justification for large classes is shortage of teachers. If large classes must be organized, then by all means limit them to the brightest pupils in non-laboratory courses, put them under superior teachers, provide adequate equip- ment, suitable facilities, and wholesome atmosphere, back up the teachers, and give them schedules that will permit them to do remedial work without impairing their health. The duller the pupil, the smaller should be the class. Large classes encourage the leaders, but overwhelm and suffocate the followers. Against large classes: Large classes are stupidly uneconomical, unwholesome, and unjust, any way you take them. They make discipline more difficult and they reduce the pupils’ opportunities for oral expression and for education under normal social condi- tions. Equitable distribution of individual attention and respon- sibility simply cannot be made to pupils in large classes. Teaching inevitably becomes top-heavy with the mechanizations and routine of management. Education is not merely a matter of dollars and cents ; the physical and emotional strain on both teacher and pupils must be considered. The wholesomeness, the poise, the ideal social training that can come only from intimate personal contact of pupil and teacher are lost in large classes. If your goal is quantity pro- duction, then the lock-step, factory method of mass education is the thing; but if you are trying to train human beings, don’t put them in large clasess. It is inconceivable that any principal or teacher who is worthy of the name should prefer large classes; for while information can perhaps be dished out to pupils in such classes, real teaching is impossible. 44 National Association of Secondary-School Principals Remarks At the end of the questionnaire space was reserved and pertinent remarks solicited on any aspects of the problem of class size that had not been covered in the inquiry. On the whole, their com- ments merely reiterated reactions which they had already expressed. Some, however, possessed a cogency that their earlier observations lacked. The remarks which I considered most constructive will ap- pear in the complete report. A few of the most forceful or pungent of them are as follows: “The fundamental problem is, if one must have large classes, how can he minimize the disadvantages?” “Someone has to prove to the chairman of the budget commit- tee, who may be an expert in real estate values, that the apparently cheaper plan is in the end very expensive to the city.” “If I were called upon to teach a class of forty or more pupils in a modern foreign language, I would rather resign and seek a position where I could earn an honest living, than accept money for going through a farce.” “Tf the dead wood were removed, we’d have less need of classes of forty.” “The large-class teacher may get by with some pupils for a while because the situation is novel and pupils are willing to give teachers a sporting chance; but she can’t fool all of her pupils all . of the time.” “T have had pupils who were failing in large classes do well when placed in small classes; on the other hand, I have had pupils do well in large classes who had been failing in small classes. I suspect that there is no categorical solution to this problem.” “Perhaps if buildings were cleaner and physical surroundings better, the terrific strain under which we work in large classes would not be necessary.” “My observation is that maton will volunteer recitations freely in the same proportion in large and small classes. The pupils who will not recite in large classes will not recite in small classes.” “If a teacher has no personality, no sense of humor, and can- not inspire confidence in his pupils, he is a failure, either in a class of ten or in a class of fifty. The loss is greater, of course, in the class of fifty.” Eleventh Yearbook 45 “If homogeneous grouping of pupils on the basis of intelligence were extended to all of the grades, the teaching of large classes might be done to better advantage.” “It seems to me that many of your questions have self-evident answers, though taxpayers cannot be made to see them.” “This inquiry is rather useless, for class size is usually deter- mined by factors of space available, money, etc., and not by deeds, theories, or ideals.” “This is the most foolish of all questionnaires. The only satisfactory way would be to notify teachers five years in advance, thereby enabling them to keep statistics.” “Organize large classes only when the higher aims of the sub- ject are not vitally affected and when your best teachers do not satisfy you; then take the classes yourself, swallow your own medicine, and cure yourself if you can—and then don’t be afraid to admit to your subordinates what your honest opinion is.” Interpretations Those, then, are the data. What are their implications? In interpreting them let it be understood that this inquiry had the fault of most questionnaires—it went to a selected mailing list. Doubtless all of these teachers rationalized at times; most of them were probably too prejudiced on some matters to make purely dis- interested decisions ; a few were biased to the point of vituperation ; and one was downright scurrilous. Yet, remembering, I find it easy to be charitable toward even the most bitter among them. As pupils they attended small classes; they grew up in a popular belief in small classes; in so far as they were trained to teach, that train- ing assumed the divine right of small classes; and the major and happiest teaching experiences of most of them have been with small classes. Moreover, most of them have never had a fair chance to make a go of large classes. One should never stop a man and preach heaven to him when he is running to catch a train, lest he miss both of them. Even if large classes were ten times as effective as small ones under comparable conditions, a high school principal has it in his power to impose such: unreasonable conditions that the small classes will invariably show to better advantage. 46 National Association of Secondary-School Principals I believe that the great majority of these teachers devoted their best thought to the questionnaire, were absoluely sincere in their opinions, and are as desirous as you and I are of learning the truths about class size. They could not have answered as con- sistently as they did if they had been dissembling, for the ques- tionnaire was full of double-checks. I am confident that they were sincere. And they are all but unanimously opposed to large classes. Their three outstanding reasons for this opposition are: (1) in- ability to provide for individual differences; (2) increased dis- ciplinary problems; and (3) more work on the teacher. I think it is worthy of high commendation that the majority of these teachers placed first the problem of individualizing instruction. It is to their everlasting credit that they consider this their first and highest duty. They are sincerely trying to bring out the best in each pupil, and they feel that they cannot do it in large classes. Nevertheless, I do not feel that the majority of these teachers were qualified to express opinions upon which you would be war- ranted in basing exclusively your future class-size policies. Their responses were most meager, most hesitant, most equivocal, and most inconsistent upon the very questions that your Commission most wanted information; namely, successful large-class tech- niques of instruction and classroom management. Moreover, when the majority of these teachers had made no conscious effort to adapt such vital functions as the assignment, class organization, . teacher preparation, and discipline to large-class conditions, and when a bare majority of them had attempted to adapt routine, teaching pupils how to study, and adapting work to individual dif- ferences in pupils to large-class conditions—I do not believe that you are warranted in considering their verdict final. This is not necessarily a criticism of these teachers. Doubtless some of them have never been trained to adapt their teaching procedures to changes in conditions, and probably most of them were too busy to do it if they had known how. But the fact remains that prac- tically every teacher who had adapted all of the major teaching functions to large-class conditions either favored large classes or was extremely tolerant toward them. The conditions revealed in this questionnaire convince me that the experimental results of the investigations by Stevenson and those before him are not refuted; that as far as pupil achievement Eleventh Yearbook 47 is concerned, the burden of proof is now upon the defenders of small classes ; that in future experiments every possible effort should be made to measure the by-products of large and small classes as well as mere pupil achievement ; that the outstanding question is not whether small or large classes are better under present teaching methods, but whether successful large-class techniques can be evolved which an adequate number of teachers can be trained to use; that extreme care must be taken to select teachers who are competent to conduct experiments under controlled conditions and who are either absolutely impartial toward class size or are able and willing to sacrifie their prejudices for the sake of the truth; and that every reasonable effort must be made by administrators to see that the question of class size has a fair chance to be decided in the only way that it can be decided reliably—by experimentation under scientifically controlled conditions. CRITERIA FOR JUDGING THE EFFICIENCY OF A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL James M. Grass, WINTER PARK, FLORIDA The Junior High School Movement is a tangent diverging from established practices. It was created to achieve new pur- poses. It began without a pattern. It started without fixed stand- ards. Its only guide has been experience. To the literal-minded it grows irksome because it can not be standardized. Its chief virtue of continuous experimentation be- comes a fault to those who would objectively measure it. Stead- fastly it refuses to stay put. For a decade and a half we have experimented, accepted, amended, and rejected. Repeatedly we have adopted criteria for judging its efficiency and then proceeded to modify or discard them. 48 National Association of Secondary-School Principals We could not do otherwise and be scientific. And to fail to be scientific in this age of research and investigation would be ana- thema to the best educational thought of our day. The absence of definitely established standards is evidence only of an incessant discontent from which comes greater efficiency. Until we complete an experiment in the laboratory we can not draw conclusions. The very purpose of experiment is to postpone conclusion until the experiment is finished. During the process of experiment we watch the steps of its development, make observa- tions, record data, and test conclusions. Who has not watched the height lines crawl up the casing of a convenient door? We perpetuate the custom with our children. The junior high school is growing up. But it has not grown to its full stature. We can measure its growth and fix the lines of its present achievements. But we would no more curb the carrying forward of its experiment than we would check the growing up of our children. This paper, therefore, is undertaken in the conviction that criteria for judging the efficiency of a junior high school can be tentative only. Yet they are unavoidable. If for no other reason they are needed to help clarify the lessons of our experience. We can not improve and restate our criteria without first testing them. Everywhere one meets the question—How can we judge the worth of our junior high school? Experience alone can provide the answer. The writer has been placed in many a situation where the answer could not be sidestepped. Criteria for judging the efficiency of a junior high school mean merely this,—in the light of to-day’s experiment what are the best practices most universally accepted. Accordingly, let us put our subject this way,—what are the generally prevailing practices which can be used as criteria for judging the efficiency of a junior high school. 1. A Facutty WITH VISION Unquestionably the first criterion by which a junior high school should be judged is the vision of its administrators and instructors. Junior high schools very little in organization, program of studies, and administration; these can readily be appropriated. They vary much in the breadth of vision of the junior high school movement in the minds of their faculties. Principals and teachers need Eleventh Yearbook 49 unceasingly to search for the underlying philosophy of the junior high school, for the irresistible fascination of its true spirit, and for the enthusiasm which rewards this search. Vision comes from this study in preparation for a junior high school career. The teacher begins with an understanding of the mission of the junior high school to create a school of transition designed to articulate elementary and secondary education into one continuous and integrated school system of eleven or twelve years. Thus the teacher’s career can be inaugurated with a vision of a mission to be fulfilled. Then experience brings the conviction that the junior high school should begin by continuing elementary materials and methods to assure proper articulation between the elementary school and itself; that it should carry forward its own mission to integrate the school system by fusing elementary and secondary procedure into new and composite products adaptable to its own needs; and that it should close by initiating secondary materials and methods to assure proper articulation between itself and the senior high school. Thus will preparatory study and actual experience interpret the mission of the junior high school to the growing vision of a faculty. Without this clarifying and motivating vision the junior high school becomes a purposeless and static unit in a school sys- tem. With this vision to guide experiment and to inspire service the junior high school becomes a purposeful and dynamic center of educational reconstruction. The first criterion of a faculty with vision gives us the cause of which an efficient junior high school is the result. 2. TEACHERS TRAINED IN EARLY ADOLESCENT PsyCHOLOGY The acid test of any school unit is the degree of correspondence between the psychology of the age with which it deals and its organized environment of materials, method, and school life. This criterion leads to the conviction that the junior high school is an agency to make the study of psychology the basic principle of sec- ondary education. The child rather than subject-matter must be the focus of procedure. Fortunately many junior high school teachers have been trained in the elementary and primary school. Here they have learned that 50 National Association of Secondary-School Principals the study of child psychology accounts almost wholly for the in- creased efficiency of the elementary school by reason of which it has released its last two years to the secondary school. These teachers have carried over into the junior high school their experi- ence of making psychology the basis of their method. Under intel- ligent leadership they will become thorough students and practical exponents of the principles underlying early adolescent psychology. Like the junior high school itself early adolescence is a period of gradual transition from the age of childhood in the elemen- tary school, through the age of pubescence in the junior high school, into the mid-adolescence of the senior high school and to late ado- lescence of higher education and early vocational life. There is, therefore, a psychological correspondence between the age of tran- sition and the school of transition. Early adolescence is a gradual awakening, an irresistible desire for wider contacts, the forward look, and a broader vision. As- cordingly, the efficient junior high school offers in its building, equipment, curriculum, and its organized environment richer facili- ties which harmonize with these expanding intincts. Early adolescence is an age of budding independence in intel- lectual activity, of instinctive trying-out of new powers, a sampling of varied activities to discover wherein proficiency and therefore achievement may be found. The early adolescent is impatient of exclusive review in old educational materials. He has no present concern for details. The simpler aspects of each new study content his present cravings. Refinements come later. The efficiency of a junior high school is to a large degree determined by the harmony between these instincts and its curriculum construction and class- room procedure. The second criterion of building a junior high school upon the foundation of early adolescent psychology gives assurance that it will pass the acid test of its efficiency—a fundamental correspond- ence between the early adolescent age and the early adolescent school. 3. A RECONSTRUCTED PROGRAM OF STUDIES The enacting clause of a junior high school is a reconstructed program of studies. Briefly this means a change from a vertical line of demarcation between elementary and secondary courses of | Eleventh Yearbook 51 study, which produced the gap in the 8-4 plan, to a diagonal line of gradual articulation between them, which will integrate a 6-3-3 or 6-6 plan into a continuous school system. Each course should proceed by natural, transitional, and pro- gressive stages from its elementary to its secondary constituents. Each course should fuse the refinements of its allied elementary courses with the simpler aspects of its allied secondary courses. Each course should provide a survey of the subject field to the end of exploring aptitudes and of revealing its educational and voca- tional possibilities. The materials of each course should deal with the problems, interests, and needs of the early adolescent age. The so-called junior high schools, so frequently discredited in the early years of the movement, failed chiefly to replace the exclus- ively elementary courses of their first two years and the exclusively secondary courses of their last year with the general courses charac- teristic of efficient junior high schools of to-day. The present wide- spread curriculum study, research, and experiment are evidence of an increasing appreciation of the vital need for reconstructed courses of study. Invariably the approach in a present-day project to adopt the junior high school is the program of studies. There has been a time when the initial approach too frequently was the mere re-orga- nization of the three grades into a new administrative unit under the name of a junior high school. This third criterion of a recon- structed program of studies is steadily becoming the actual enacting clause which makes effective a junior high school in fact as well as in name. 4. SocrALIzED CLASSROOM PROCEDURE The exclusively cultural-disciplinary concept of education has been modified, not replaced, by a modern social-practical concept. This new concept leads to the conviction that the socialization of the curriculum is a paradox without the socialization of classroom procedure. Manifestly, then, a fourth criterion for judging the efficiency of a junior high school is participation in the widespread experiment of socialized classroom procedure. This fourth criterion assures a modern and consistent program for an efficient junior high school, viz., an objective to introduce new social-practical values, the 52 National Association of Secondary-School Principals reconstruction of materials to socialize the curriculum, and social- ized classroom procedure to harmonize method with objective and materials. A more comprehensive and sympathetic understanding of early adolescent psychology will save junior high school teachers from fatal errors in classroom method. Early adolescence is charac- terized by a dynamic mental growth from the vicarious thinking life of the child to the independent thinking life of the adolescent. The early adolescent youth has an irrepressible instinct to think, to inquire, and to investigate for himself. He wants to discover and to understand in terms of his own experience. Yet his power for independent thinking and study has not developed to the point where he can do so unguided. The faculty of an efficient junior high school are the unobtru- sive directors of early adolescent mental expansion. They accept the concept of the classroom as a laboratory even though it chal- lenges their former practice of making it a recitation room. They subscribe to the principle of “activity as the chief means of learn- ing,” though they are themselves unable at all times to apply it. They believe in learning by doing because they themselves are being trained to efficiency during the process of doing new things. They are willing to experiment with directed learning, socialized class- room procedure, and other expressions of the classroom laboratory ideal because their classrooms compose in part the laboratory in which the junior high school experiment is being conducted. This fourth criterion obviously requires the adoption of the longer period. The laboratory needs more time than the recitation. Likewise, socialized classroom precedure, which is a laboratory method, is impracticable under traditional recitation limitations of forty-five minute periods. Consequently the fourth criterion leads to the practice of administering an efficient junior high school on the basis of six one-hour daily periods or an approximate equivalent. 5. GUIDANCE Guidance is a synonym for the junior high school. It must guide its pupils from the common and single curriculum of the ele- mentary school, through its own enriched program of studies for testing aptitudes and revealing educational training, to the proper nn satan MB ne NT ee a Eleventh Yearbook 53 curriculum placement of its individual pupils among the multiple curricula of the senior high school. This individualization of junior high school instruction and administration is peculiarly a guidance problem. The guidance program has three objectives: (1) The discovery of individual aptitudes, (2) The discovery of educational oppor- tunities for the training of aptitudes when revealed, (3) The dis- covery of vocational openings for the useful employment of apti- tudes when revealed and trained. In another way of statement, the junior high school offers to the early adolescent youth, as he instinc- tively looks forward to his proper place in society, three visions: (1) His own native endowment, (2) The world of education, (3) The world of work. In still another way of statement three pur- poses must be concurrently fulfilled: (1) Exploration of aptitudes, (2) Revelation of training, (3) Motivation of effort, The efficient junior high school subscribes in no uncertain terms to the practice of classroom guidance instruction. It is convinced that junior high school children with their impulses to mental self- activity should have their own conscious interpretation of what the junior high school is planned to give them, what they are to achieve for themselves during its three years, and how they are to succeed in their efforts to reach these goals. Further they must know the worlds of education and vocation if they are to find their intelli- gent adjustment to both during the periods of training and voca- tional life. The efficient junior high school, therefore, believes in a guidance course of study as an integral part of the program of studies and in the guidance classroom period as an integral part of the schedule of classes. This fifth criterion leads still farther to the vocational coun- selor, the girls’ adviser, the boys’ adviser, the homeroom weekly period, and to other types of social and personal guidance as varied as junior high schools themselves. Experience is teaching us all that the junior high school teacher is primarily a guide of early adolescent youth and secondarily a teacher of subject matter. Our fifth criterion teaches us that guidance is not only a synonym of the junior high school but also its basic method. By the efficiency with which the guidance program is administered can we judge the worth of a junior high school. 54 National Association of Secondary-School Principals 6. JuNtor CITIZENSHIP A sixth criterion for the appraisal of a junior high school is its program of Junior Citizenship, more commonly called extra-cur- riculum activities. Dewey’s definition of the “school as life, not preparation for life” is interpreted by Kilpatrick in his concept of education as “the continuous remaking of the child’s life upon ever richer and higher levels.” Thus defined the junior high school is the early adolescent cross-section of life, a higher level than the elementary school and antecedent to the richer experience of the senior high school. It is, as Henry Neumann states it, “the special field for their activities” as junior citizens. The socialized curriculum, socialized classroom procedure, and socialized school life constitutes a harmonious whole because they complement each other. The materials of the classroom, the method of instruction and learning, and the citizenship activities of the early adolescent school consistently work together as another higher and richer experience toward the goal of all education,—the citizen serv- ing society. Early adolescence is an age of general expansion; a physical expansion with its instinct for ceaseless activity; a mental expan- sion with its instinct for rationalized understanding and its aversion to mechanized practice; a social expansion with its instinct for co- operative service; and an emotional expansion with its instinct for altruistic expression. All of these worthy instincts are converted into useful and saving habits of conduct through the program of junior citizenship. A competent junior high school faculty know that junior citi- zenship requires the unremitting and sympathetic control of those who understand and love the early adolescent age. They know that they must be the same unobstrusive directors of the citizenship activities of their homerooms as they are of the directed learning of their classrooms. They have become convinced that junior citizenship is extra- curricularizing the curriculum activities of the classroom. They, therefore, accept without hesitation their assignments as homeroom counselors, club sponsors, and co-workers in citizenship activities. Their experience in the school life outside the classroom increases 55 Eleventh Yearbook their powers more effectively to perform their duties in the class- room. They cannot comprehend how any junior high school can be appraised as efficient without the program of active, living, and inspiring junior citizenship. ‘ 7. ADEQUATE BUILDING ACCOMMODATIONS There are building criteria by which to appraise a junior high school: a library which is the general laboratory of all classrooms ; a gymnasium where new physical powers may be properly trained ; health rooms where unfortunate physical handicaps may be reme- died before they become permanent; practical art shops for girls and boys where both may be trained to worthy home membership ; fine arts rooms where instincts for the appreciation of the aesthetic may find expression; no study halls to invite wrong habits of undi- ricted learning; the labortory ideal for every classroom where the principle of activity as the chief means of learning finds a stimu- lating environment; a students’ conference room where leadership in junior citizenship may be trained; and ample administrative and supervisory quarters where the educational leadership of principal and advisory and supervisory associates may function effectively. Prior to the architect’s preparation of plans there should be drawn up a set of educational specifications which will control the architect as his specifications control the contractor. These specifi- cations amount to the visualized operation of the actual school with- in the building. They specify the type, size, and number of class- rooms, the size and equipment of library, gymnasium, auditorium, i shops, laboratories, home economics rooms, music and art rooms, office quarters, and accessory facilities which are likely not to be included except the educational architect specifies them. Without competent educational specifications school organiza- tion, its operation, and its efficiency will be handicapped by unfor- tunate and unnecessary restrictions of construction. Adequate edu- cational specifications are indispensable if a junior high school building is to be determined by the organization of the school to be operated within its walls. The day of the educational architect is at hand. His co-opera- tion will be received with enthusiastic welcome by the building archi- 56 National Association of Secondary-School Principals tect. The services of both co-ordinate a unified educational-build- ing program which guarantees that the physical plant will measure up to the criteria of efficiency. 8. A UNIT or EpUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTATION A final criterion for judging the efficiency of a junior high school is its freedom to continue experimentation and its privilege to challenge inhibitive traditions. It is the pivotal center of educa- tional reconstruction. It dares to make mistakes that it may make progress. It protests standardization until its problems are solved and as long afterwards as possible. It must not be circumscribed by convential practices which impede the experiment to increase its efficiency. Progress has been made. But its mission is only partly ful- filled. Conditions in any junior high school cannot become rigidly fixed without limiting growth toward greater effectiveness. The efficient junior high school will endeavor to stay in a plastic state of progressive development. Experiment, research, investigation, discussion, and unremitting study are its media of increasing effi- ciency. The final criterion of continued experimentation leaves us with what we started,—tentative standards of measurement. This is the creative inspiration of the junior high school movement—it raises higher and higher the criteria for judging its own efficiency. THE PROBLEMS OF THE SIX-YEAR JUNIOR-SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL Francis L. Bacon Supervisor SECONDARY EpucatTion, Newton, MAssACHUSETTS Our first problem is to define our terms. What do we under- stand by a six-year school? In a general way the six-year school presents the conception of a single building with one principal in charge. Common housing is apparently the one certain element in this conception. In administrative practice there are modifications and distinctions. These may be defined sufficiently for our purpose as modifications of the 6-3-3 type of organization. In this case the junior and senior schools are administered as segregated parts, Eleventh Yearbook 57 each in a restricted section or floor of a common building. One principal administers both units with, at least, one administrative assistant. All the facilities are separate except those which are classified under the name, “special.” A more clearly defined six-year school is administered as a single unit. One principal carries all of the administrative and supervisory duties. There is little, if any, distinction between teachers and but one recognized faculty group. Our subject, as we understand it, is inclusive of this latter conception plus its immedi- ate modification previously defined. The six-year high school organization is typically in small towns and housed for the most part in small, single buildings. In some states as Vermont this type of organization applies to more than half of the high schools. In these very small six-year schools the outstanding problems are those generally common to any small high school, whether they are of the six-year or four-year type such as: The problem of securing competent teachers to handle special vocational subjects. The problem of organization so that with a small number of teachers and small enrollment in classes the desirable variety of work may be accomplished to meet individual differences. The problem of securing adequate laboratory and demon- stration rooms together with special equipment in scientific, voca- tional, and industrial lines. The problem in rural communities of tying up special vocational subjects with the environment of students who are typical residents of farming or small village communities. The problem of costs. THE ORGANIZATION PROBLEM This last mentioned problem is more suggestive of certain finan- cial difficulties that may be more peculiar to the six-year school. We shall not attempt to discuss problems that are not, in large degree, characteristic of the six-year organization. This last prob- lem precipitates the question: When should the six-year school be organized. Building costs alone, will limit the justification of sep- arate junior and senior high schools to communities sufficiently 58 National Association of Secondary-School Principals large to enroll more than 500 or 600 pupils in the seventh to twelfth grades. In smaller communities a single building, housing both junior and senior units is generally more economical to build. Satis- factory maintenance and operation support this solution of a vexing building problem. When the school population of the seventh through the twelfth grades reaches more than 600 to 1000 pupils the modified type previously defined becomes increasingly desirable. As the enroll- ment nears 1000 the satisfactory and efficient use of the special facilities as assembly hall, gymnasium, library, laboratories, etc., becomes increasingly difficult. In places of this size the only intelli- gent solution of the problem of junior-senior organization should rest on a careful survey of the future possibilities, especially in respect to the growth of the population. In case the latter seems comparatively static the modified type of 6-3-3 organization with one building but especially adapted, segregated sections would seem advisable. Should the rate of population-growth seem to warrant, the modified type of organization could be so planned that it would perform a temporary or transitory service with the eventual organi- zation of the regular 6-3-3 plan. The existing building, if properly constructed, would operate as either the senior or junior high-school building according to the character of the situation. Thus in practice the six-year high school is intermediate in advantage between the high school organized under the 8-4 plan and under the 6-3-3 plan. Usually the six-year type of school could be judged as suitable for places that would not have a junior high school of at least 300 or 400 pupils in case one were to be organized. For the larger places it is generally agreed that this 6-3-3 plan of organization is the best one. If the number of pupils does not justify this type of organization then the 6-6 plan seems to be the next best arrangement. Tue ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEM There are at once a number of administrative problems that are related to the principal’s duties. These do not present difficulties that are peculiar in secondary-school administration, and will be, in practice, solved according to the character of the individual prin- cipal. It is the principal himself, who presents one of the most Eleventh Yearbook 59 outstanding problems in the six-year school. He is too likely to be of the traditional, small four-year high-school type. His teaching and administrative experience have been limited to this type of school. Too often he has not had the graduate training nor the progressional ambition that would suggest promising offset to his restricted experience. About the junior high school he knows little beyond the name. His placement as the directing officer of the small six-year high school guarantees a considerable domination by the senior high-school unit with many, if not all, of the dangers which are incident to the six-year organization. It is also possible in the larger six-year schools to have a junior high-school assistant principal, as the one miost available person, appointed to the principalship of the six-year school. In such cases the lack of training might well be considered a most serious handicap to the welfare of the school, but in the long run is probably much less serious than the reverse situation previously mentioned. These cases seem to point out the fact that the educational sit- uation has not provided for men or women suitable in training or experience for the comparatively new position of the six-year high- school principalship. The successful development of this desirable type of school with the satisfactory solution of the many problems involved, is largely dependent upon the direct effort made to improve the status of the six-year school principalship. The position is sufficiently important to warrant a demand for the best qualifications with corresponding compensations in salary and education prestige. Tue TIME SCHEDULE The problem of the time schedule presents important practical difficulties in the six-year school. First, there is the length of period which in general practice is longer in the junior high school. It is largely believed that the longer period is essential to the junior high school idea if the organization is to set up the best opportunities for the realization of the junior high-school objectives. On the other hand, it is well known that the senior high school does not lend itself so well to the longer periods and resulting longer school day. 60 National Association of Secondary-School Principals In many places where the 6-3-3 plan has developed the juniu: high-school time schedule had tended to approach the customary high-school closing time rather than to maintain the longer day of the grammar grades. The psychological factor of the name, high school, has operated influentially here. In some cases school patrons have insisted that because the senior high-school schedule has closed at one or one-thirty o'clock the same must be true of the newly-organized junior high school. In the six-year school the administration has often tried to use the longer periods as best for the junior high school section, while the senior high school group has operated on a schedule of shorter periods. This situation makes complete unity of admin- istration impossible. It has led to confusion in class periods, in the noon hour, and in the passing of classes. The double-bell schedule also causes no end of difficulty in the use of the assembly hall, the gymnasium, and of other special facilities. It often happens that the time schedule of one unit may be rather easily arranged on a 50, 60, or 75 minute basis because of a smaller or larger group of pupils or by reason of other factors; while the other group may be so congested or restricted that periods longer than 40 or 45 minutes are practically impossible. The only practical solution is an identical time schedule for both groups, though there is considerable danger that the length of period is likely to be determined by the desires of the senior high-school, and thus inimical, especially to the best interest of the junior high- school, and probably not so desirable for the senior sections as the longer periods. Every effort should be made to obtain longer periods, presumably at least six 50 minute periods, while in some of the smaller schools an eight period day will be desirable. THE ASSEMBLY PROBLEM In many of the six-year schools it becomes necessary because of the comparatively small number of pupils to hold assemblies in- clusive of all grades, yet, in practice, it is exceedingly difficult to plan assembly programs which are effective in value and interest to the entire six-year group. The spread of interests is too great. The background of experience and information and the type of presentation desirable are too varied to make the best educational Eleventh Yearbook 61 use of the assembly periods. Accordingly, single assemblies under the six-year plan are likely to retain in form and content, all of the mere entertainment and questionable assembly practices from which the progressive school is rapidly escaping. The wise administrator will hold regular assemblies for the separate groups, if at all feasible, with a combined meeting upon occasions that seem suit- able. The assembly problem is typical of other special activities. PERSONNEL PROBLEMS There is also the problem of the teaching personnel. Shall the principal handle his teachers as a single group for faculty meetings, committee work, et cetera, or shall there contacts be through separ- ate groups? In the smaller schools the corps is sumewhat too small for effective separation, while in the larger schools separa- tion of faculty meetings may be saving in time and interest to the two groups. At any rate, for purposes of articulation it would seem wise to hold some meetings that would be common to both groups. In general practice one factulty group is desirable with as little distinction as possible. Differences in training, qualifications, and salary should be adjusted as rapidly as possible. All member of the teaching staff should carry programs call- ing for contacts with both junior and senior groups, particularly in relation to subject matter that requires continuity. Such assign- ments should prove of great advantage in the progressive develop- ment of methods of instruction and adaptation of subject matter to the individuals needs. Senior high-school teachers will gain much by teaching in the early grades of the six-year school and helping to lay the foundational material which they so often criticize as poorly done. In this question of personnel there is the problem of combating a rather strong tendency to overload the teaching program of the junior high school teachers, because the senior high-school teachers are considered as specialists and may not be encroached upon so easily. The greater load of the junior high-school teacher may develop in one of several ways. Classes left over from the senior high-school program may be assigned to junior high-school teachers, since their programs are considered to be less difficult and exacting. The same situation tends also to develop in activity and duty assign- 62 National Association of Secondary-School Principals ments. The junior high school teacher is more likely to receive a program involving more pupil hours, since classes may be thought of as less important, and accordingly made larger. The fact that college and vocational curricula requirements call for greater exacti- tude is utilized by the senior high-school teacher as effective argu- ment in such unbalanced assignments. Practically, there is some justification in such administrative procedure. Theoretically, it cannot be justified. Unquestionably such practices fail to recog- nize the importance of foundational teaching, and tend strongly to make lower standards acceptable in the junior high-school division, thus leading to difficulties in articulation, particularly in respect to subject matter that is sequential through the six-year period. The only solution in this respect is the identical recognition of all members of the six-year teaching staff. There must be equality in salary for identical training and experience, comparable pupil hour loads, and as much concern for the teaching assignment in the seventh grade as in the twelfth grade. After all, each grade has some peculiarities for which teachers may be especially adapted. Such suitability should be capitalized and respected. THE StupENt Activity PROBLEM According to the studies made, separate buildings and separate principals for each of the secondary school units accelerate the number of activity opportunities open to pupils. Here again the senior high-school is likely to absorb into the activities that it would have anyway, some or much of the interest and initiative which the junior high-school group would manifest if it were on its own. An important part of the separate housing facilities is in respect to the availability of special types of floor space which are more likely to be found in buildings especially designed for junior high-school use. The item of exclusive control over the special rooms and equipment is of distinct advantage in the assurance of larger ac- tivity use. The social needs of the two groups are considerably different in form and content; and constructive recognition, guid- ance, and effort can be more clearly emphasized and obtained under the more definite opportunities offered by separate organizations. On the other hand, where the groups are small, a single build- ing designed to accommodate both groups will insure better special Eleventh Yearbook 63 facilities and richer activity opportunities than would be possible under the 8-4 plan with the smaller type of building that would perforce obtain. It is rather clear that whenever the size of the groups, justify, this problem can best be met by separate buildings, but that a single unit organization is superior in the smaller schools. The immaturity of the pupils in grades 7, 8 and 9 does not permit easy adjustment in the social activities to the much greater maturity found in the pupils of the upper grades. While the ac- tivity program has common objectives and there is naturally a simi- lar organization for both groups, the treatment must be essentially progressive and hence to some extent distinctive in the two groups. Tue ProspL—eM OF PHYSIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY One of the most difficult questions in the six-year organization is that of the proper segregation and separation of the mature and the immature. Pupils in grades ten to twelve are predominantly mature physiologically: in grades seven to nine they are in a transi- tional stage physiologically. “At the age of twelve less than five per cent of the pupils are post-pubescent: ages thirteen to fifteen are markedly transitional ages as far as puberty is concerned.” This spread physiologically affects to important degree the intellec- tual and sociological factors, particularly the latter. The younger pupils are inclined to ape the most distressing and artificial manners, customs, and attitudes of the older pupils. Sophistication, already a problem in any high-school group, is likely to be given additional emphasis where it will be more serfous. On the other hand, the older pupils are inclined to resent the enforced association with the younger groups. Sociologically this problem is best met by as much segregation as possible. This question is intimately related to the disciplinary control of the school. It is often reported that discipline is more difficult in the six-year school, though it is rather obvious that the general morale and spirit of the school is more likely to be the determining factors in satisfactory or inefficient control. However, it is reasonable to suppose that general morale is more difficult to obtain and hold under an organi- zation that carries so much diversity of age and interest in its pupil membership. It is equally true that there must be clearly recog- nized distinctions in the types of punishment and disciplinary treat- 64 National Association of Secondary-School Principals ment suitable to the differences from immaturity to maturity. Larger demands are made upon the teacher’s and the administrator’s knowl- edge of the manners and morals of youth, as well as more accurate psychological information and treatment. CURRICULUM PROBLEMS A constant danger and one not usually met in anything like a satisfactory way is in respect to the curriculum organization. We are sufficiently familiar with the curriculum objectives and the sub- ject matter organization of the junior high-school. It is vastly different in theory and practice from the traditional four-year high- school. In the six-year school the teachers of the senior division or the department heads tend to impose upon the instruction in the lower section, that traditional type of school teaching which is gen- erally known as lesson-hearing. This is all the more operative in the six-year high-school by reason of the naturally restricted pro- gram of the small school. Exploratory, broadening, finding, and introductory courses are difficult to offer in satisfactory form. The necessity of offering college preparatory subjects, though there be but one or more pupils going to college, intensifies the complexity of this problem. The first step in the solution of this problem is the recognition of the distinctive purposes of the two units. No better statement has been made on this point than the one offered in Bullein No. 35, The Cardinal Principles: “The six years to be devoted to secondary education may well be divided into two periods which may be designated as the junior and senior periods. In the junior period emphasis should be placed upon the attempt to help the pupil to explore his own aptitudes and to make at least provisional choice of the kinds of work to which he will devote himself. In the senior period emphasis should be given to training in the fields thus chosen. This distinction lies at the basis of the organization of junior and senior high schools.” This distinction implies two programs of studies, each as a separately integrated curriculum but with carefully planned and supervised articulation to insure the essential continuity of second- ary education. Successful organization and supervision of a six- Eleventh Yearbook 65 year high-school in accordance with this conception depends upon the principal’s recognition of the factors involved, with correspond- ing ability ‘to translate such recognition to his teaching staff. A survey of the existing situation, a working knowledge of the best educational thought and practice, and the consequent re-organi- zation of the entire curriculum matter through the co-operative effort of the teaching force, are the means whereby this problem of curriculum articulation may be met successfully. ARTICULATORY PROBLEMS The general problem of articulation runs throughout this dis- cussion and is involved in most of the specific problems presented. The question of articulation stands peculiarly alone in respect to the sixth grade. This is, of course, equally operative in the 6-3-3 plan. To the degree that the six-year school takes on the character and spirit of the senior high-school, ever a strong tendency, the question of sixth grade contact becomes important. There will be something of a gap here in any event, and it may be lessened and sucessfully bridged only by careful emphasis upon the character of the seventh grade treatment. The latter should be largely in spirit and in method the same as in the sixth grade. The lesson between the sixth and seventh grades under the six-year plan is likely to become more important and should be realized accordingly. Another danger relative to the general problem of articulation is that of the tendency merely to departmentalize the seventh and eighth grades, and attach them to a four-year high-school. The prevention of this result is one of the outstanding problems. The question becomes one of the ninth grade as the final year of the junior high-school, or as the initial year of the traditional high- school. It must be one or the other, and it is well established that the fundamental purposes of the junior high-school organization cannot be realized in the two years of the seventh and eighth grades. This realization must be carried out in a constructive junior high- school program including the ninth grade, if it is to be made effec- tive and the six-year high-school organization is to be justified edu- cationally. 66 National Association of Secondary-School Principals CONCLUSION. Though the problems are many and difficult there are promis- ing solutions in every case. Many of the most pertinent problems can be obviated by an approach toward middle ground with re- sulting modification of the extreme of a completely conceived and executed single six-year unit on the one hand, and two entirely seg- regated units under one general administration on the other. The advantages of convenient and immediate articulation in the six-year school are so pronounced that properly utilized they can be made to outweigh the difficulties. In conclusion, it seems desirable to point out briefly, by the following list, the advantages which are obtainable in the six-year organization: Economy of building through common use of one auditorium, one gymnasium, one library, one group of shops for practical arts, one group of laboratories, one lunch room. Economy of administration through one administrative head, with special teachers of fine and practical arts, physical education, foreign languages, commercial subjects, able to work in both units. One office, one teachers’ room, one set of special equipment and furniture. The greater opportunity for articulation of curricula, courses of study, methods of instruction, continuity of subject-matter, and progressive administrative direction and control. The more favorable conditions for the integration of the civic, social, moral, and vocational opportunities through a unified six-year program. The larger opportunity for a co-ordinated and developmental system of guidance with a follow-up plan that can be made effective. More direct articulation between the ninth and tenth grades. Larger opportunities for mutual appreciation and sympathetic understanding among pupils and teachers. eo tp matacannand aaTmaanISEOO Eleventh Yearbook 67 CHARACTER EDUCATION IN THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL E. H. FisuHBack, PRINCIPAL, JUNIOR HiGH ScuooLt, ANDERSON, INDIANA. The boys and girls of the junior high school age find themselves at the threshold of adult life ©. a world that has been all but revolutionized in the last twenty-five years. They and their parents are bewildered as they view the rapidly changing conditions affecting social welfare. While youth has not lost its way, the common ob- servations of teachers and the scientific investigations of experts and social workers reveal the urgent need in the lives of adolescent pupils for some better method of character training. SoctAL CHANGES TuHat AFFECT YOUTH New Inventions—When seven o'clock in the evening arrives, the boy or girl of the junior high school has at least three modes of activity at hand that were not available to the youth of a quarter of a century ago. He may stay at home and listen to the various programs given over the radio. He may go to the motion picture house to take a chance at seeing something of value, or he may get into an automobile and be quickly transported beyond the limits of his neighborhood or his city. The Radio.—The radio is in its infancy but already it has made a profound impression upon young people. The fifteen year old boy who has the opportunity of a radio set, and most of them have, has heard the President of the United States talk at the Capitol at Washington. He has heard sermons by metropolitan preachers. He has heard grand opera from the large cities. He has listened to jazz music by the hour. The typical fifteen year boy of the year 1900 had experienced little outside of his narrow home environment. Naturally, this new experience will make a difference in his think- ing, as his attention is called so definitely to that great world beyond his own neighborhood. He will acquire an interest in places and persons far removed from him and such experience will create a curiosity unknown in the life of the boy who lived in more or less seclusion twenty-five years ago. 68 National Association of Secondary-School Principals Motion Pictures—The motion picture has been used long enough now to enable students of the question to evaluate its influence upon youth. Like the radio, the moving picture takes young people into realms unknown before it was invented. Far distant cities of the earth are brought before their very eyes. Scenes of life far re- moved from the child’s actual experience are forced upon his atten- tion. Great moral issues are presented in a vivid setting. Matters of sex are shown in situations that are overwhelming. Great les- sons are taught and convictions crystallized that could not, except through a long period of time, be built into a human life. Un- doubtedly, the motion picture has stimulated curiosity in the minds of young people. Not only in matters of sex and moral questions, but in places distant from the home neighborhood. Boys and girls see the pictures of great thriving cities and they want to visit them. They see before their eyes the great scenery of the world and this creates a desire for travel. Great episodes of adventure cause a feeling of restlessness that was practically unknown before the advent of the movie. Besides the curiosity and restlessness, it has made the youth more alert intellectually. Their stock of general information is increased materially. Imagination is quickened as every English teacher will testify. The Automobile——Somewhat akin to the motion picture is the automobile as far as young people are concerned. It will quickly transport them to distant places where thought and imagination are stimulated. There are few children of the junior high school age who have not been in some of the large cities of the United States. Sometimes the automobile may take children from parental control which many times results disastrously. Life in general moves more swiftly than it did before the invention of the auto- mobile. Home Life-——Every community has its alarmist who tells us that the home has failed. It is true that many homes have failed and are failing, but it is also true that most homes at the present time are wholesome places for youth. However, certain changes have taken place in the home that makes it different from what it was twenty-five years ago. The entrance of women into the work of the world has led great numbers of mothers away from home during the day. Many of them are engaged in industrial Se Eleventh Yearbook 69 work. Mother is not at home when the children arrive from school. Many pupils are forced to go to school in the morning after mother has gone to work. The evenings that used to be spent in quiet study or restful conversation are spent away from home, or the family sits about “all tired out.” Divorces have in- creased at an increasing rate and now great numbers of families are broken. In these instances it is the children who suffer most. Every teacher is familiar with the discipline cases that arise be- cause of the lack of either father or mother. There seems also to be a growing tendency for parents not to talk of matters of conduct and character as they once did. They are expecting the church, the court, and the school to do much of this work. Home study for the junior high school is next to impossible as most schools have found, and they have therefore substituted super- vised study at school. It may not be for the best interests of all concerned to do this entirely, but home conditions have changed so much that the need demanded school time for study. The changed conditions in the home demand some better means of giving train- ing for character. What institution can do it better than the school ? The Church—While the church is deep and far reaching in its influence with young people, great numbers, probably a majority of boys and girls, do not come directly under the influence of the church. Also, the church does not have the authority that it had before social conditions underwent the changes that have come about since 1900. Family worship and the discussion of religious topics in the home have steadily declined. Undoubtedly religious convic- tions are among the deepest of the human race, and religious prin- ciples are among the strongest factors in the development of charac- ter, but the fact remains that the church is not reaching the mass of young people and religious instruction is not given in the home as it was formerly. Moral Standards.—There is evidence that moral standards are changing among young people. Senior high school teachers note that there is a much freer discussion of sex questions among young people than there was a few years ago. Junior high school teachers know that the conviction of what constitutes mine and thine is rather weak at the present time. Young people are inclined to have the same disregard for law that their elders exhibit. Authority, as 70 ~=— National Association of Secondary-School Principals such, in parents, in the school, or in the state does not mean as much as it once did. Some means need to be found that will clarify moral issues and will establish moral standards in the lives of youth. Changes in Economic Conditions —There has been a radical change in economic conditions in the last twenty-five years. The average family has more ready cash than it had formerly. This has enabled its members to buy more of the conveniences and comforts of life. There has been an enormous increase in the number of telephones in use during this period. Bathrooms, fur- naces, electric washing machines, radios, automobiles, and daily newspapers have become necessities in the homes of the typical family in the United States. At one California high school re- cently a complaint was registered with the school authorities be- cause the students of the school did not have proper places for the parking of automobiles. The fathers of these same students rode bicycles to school in the nineties. A few years ago the average school grade attained by the population as a whole was near the fifth grade. This average has risen steadily until now it must be some place in the high school. Efforts at Overcoming Social Changes——The legislatures of the various states have attempted to pass laws that require the Bible to be read in the schools. Some have attempted to have religion taught in the schools. Others require certain qualifications of the teachers. The people themselves know that something is needed to be done to improve conditions, and they turn to the public school, because it is their school, for encouragement and help. It becomes the duty of those who are connected with the schools and whose training is such that they know what should be done, to point the way by including in the curriculum material and methods that will secure the results that all are seeking. The School Cares for the Needs of Pupils——In the past, pupils in the schools were found to be ill and in need of attention and all needed exercise and recreation, so health education was undertaken in the school. Home conditions have changed so materially from a generation or so ago that the study of foods and clothing becomes a necessity in the school. Likewise, industrial arts has become a part of every junior high school curriculum. Cox has called our attention to the fact that all the subjects of secondary education Eleventh Yearbook 71 have found their way into the school curriculum, not because some one evolved a theory that a particular subject should be given in the school, but because a need was found in the lives of the boys and girls, and then the school proceeded to give the help needed through organized courses of study and training. The state, through its public school system, becomes a foe of ignorance and should just as truly become a foe of all that would endanger its institutions through the lack of character in the individual members of the state. Responsibility of the Junior High School—Desperate efforts are being made by junior high schools to adapt their method and subject-matter to the new day in which society finds itself. There is a growing feeling among all school people that, as one superin- tendent in a city system remarked: “It is not enough for the teacher to check the conduct of pupils.” Something more con- structive and far reaching is needed. The teacher has not done her full duty when she watches the arithmetic papers of her pupils to see that no one cheats. Her duty leads her to try to establish by scientific materials and methods such ideals and habits that youth will be led to accept and improve the standards of the better class of adults. Such, then, is the need and the plain duty of the school. Youth in the junior high school must be trained in the school, through the various avenues open in the junior high school, includ- ing direct character training, with a full consciousness on the part of teachers that after all character in its full meaning 1s the goal of all education. OBJECTIVES OF CHARACTER EDUCATION. The objectives of character education in the junior high school may be stated briefly as follows: 1. Opportunities to make use of all the qualities that enter into a fully developed character. 2. The awakening and quickening of the moral judgment. 3. Opportunity for the correction of false notions and ideals. This may come through the teacher or other pupils. 4. Appreciation of the importance: of right thinking and acting. 72 National Association of Secondary-School Principals 5. Conduct situations should be emotionalized so that satis- faction results from noble thinking and acting. 6. A knowledge of the accepted ideals of the better class of people. 7. An appreciation of character in others past and present. 8. A voluntary acceptance of the right ideals. 9. The right habits formed and rationalized so they do not fail in social situations. The school must provide opportunities for the use of all the qualities that enter into a fully developed character—Dewey said a good many years ago, “The only way to prepare for social life is to engage in social life. To form the habits of social usefulness and serviceableness apart from any direct social need and motive, apart from any existing social situation, is, to the letter, teaching the child to swim by going through the motions outside the water. The most indispensable condition is left out of account, and the results are correspondingly partial.” These words were written before the junior high school, as an institution, was recognized, but the spirit of the junior high school was very well expressed. The arbitrary formal methods of a quarter of a century ago are not conducive to opportunities for real social relations. As long as the recitation is a formal affair between the teacher and the child who is reciting, there are not many opportunities for the use and de- velopment of the qualities of character. Project teaching and the socialized recitation have become a part of all the typical junior high schools. Likewise, if conduct is related only to the teacher and does not connect with the small school group, or whole school community, not very much in the way of character development may be expected at the present time. The junior high school de- liberately and systematically plans the work of the school in such a way that the normal social situations that arise when pupils work together for common purposes will produce the maximum of social and character training. This objective has become very prominent in junior high schools. The Awakening and Quickening of the Moral Judgment.— Limited experiments show that the moral judgment may be awak- ened and quickened by training, just as other qualities may be im- Eleventh Yearbook 73 proved. Teachers know that in those homes where time and at- tention is given to the moral development of children, through various ways, that the moral judgment is more dependable. Opportunity for the Correction of False Notions and Ideals.— Among all the children of all the people, there will be a great variety of ideals. Even a superficial examination will reveal many false ideals. It is highly important that the school has as one of its objectives the correction of false notions regarding what constitutes right moral conduct. In a socialized school the natural opportunities that come up day after day may become occasions when these notions may be corrected. The Right Habits Formed and Rationalized So They Do Not Fail in Social Situations —One might be led to think that the having of high ideals is sufficient. The truth of it is that the world is full of adults that have a large assortment of high standards put away for safe keeping. The proverbial hypocrite has many of them as evidenced by his desire to make others think well of him. Mere habit is not safe. As long as conditions do not change materially habit may be depended upon but when many new elements enter into a situation mere habit is likely to fail. Many a young man who has gone to a large city from the country finds that the habits which were reliable in his home districts have broken down. In order to make a habit safe and enable it to carry over, there must be a full realization of the necessity of it. The small child brushes his teeth regularly because his mother has helped him to form the habit. The adolescent child should begin to learn that he should clean his teeth because it adds to his well being and personal ap- pearance. The junior high school must not neglect the opportunity to help to rationalize the conduct of its young people for it is only with this preparation that the right responses will be made in the varying social situations in which the child will find himself. The Program for Character Education should be Broad.— There is danger when we think of a plan of character training that we shall make it too narrow. It should include the whole round of activities of the school. The Teacher—No plan for increased attention to character training could leave out of account the teacher. Indeed, many persons would say that the teacher is the most potent influence in 74 National Association of Secondary-School Principals the whole round of school activities. Principals, supervisors, super- intendents, and others working with the junior high school are likely to have the conviction that the kind of teacher, who is teaching the boys and girls, is of primary importance. The teacher must have accepted the best ideals and incorporated them into his every day living so that they are part of his character. The ques- tion may arise as to whether these excellent traits of teachers may carry over into the later life of the pupils, with whom he associates. By the way of contrast, we may safely predict that the bad traits of a careless, immoral, and indifferent teacher will carry over into later life. Who shall say that the commendable traits of a noble teacher will not carry over into adult life? School Discipline-—School discipline is a means of develop- ment of character in the life of a boy or girl. It teaches in a very forceful way that low ideals and unmoral acts do not give the complete satisfaction and comfort that they should, but instead bring pain and discomfort. This will assist in turning the pupil toward the correct ideal that will bring the permanent rewards and satis- factions that he wishes for himself. Extra-Curriculum Activities—The school will find one of its greatest opportunities for the development of character in the field of extra-curriculum activities. These activities are semi-voluntary in nature and represent the natural interests of boys and girls. The need of the pupils, both present and future, should govern the selection of activities. The teacher who sponsors the activity should exhibit real qualities of leadership. Curriculum Activities—All of the subjects of the school cur- riculum should be re-evaluated for character education purposes. It may be that history and literature will yield more in the way of the establishment of ideals if we give conscious attention to that part of the work. Already textbooks have begun to change their subject-matter to give more attention to character values. Some ex- cellent civics and junior high school literature books have appeared lately. Tue Direct MErTuHop. The Need for Direct Instruction—There is evidence, which cannot be disregarded, that more is to be expected of the schools in the way of character training. The meetings of the legislatures Eleventh Yearbook 75 in various states have considered, seriously, the problem and the bills that have been drawn (most of them have failed to become laws) have suggested the teaching of religion, the reading of the Bible in the schools, moral citizenship qualifications for teachers, specific civic training for citizenship, and many other items related to the conduct of the young. This is an indication that the public is interested in the moral welfare of its young people. Many impas- sioned speeches have resounded in legislative halls in praise of the McGuffy readers of our fathers’ day. The claim is made that they helped to form character. The National Education Association has taken note of this demand for increased attention to character values and has a strong committee studying the question. In the yearbook of 1926 an excellent discussion of the subject is given. There was a time when the school could confine itself to the mere rudiments of instruction. At an early time in this country home life was such that sufficient moral instruction could be given in the home, supplemented by the small amount that the school gave. The fact is that life was so simple then that the moral adjustments were not difficult to make. Life has become so complex that there has now developed a critical “social lag.” Social and moral adapta- tion has not kept pace with the great strides made in inventions, science, and industry. The state naturally turns to the schools to help in this struggle to interpret the new age in which we find our- selves. The schools must help to reduce the social lag. The Junior High School is the Place to Begin Definite Instruc- tion——Adults are equipped with a mass of ideals that are largely crystallized. Occasionally an adult will give up an old ideal for a new one, but the acceptance of new ideals is not characteristic of adults. In small children ideals are very changeable and fleeting ; in a true sense there are no established ideals that guide conduct. There is a time in the life of an individual when the ideals that are found in adult life become fixed. Undoubtedly, the adolescent age is the time when ideals, as controls of actions, take permanent and definite form. A college president in speaking of this matter not long ago, said that at the age his institution receives young people their ideals are fairly well established. The junior high school teacher knows that at the age he deals with boys and girls their ideals are in the process of formation. The method of instruction of young children in the home and school should be largely that 76 ~=National Association of Secondary-School Principals of example, and all that can be gained from absorption. The younger children do not require that their conduct responses be rationalized. It is quite different during the adolescent age. Con- duct that has become habitual needs to be rationalized. It is not enough for the fourteen-year-old child merely to put money in a savings bank. This child begins to want to know more about thrift which involves the saving and expenditure of money. He must continue to put money into savings, but he must appreciate and understand the quality of thrift, with the reasons for it, if he is to establish the correct ideal that is to govern his future conduct. In a complete plan for character training, it would be useless for a junior high school to put its sole or main emphasis upon direct instruction. On the other hand, if the direct method is ignored, one of the most productive phases of school work has been left out of account, if we are intent upon getting results in character building. The near future will likely find curriculum makers in the junior high school trying to improve the method and technique of character instruction, rather than in spending time in debating the question as to whether such instruction is at all effective. Al- ready in many schools the boys and girls have had the advantages that come from such definite instruction. Wuat May Be ExPeEcTeD FROM MODERN CHARACTER EDUCATION? The School Will Awaken to Its Full Responsibility—The school in the past has been moderately well satisfied with its prod- uct. As long as life was fairly simple, the curriculum of the school did not need to be too comprehensive. The pioneer school of ten pupils, in the time of Andrew Jackson, scarcely needed gymnasium work, household mechanics, auto repair courses, glee clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Reserves, camera clubs and many more that the modern complex city junior high school has. These activities have not been added to the original idea of the school for the mere enjoy- ment of the boys and girls, as much as they are appreciated by the students of the junior high school. Participation in these various activities gives young people controlled training in those human and social relations, that exist in and outside of the school, in a society that is becoming more complex as the days go by. It is these organizations which are semi-voluntary, that mistakes in conduct and social responses are made and corrected. Certain kinds of responses do not “work” and others are substituted for them. Rep aar een haiti ainsi nl nag ers Eleventh Yearbook 77 Satisfaction of a keen nature follows those responses that harmonize with the best interests of the individual and the group. Disapproval and discomfort are meted out to those whose responses are not for the best. The school will realize also that its full responsibility includes, in the junior high school, more than a mere academic knowledge of the subjects to be taught. All of the subjects have character forming values that have been more or less unnoticed in the past. We have taken for granted that if a child were accurate in mathematics he would be led to be truthful in his dealings with his fellow men. We now realize that mere accuracy alone will not assure honesty or truthfulness. It may be made to minister to character building if the quality becomes generalized, and attention is definitely and consciously called to its extended application in the various relations of life. Much of the work in literature may, and has been, studied in an intellectual formal way without its application to the lives of the pupils having been consciously realized by either teacher or pupils. We may expect the school that under- takes a plan of character education to give more attention, both in curriculum and extra-curriculum activities, to those character making values that are present, in potential form at least, in any junior high school. The Individual Will Feel a Responsibility in Helping Others to Improve Their Conduct—The school has not done all it can do until it has stimulated in its pupils a desire to help others. It is not enough that each individual should look after himself. There are unsocial boys and girls that feel that they do not have any responsibility for others. If they are left alone in this attitude, adult life may find them as the citizens who refuse to take any interest in affairs of the community. Their idea is that all should do as they do—attend strictly to personal affairs. They carry out this attitude by refusing to vote at election time. They are not interested in the church, nor in any other institution of society except perhaps their own homes. They may be honest and upright and cannot understand why others do not exhibit the same qualities. Young people need to learn before the adolescent age is over that they are their brothers’ keepers. They must know and realize that graft, the kind of officers selected, the handicaps placed in the way of progess, and othe revils that exist become their responsibility and 78 National Association of Secondary-School Principals they must join with others to eliminate such objectional phases of society. SUMMARY. Society is looking to the junior high school, as it does to other departments of the school system, to give its citizens those qualities of character that will enable them to live in this complex age in which we find ourselves. One thing must be taken for granted— the junior high school that pursues the laissez faire policy toward the teaching of ideals must expect from the students incidental and indirect results in character. Regular, systematic, and sympathetic attention to character values will certainly bring results in this im- portant field of education equal to, or greater than, in any other. As goes the character education in the schools so in the main will go the moral quality of society, and the spiritual destiny of civiliza- tion. DISCUSSION OF THE SIX YEAR HIGH SCHOOL W. H. Bristow, DEPARTMENT OF PuBLIC INSTRUCTION HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA When we remember that it is only since the Civil War that the public high school has been a fully accepted part of our educa- tional system, we can surely say that high-school development has been nothing short of marvelous. Roughly speaking there have been three natural stages in the American secondary education. From the time of the Colonies to the Revolution, Latin grammar schools prevailed. Then came the period of supremacy of the academy. This period extended approximately to the time of the Civil War. After this the public high school begins to predomi- nate. The past thirty years have been a period of adaptation. To secure close articulation between elementary and secondary educa- tion has been a prominent problem throughout the period. Be- ginning with President Eliot a movement was started which, through experimentation and discussion, has resulted in the reorganization of many of our school systems on the 6-3-3 basis, introducing an intermediate school in the form of the junior high school. aaa ORA CR na 79 Eleventh Yearbook In the early stage the reorganization movement was expressed through the six year school. Early schools were: Boston Latin School, 1819, Six Year High School, a purely college preparatory school, and Chicago (Superintendent Harper) 1894, Six Year High School, purely college preparatory. During the interim 1894-1910 various administrative combinations were attempted—7-5, 8-5, 7-3-2, 6-2-4, 6-4-2, etc. The six year high school, at least in preliminary form, is not therefore, a new institution. Before the organization of the first junior high schools, embryo six year high schools were in the process of formation. Some of these schools planned a correspond- ing change in the program of studies, others were merely the union of grades seven and eight with the conventional four year high school because of the values of separate junior and senior high schools. In fact, some form of the six year high school antedates the junior high school. Experimentation lead the cities to reorganize with separate junior and senior high schools. It is now generally conceded that the 6-3-3 plan of organization with a separate junior and senior high school, where feasible, is the most desirable type of organiza- tion. Most of the larger cities (over 75 per cent) are operating at some stage of the junior high school development. On the other hand if the junior high school plan is to be made available to a large portion of our boys and girls it must be through a modified plan. The extent to which reorganization has already taken place in Pennsylvania may be shown by the enrollment statistics for 1925-26. Of the 290,875 pupils in secondary schools November 1, 1925— 118,471 were in 6-6 organizations, 164,259 were in 8-4 organizations, 3,815 in vocational schools and 4,330 in non-classified schools. This development is shown by the following table: Type of Organization | Number Percent 8 errr errr ee cre ee 164,259 56.4 GBF etl GOs a ccc cccesdenss 118,471 40.7 Vocational School .............- 3,815 1.3 Non-Classified Schools........... 4,330 1.4 Classified Six Year Junior-Senior....| 20,864 7.1 80 National Association of Secondary-School Principals Data for the United States as a whole indicated similar de- velopment throughout the country. In organizing and administering a six year high school two vital complementary principles which should be kept in mind are: 1. The principle of continuity of a six year secondary school period. 2. Recognition of particular functions of the junior and senior divisions. In realizing the first principle the six year high school has some advantages over the separate junior and senior high school. A school administered by one principal, taught in a large measure by one faculty, working on the same schedule, etc., should, it seems, develop continuity. Such will not be the case, however, in schools where the senior high school viewpoint predominates. Unless the faculty recognizes the philosophy back of the six year secondary school period we have little more than a departmentalized seventh and eighth grade. On the other hand, as Dr. Briggs pointed out in 1920, “When satisfactory courses in the various subjects of secondary education have been worked out for the junior high school, it will be necessary for senior high schools to make cor- responding adjustments in these subjects.” Dr. Briggs adds, “this has not been done yet.” Perhaps more progress has been made in readjusting junior high school courses than in the senior high school. Morrison in his recent book “Practice of Teaching in the Sec- ondary School,” points out that secondary education may well be- gin when the pupil has learned three adaptions—reading, writing, and social. This implies, of course, a command of the fundamental tools of learning, sufficient mastery of which we can expect in the first six grades. As early as 1893 the committee of ten on Sec- ondary Studies of which Charles W. Eliot was chairman, included in its report, the following statement: “In preparing these pro- grams the committee were perfectly aware that it was impossible to make a satisfactory secondary school program, limited to a period of four years, founded on the present elementary school subjects and methods.” It would seem, then, that what we need in this matter is a conviction that secondary education should begin at least at the stage represented by our seventh grade. After this has been de- | ] | ] | | i 81 Eleventh Yearbook cided upon, it becomes a matter of making such adaptations us are necessary in the realization of this objective in a given community. Here again experience has been crystallized. No better state- ment covering the principle can be found than that given by the Committee on Reorganization. “The six years to be devoted to secondary education may well be divided into two periods, which may be designated as the junior and senior periods. In the junior period emphasis should be placed upon the attempt to help the pupil to explore his own aptitudes and to make at least provisional choice of the kinds of work to which he will devote himself. In the senior period emphasis should be given to training in the fields thus chosen.” Fundamentally this implies a junior high-school program of studies and a senior high-school program, each completely in- tegrated in itself and at the same time articulated with the other. The junior high school should provide for articulation between elementary and secondary education. Facilities should be provided for instruction in academic subjects, in health edu- cation, in science, fine and practical arts, junior business train- ing, language, guidance, and activities. The senior high school should be devoted to “carrying on” with the conviction of educational and vocational worth, the paths opened up by the junior high school. While some brave souls have looked ahead and are really developing an articulated program for the junior high school, too many schools are vet operated on a 2-1-3 basis. After all, it may be that our smaller six year high schools will point the way to “actual reorganization.” The standard of organization adopted by the North Central Association is pertinent. Here they say: “A six-year high school shall be organized into two units so that the work of the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades shall meet all the standards of the standard junior high school relative to the curriculum, training of teachers, and articulation with the senior high school—grades 10, 11, and 12. (In school systems en- rolling less than 500 pupils in grades 7 to 12, the organization should be of the six-year type, with the division distinctly drawn between the junior and senior divisions at the end of the 9th year.)” 82 National Association of Secondary-School Principals They point out, however, that this standard should not prevent a reorganization of the seventh and eighth grades separately, pre- liminary to the development of a junior or senior high school, if this is found to be administratively expedient. In many of our schools the seventh and eighth grades are al- ready located in the building with grades nine to twelve. This situation, together with a limited number of teachers and adminis- trators, generally necessitates the six year type of organization. There is a somewhat prevalent opinion that unless the assembly hall or study hall will accommodate the seventh and eighth grades in addition to the upper four grades, the organization of the six year school is impossible. With the adoption of the long recitation period involving the directed study, the separate study hall becomes less of a necessity. In a reorganization the “homeroom” is sub- stituted for the large study hall. The fact that much of the laboratory, library, shop and home economics equipment may be used by both junior and senior high school divisions, is another factor which favors the six year high school in districts with limited means. In the modified 6-3-3 plan, two buildings are ordinarily pro- vided for one unit is placed in one wing or floor and the other in another wing or floor. This makes it possible to separate the two units entirely except in the use of special facilities (library, shop, gymnasium, assembly, etc.) In other districts, facilities do not provide for this segregation. In such cases other administrative measures must be taken to in- sure the unity of junior and senior divisions. It is in the pos- sibility of disregarding the division line between junior and senior units, that the greatest danger of the six year high school lies. When it is disregarded upper grade pupils assume complete leader- ship, thus depriving the junior high school pupils of valuable social experiences. There will remain for some time districts where it will be im- possible to either move the ninth grade out of the senior high school or the seventh and eighth grades into a new organization. These situations make it necessary to apply junior high school features to the seventh and eighth grades and maintain the traditional or- ganization until such time as added facilities are provided. The inte ih _— —-s arnt Eleventh Yearbook 83 vital problem of reorganizing the program of studies in a school system need not be entirely delayed until buildings permit a re- organized school. With the reorganization of the seventh and eighth grades as a part of the high school there will no doubt be a corresponding reorganization in the work of the upper grades in schools contributing pupils to these high schools. There are al- ready evidences of this in many sections of the country. Some of the Problems in the Organization of a Six Year High School 1. Teachers must be brought to an understanding and broader vision of the functions of secondary education, particularly, as it effects widening the secondary school period from four to six years. 2. Teacher qualification is another problem. Where upper grade teachers are retained in the new organization, it should be with the understanding that they will avail themselves of full preparation of secondary school teachers. College certification should be considered the standard of work for all new secondary school teachers. 3. Teachers may well have class contacts in both junior and senior divisions in the interests of “integration.” This, of course, must be a gradual development. When this is done some of the difficulties which now arise when senior high school teachers com- plain of the lack of preparation on the part of pupils coming into the senior high school, will be avoided. 4. The organization of the time schedule with the longer period, eliminating study halls for junior high school pupils, pro- vides greater opportunity for directing learning in both junior and senior divisions. Greater responsibility can, however, be placed on senior high school pupils. Directed learning, however, should char- acterize “method” with both groups. 5. For the interests of both groups, wherever possible pupils should be segregated for certain of activities such as clubs, etc. In the junior high school the social activities will radiate in a large measure from the homeroom—in the senior high school they will be more around the “assembly.” 84 National Association of Secondary-Schoot Principals The Advantages of a Six Year High School 1. From the standpoint of finance, it is more economical, since the same rooms and equipment which would ordinarily be used in the senior high schoo! can be used for exploratory courses of the junior high school organization. Aiso such units as the gymnasium, laboratories, library and assembly, may be used in common. 2. The special instructors who ordinarily teach smaller classes in the upper years of the senior high school can devote part of their talent to classes in the junior high school. 3. From a pedigogical standpoint: The children in lower grades, seven to nine, profit greatly seeing the kind of work that is being done by children in the upper grades, ten to twelve, and are inspired to emulate them. A clear distinction should, however, be made in the social function for junior and senior high school pupils. 4. From a standpoint of discipline, it has been the experience of many that the best boys and girls in school are the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth year pupils. Their counsel and actions are an aid to the faculty in working with the younger pupils. 5. Says one principal, “From an administrative standpoint, after promotions have been determined from ninth grade into tenth by teachers’ marks and careful mental and educational tests, we often find some students who are capable of going ahead in some subjects and not in others. The six year organization readily ad- mits of this arrangement, whereas the 6-3-3 would not without inconvenience.” 6. Articulation between the junior and senior high school can be more carefully worked out as matters of promotion, supervision, admission, classification of pupils, etc., are under the direction of one principal working with one faculty. The six year high school is an attempt to develop an adminis- trative organization which will make available a more satisfactory type of secondary education. We have a sufficient number of schools operating successfully on this basis to justify urging com- munities which are ready for reorganization to adopt it, if separate junior and senior high schools are not possible. Eleventh Yearbook 85 Two criteria should always be applied in developing a six year secondary school organization: 1. Is a six year secondary school period recognized ? 2. Are the special functions of both junior and senior high school units safeguarded ? 86 National Association of Secondary-School Principals Tuirb SESSION The luncheon of the convention was held in the Ballroom of Hotel Statler at 12:30 P. M., Friday, February 25. Over four hundred were at the tables. Elbert K. Fretwell of Columbia Uni- versity led the singing. Colonel Robert I. Rees of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company spoke on the “Articulation of School and Industry.” Charles H. Judd addressed the Association on the subject, “Is There a National System of Secondary Edu- cation ?” IS THERE A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF SECONDARY EDUCATION? Cuar.es H. Jupp UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO The English have recently inaugurated a reform of far reach- ing importance in their educational system. The reform is of interest to the student of education because it is a long move in the direction of a liberal democratization of a school system which, like all the systems of Europe, was dominated until the most recent times by the principle that the aristocracy alone has a right to education above the elementary level. It is not, however, with the content of the English reform that we are at the moment concerned, it is with the method adopted of determining the character of the reform. Three years ago the Board of Education, which is the governing body in charge of English schools, seeing that change of some kind was impending, appointed a committee of persons experienced in educational mat- ters and asked this committee—called a consultative committee— to examine the situation and make recommendations. During the three years that have elapsed since its appointment the consultative committee has held numerous hearings at which school officers, representatives of religious organizations, and repre- sentatives of various civic interests have presented possible programs of more liberal provision for higher education. Out of these hear- ings and out of the deliberations of the committee has issued a plan which is now laid before the country as a guide for action. The plan is presented in detail and with a statement of the considerations which led the committee to its conclusions. The President of the Eleventh Yearbook 87 Board of Education calls attention to the fact that the realization of the plan calls for very little new legislation because under exist- ing statutes local school authorities have the power to adopt all of the major recommendations. England has thus launched what is likely to be one of the most momentous reforms in her educational history in a manner which is exemplary in its regard for reason and in its employment of the most competent agencies to guide national actions. One is impressed with the contrast between what is happening in England and what has been going on in this country for the last decade. We, too, have been reconstructing our educational system at the very point on which English attention is concentrated. We have been organizing the junior high school and re-adjusting the schools above and below. Have we taken deliberate counsel with all parties concerned? The answer is painfully clear to all of us. We have had riots incited by teachers’ unions which were bent on defeating progressive superintendents. We have had junior high schools built as devices for relieving congestion in school buildings ; junior high schools organized to provide for pupils who are going to high school and want to begin high-school work early ; junior high schools for pupils who are not going to high school; junior high schools with new curriculums ; junior high schools with curriculums so conventional that one looks in vain for any justification for the use of the new name. In short, we have change and reform of every possible shade and variety,—but of national leadership, of deliberate planning by a group of our best educators, none. I dare say that one could devise an argument in support of the statement that the American method is the more elastic method and I have no doubt that in the long run we shall, for reasons of national pride if for no other, express ourselves-as in favor of unrestrained experimentation. I am in a mood to-day, however, to point out some of the waste that results from the fact that we Americans are prone to play the educational game without much regard for the advantages of team play. Let us consider another of the methods by which we are leading the world in reconstructing popular education. About a decade ago a group of public-minded manufacturers noting that America needed more skilled mechanics than were-available went to Congress 88 National Association of Secondary-School Principals and asked for help in constructing a new type of educational pro- gram. The manufacturers took along with them a small group of educators who were quite prepared to advocate a dual school sys- tem for America. These manufacturers and their educator friends persuaded Congress to establish the Federal Board for Vocational Education. Was there careful consultation with all concerned? Did the meaning of the proposed change in American schools stand out clearly in the minds of the American people? Was there a carefully considered body of instructional material at hand for the use of these new schools? Was the problem of training teachers duly considered? I am sure that we all know how nega- tive is the answer to these questions. We have paid a high price for much experience in industrial education since the passage of the Smith-Hughes Law. We have learned something since that time, but we have not learned how to conduct vocational classes. We have enjoyed the democratic method of experimentation and we have reaped its rich rewards. Let us take still another example of the truly American method of procedure. We have two groups of institutions which contribute to the education of adolescent boys and girls, namely high schools and colleges. Each year hosts of intelligent young Americans make the transition from one to the other. Do they find high schools and colleges intelligently interested in the national problem of educational co-ordination? Do they find that the curriculums of these two groups of institutions fit together? Do they find that it is the custom for members of the faculty of one institution to speak in complimentary terms of the members of the faculty of the other institution ? It has occurred to me in considering the example of England and its consultative committee that there must be certain advantages in having a body to which all parties can go for the purpose of unburdening themselves about everybody else. Suppose that we had a committee to which one of our contemporaries who loves to berate the colleges could appeal. Would it not save the rest of us the necessity of much painful listening? To this same committee we could then refer that group of college professors who think of the American high school as the home of general science and bad grammar. Eleventh Yearbook 89 If the absence of team play is conspicuous between the colleges and the high schools, the lack of co-operation between the high school and the institution immediately below it is a glaring feature of American life. I was at some pains to use a phrase which is broad enough to cover both elementary school and junior high school when I pointed out the fact that the high schools lack co-ordination with the schools below. The lack of adjustment between the con- ventional elementary school and the high school used to be a con- spicuous source of waste, but the quarrel between high schools and junior high schools sets an entirely new example of what is possible by way of infelicitous lack of harmony. The junior high school has recently gone so far as to ask the aid of its friends in releasing it from all contact with higher institutions. If the junior high school can go its way without regard to requirements imposed from above there is some possibility that it may survive. Certain it is that the junior high school has been very clever in so engaging the attention of both the colleges and the high schools in the last three years of the high-school curriculum that it promises to be successful in organizing its own program in complete freedom from all requirements other than those which arise from its own educa- tional program. The inco-ordination which I have described up to this point are of insignificant dimensions compared with the open hostilities which keep apart the subjects and interests which make up that curious collection of specialties known as the high-school curriculum. I do not believe that even a British consultative committee sitting for three years could devise a plan to overcome this cardinal defect in present-day education. Perhaps there is no corrective for the situation. The best we can do is to face it frankly and decide whether we shall try to devise a program. The situation is capable of fairly clear description in a very few sentences. Modern life has grown enormously complex and has at the same time developed an intense respect for precision of knowl- edge which no earlier epoch in history has ever approached. As knowledge has expanded and become more and more refined the educational program has become more and more unmanageable. A hundred years ago there was no biology and no economics; physics and chemistry, history and the study of government were compara- 90 National Association of Secondary-School Principals tively simple as contrasted with the natural sciences and social sciences of to-day. If we ask a biologist to teach in the high school we must find a place for him on the program and we must give him time enough to present to his classes typical sections from the vast body of pre- cise knowledge which belongs to his science. Writers on the curric- ulum have often noted the breadth of modern civilization. They have not sufficiently stressed, I think, the devotion of men to com- plete and exact knowledge. One hears a scientific leader scoffing at high-school courses in his field. It is not usually true that this scientist is contending for a place in the curriculum. He is aroused by what to his mind are the inexcusable superficialities and failures to conform to the canons of exact thinking which he finds tolerated in the high school. The true scientist is a devotee of precision. He is willing that people should be ignorant, but he will not patiently see them intellectually inexact. What is to happen to the high-school curriculum under these conditions? For my own part I have a judgment as to what ought to happen. I believe that it is the duty of the schools to divide courses into two types—those which are designed to provide the non-specialist with a general view of the field and those which are designed more adequately to introduce the pupil to the techniques and results of particular subjects. If I am right in demanding two types of courses, it is clear that we shall have to provide in our educational system some agencies other than the specialists to prepare the general survey courses. The true specialist will not prepare courses except with complete- ness and exactness. No one can realize more fully than the members of this audi- ence the dangers that lie in the path of the educational program which I am advocating. We have all read the New York report on history. We have been told that history should be taken out of the hands of historians and put into the hands of those who will use it for propaganda. We also know that as far back as the Madison Conference which prepared the history section for the report of the Committee of Ten, there was criticism of the then common gen- eral history course. The orthodox historian does not favor a gen- Eleventh Yearbook 91 eral history course because it is superficial and inexact. He holds that not even an H. G. Wells can compile a general history without sacrificing the truth. Beset by the propagandist on the one hand and by the dilettante on the other, the competent historian is prepared to fight for the right which he believes to be the inalienable right of himself and his fellow-historians to prepare the program in history for the schools. The historians have the sympathy of all specialists. In the defense of their right to produce the textbooks in history, the historians can count on the support of all the members of the faculty. When I say, as I did deliberately a few moments ago, that we must devise some agency for doing something that the his- torians will not do I was fully aware of the hazards that confront this program. I took the case of history first for the sake of introducing variety into the discussion. The stock illustrations, I suppose, is general science. It is certainly an interesting sight for a student of human nature to see the writhings of a true scientist at the mention of general science. The contortions grow more protracted and intricate if the scientist is author of a widely used textbook in his own field. I am persuaded that one ought to have nothing but sym- pathy for this abhorrence of general science if one is to be true to academic traditions. Any particular science has at least the virtue of being limited in its field. In the district in which I live I am told that general science is rendered respectable with the neighboring institution which objects to such a course by rechristening it “physi- ology” on the reports of the work of pupils. Be that as it may, general science is out of favor with the scientists—and, it should be promptly added, on the increase so far as enrollment of pupils are concerned. It is easy to see that general science may become too general and inexact. I have seen courses in general science which were criminal in their slackness and waste of intellectual energy. The scientists are right in one respect—general science is not physics or chemistry or botany or even physiology. Lately there came into my hands a book designed as a text for class use in a course on general language. After some introductory chapters dealing with what the authors think may have been true 92 National Association of Secondary-School Principals of primitive languages there are a number of elementary lessons in Latin declensions and conjugations followed by similar extracts from the first chapters of grammars of French, Spanish, and Ger- man. When I laid the book down, I was nearly ready to join the ranks of those who abhor general courses, so full of ignorance on the one hand and conventional treatment on the other was this well intentioned but misguided excursion into the field where com- parative philology has opened the way to historical and anthropo- logical romance. So I might go on enumerating subjects and difficulties. General history, general science, and general language are extremely dan- gerous fields to enter. My contention is, however, that which I boldly laid down some time ago. There must be courses designed for the pupil who is not going to specialize and however great the difficulties, the educational system must provide such courses. This means that one of the most urgent needs of our times is some kind of machinery whereby there shall be brought into existence general- ized material which shall at one and the same time serve the pur- poses of the modern school and escape the charge of being super- ficial and inexact. Before I describe in a concrete way the steps which I think we ought to take, I venture to remind you of the point which I made in my introductory paragraphs where I held up the English consul- tative committee as a brilliant example of rational deliberation. If I were to put the matter in negative terms, I should say that I do not believe the Herculean task which I am trying to describe can be done in any single system of schools. I have read with great interest the output of Denver and St. Louis. I am told that there are some twenty other centers that are bestirring themselves after the manner of Los Angeles or Toledo. I would not be understood as minimizing in any degree the value of these undertakings. I would not be misunderstood as overlooking the work of my col- leagues in the University of Chicago where the curriculum is under intensive study. I would not be guilty of overlooking the work of the curriculum bureau of Teachers College. These and other like undertakings are interesting and doubtless important, but they do not supply us with a broad nationally acceptable program of studies for American schools. There is lacking something which we need. For want of a better name, let us call it team play and let nc A Eleventh Yearbook 93 us remember that great movements call for co-operation on a national scale. How is a course in general history for pupils who are not going to specialize in history to be constructed? The answer seems clear appoint a consultative committee. There shall be on this committee two historians of breadth and exactness of scholarship. There shall be on this committee two high-school principals who are igno- rant of historical details. There shall be on this committee two persons of proved literary ability. This committee shall have sun- dry clerks and errand boys both intellectual and physical. The committee shall be told that it is engaged in a task of the first mag- nitude and that it is to report to the American public much as the highest courts do when they focus on the problems of modern life the best intelligence of the times. Of course, I know that such a committee as I have described is not common in American life and it can not be brought together without the use of funds. I am also aware that the first time the committee comes together it will be at a loss how to proceed. It will tend to fall into the conventional methods of American committees and will tend to refer all matters to the chairman with power to draft a report. I am serious in the belief, however, that by the fourth or fifth meeting something will begin to happen. First, there will come, I think, a new realization of the fact that in this intricate modern world there is need of that kind of simplifi- cation of knowledge which comes only from breadth of view. Our committee will see that its task is not to cut and patch together but to build something new on an entirely new plan. Second, there will come, I think, a new realization of the need and possibilities of co-operation. Why were historians put on the committee? Because they know the field of facts. Why were high- school principals put on the committee? Because they know to whom the course is to be given and they bring very definite knowl- edge of the earnest desire of the American people for a larger view, for a broad intellectual horizon. Why were literary persons put in the committee? Because attractive form is as essential to teach- ing as precision of content. One might enumerate other happenings which may confidently be expected to follow these two, but such speculation is hardly 94 National Association of Secondary-School Principals necessary. Either your imaginations have been set at work and have long since outrun my laggard words or else you are in process of negotiating the first hurdle. For those who have struck the pace, I have nothing more except encouragement to run. For those who are back at the first hurdle I have some sympathy and I shall come back and spend some time looking over the ground with them. Some one will say, such committees as are here suggested are not common. This is exactly the truth. Nor is the task one of a common type. Another will object that committees have been attempted in the past. There was the committee of the American Mathematical Association ; there was the committee of the Classical League, and now we have the committee of the Modern Language Associations. Were these committees adequate to their tasks? Far be it from me to pass judgment on the mathematicians when they operate in their own field. The trouble with those peo- ple is that they did not invite in writers and I think they omitted high-school principals ignorant of the subject. They were too much engrossed in mathematics. If we are to have a truly capti- vating book on algebra it will have to be prepared by some one whose life is not devoted to factoring. As for the classical people, I do not know how many people they consulted. The list is long and formidable. It includes some who gave them very little other than negative advice on their pro- gram. This I know because the statement applies quite emphatically to one name with which I am as intimately acquainted as I am with my own. The results of the inquiry made by these people seem to be all right so far as the Latin is concerned. The statistics are, however, in the infant stage of inefficient control. If they ever diag- nose again what is the trouble with their subject, I suggest that they import some people who have knowledge of scientific methods. Per- haps the mathematicians and classicists might interchange half their membership. It would give training in team play. The Modern language people have done some inviting in. Hardly enough it would seem, but then they were handicapped by lack of the English example of consultative committees. I am told that American teachers of English were at one time hopeful of joining the ranks of the inquirers. They had a program 95 Eleventh Yearbook and a tentative appropriation from one of the great foundations. The representative of the foundation, however, did not like their program. He said that what American instruction in English needs is to be written up by some clever journalist. No extended time is needed for the job according to him. Note the marked lack of English devotion to consultative committees in this pronouncement. I am afraid some of you will feel that I am not clearing the track very much by these comments. I think I am. I am trying | to dispell from your minds the notion that committees are primarily agencies of defense. The trouble with committees of the kind we have had in the past is that they are committees of the sort which specialists always make up. What we need in American education is invention of something new. We need to make some committees which are directed to solve educational problems, not more commit- tees which are created to perpetuate inco-ordinations. We have come to the point where there must be a new kind of education This new kind of education must be broad and sound and illuminat- ing. It must be for the man and woman of the day who are not to be specialists in many lines and must be given views of fields of knowledge where they can not enter into all the paths of minute exploration. The trouble with the American high-school curriculum is that it has been handed down piece by piece from sources where ado- lescent life was of no esteem. Euclid did part of the handing down, Aristotle and Plato contributed through Quintilian and his successors. Johann Sturmn and the Jesuite Colleges contributed in . part to the modern curriculum. Of late the inheritances from these | older sources have been materially diluted by natural science, mod- ern language, and studies of a less systematic type. That we are in the midst of chaos it is easy to see. Who is to lead us out of this | condition of distracting disorder? My answer is perfectly clear to ) my own mind. The leaders in this new movement are not to be | specialists in particular fields but educators who can see the neces- sity of a new kind of teaching. So long as the specialists in their devotion to precise thinking insist that all who are to have any contact with their fields are to have these contacts on terms dictated by the specialist, so long will education be narrow and the curricu- lum a body of conflicting, competing petty particulars. It is the duty of educators to bring to notice in no uncertain terms another 96 National Association of Secondary-School Principals group of considerations. There shall be no retaliatory setting aside of the specialists. There shall be no tolerance of error and propa- ganda, but there shall be full regard for education as a legitimate sphere of activity. The reason I have ventured to speak on this subject here is that in some way we must, I believe, find an American way to inau- gurate educational reform. I began with the English consultative committee. I should like to end with an appeal to an American National Association of educators. The new curriculum of Ameri- can high schools is coming. It is for such a body as this to choose whether the next ten or twenty years shall be spent 1n isolated individual experimentation or in well-ordered concerted attack on the problem in the solution of which we are all vitally concerned a eae arom naise anemone Eleventh Yearbook FourTH SESSION The senior high-school section was held in the Ballroom of Hotel Statler, Friday afternoon. Mr. Eugene Hahnel led in com- munity singing. Mr. F. L. Bacon, Principal. of Newton High School, Newtonville, Massachusetts, presided. A CONSTRUCTIVE POLICY FOR HIGH SCHOOL PUBLICATIONS Evsert K. FRETWELL, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, TEACHERS COLLEGE CoLuMBIA UNIVERSITY The policy for high-school publications presented in this paper is based on two theses: First: It is the business of the school to organize the whole school situation so that there is a favorable opportunity for every member of the school to practice the qualities of the good citizen here and now with results satisfying to himself. Second: Wherever possible, extra-curriculum activities should grow out of curriculum activities and return to them to enrich them. High-school publications fall into four groups; newspapers, magazines, annuals, and handbooks. As every one knows, the larger high schools in the past have had a monthly magazine and an annual for each graduating class. While these two publications are still being issued by many of these schools, the present tendency is for each school to issue a newspaper and a handbook. At the present time, if a school, especially if it be a school west of the Allegheny Mountains, can have only one publication, it is usually a newspaper. The traditional annual, or yearbook, is strongly en- trenched but in some progressive schools it is giving way to a special edition of the school newspaper. The monthly magazine, part lit- erary, part news, if it exists at all, is giving up its dual role and becoming either a newspaper, or if the school has a newspaper, a literary magazine. A rapidly increasing number of schools are coming to have handbooks. 98 National Association of Secondary-School Principals Need for a constructive policy. Junior and senior high schools, individually, and as grouped together in the larger cities, and state departments of education, are confronted with the necessity of de- veloping a constructive policy for the guidance of school publica- tions. Some schools, cities, and state departments of education have developed such a policy but, either with or without such guid- ance, daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, semi-annually, and annually, these publications—newspapers, magazines, handbooks, and annuals —are being issued by high schools. These publications exist and some of them are rapidly increas- ing in number. Whether school men like it or not, publications must be endured, suppressed, or guided in the direction of sound educational ends. In this whole field of extra-curriculum activities, necessity has often been the mother of educational policy. The an- cient and dishonorable laissez-faire policy, so far as school publica- tions are concerned, has had its day. What shall the school publish? Shall whatever is published be a curriculum, credited activity, be partly curriculum, grow out of a curriculum activity, or be some- thing utterly apart? Shall the publication be definitely planned so as to serve the community, the school and the individual? If so, how? Shall the handbook be written by the principal’s office, by one or more teachers, or shall the whole school share in the educa- tive experience of telling newcomers what they must know in order to get started quickly and effectively in the new situation? If the whole school experience is desired, how can it be secured? Shall the art work of the annual that is to be entered in a state or inter- state contest as a student publication be done by a teacher within the school, by an outside professional, or firm, or shall it be what it professes to be, a student publication? Something of the same problem that has been fought out in attaining clean athletics remains to be fought out here. Shall the newspaper be considered vocational training? Shall it be produced by a small group or clique with or without guidance? Shall there be a trained teacher, adviser, or director, for the publication? If so, how can such a person be found or produced? Shall each high school, junior and senior, in a system simply do what is right in its own eyes, with its eyes either open or shut, or shall there be some county or city-wide construc- tive attack of the whole problem? If so, what shall it be? Shall “charity” advertising in school publications persist? Shall schools ee eee eos vr Te ree Eleventh Yearbook 99 teach pupils to read and then give them no guidance in the kind of reading to which a majority of them will devote the major por- tion of their reading time? Is the school interested in producing the very best publication that can be produced? If so, the way is clear; engage the very best group of professional experts that can be secured and have them produce it. Is the school, while keenly interested in producing a newspaper that reflects the whole school, still more seriously concerned in making the school’s work in pro- ducing the paper a real educative experience for its pupils? Answers exist for these and the scores of other questions that suggest them- selves to the teacher or administrator. Just answers, however, are not enough; if there is to be real, permanent progress, it must be rooted in a constructive policy. The increasing interest in high-school publications seems to be due to the recognition of the value of these publications to pupils, to the school as a whole, and to the community ; to the fact that the present is a time of transition in the character of these publica- tions; to the changing of some publications from extra-curriculum to curriculum or partly curriculum activites; to the courses or parts of courses, that are being given by colleges and universities in high- school newspaper writing; to the guidance that is being given by some departments of journalism, chiefly in state universities; to the influence of regional, state and interstate contests now being held annually in more than half the states; to the need for edu- cating the community as to what the high-schools are doing; to the recognition that work on the newspaper is not vocational train- ing and to the recognition on the part of all teachers and especially to specific teachers of English, that the newspaper provides for their pupils a favorable opportunity for accurate, brief, clear, sincere writing. What favorable educational opportunities are furnished by the school newspaper? The function of the school newspaper is to publish school news while it is news, and through its editorial page to aid in forming and guiding public opinion. Here is the oppor- tunity to capitalize the achievements of the school and of its in- dividual members, pupils, and faculty, for the benefit of all those in or out of the school who are interested, or who may be inter- ested. With the increasing size of high schools and with part-time 100 = National Association of Secondary-School Principals sessions, there is insistent need for the school to utilize all the in- tegrating forces available. The school newspaper, together with faculty meetings, the pupils’ council, and the school assembly, can develop and foster this common integrating knowledge. Knowl- edge, however, is not enough; attention must be paid to the de- velopment of the mental and emotional attitude of the members of the school toward each other, toward the school, and toward the community. The newspaper can and in many schools does express the achievement, the life, the joy, the enthusiasm, and idealism of the school, not by a direct preachment on these subjects but by a clear account of the manifestations of these qualities. To capture the temporary interest of a low grade of intelligence by accounts of physical or emotional violence is comparatively easy. However, this is not the field of the school newspaper. Here the newspaper in its selection of news not only guides but reflects the spirit and quality of the school. Lesson compositions, essays, and short stories will probably kill any school newspaper. The increasing ability to be accurate, brief, and interesting is desired for all who contribute to the school paper and these qualities must be employed in writing news and editorials on subjects of interest to the whole school or the newspaper will cease to have either subscribers or advertisers. These opportunities may be considered, first, for the school as a whole and, second, for the pupil as an individual. Opportunities for the school as a whole. The publishing of the news of the school makes for a common basis of knowledge among its members. By focusing approval in the news columns on worth while activities, the paper encourages these activities and stimulates others like them. It can and should condemn any prac- tices that work against the best interests of the school but its great power lies in its promotion of constructive activities and the ideas that lie behind them. In promoting constructive activities, the newspaper has a favorable opportunity to interpret the school to itself. By its news it can explore for the members of the school what the school is doing and in editorial it can show what the news means. Current events that affect the life of the school, either as a special depart- ment or in the run of the paper, can foster a common understand- Eleventh Yearbook 101 ing and make for harmonious co-operative effort. The paper through focusing approval on right actions can aid in developing right standards of conduct in correcting school abuses and in giving the kind of food for thought that makes for intelligent co-operation. Practical advice, not necessarily too directly given, may be a part of a vigorous editorial column. The paper can not only foster clean athletics but it can present the news of the sporting page so that the whole school sees the big educational idea that is, or ought to be, in all school sports. There can be a real advertising of coming events not only that there will be such and such an event on a particular date by advertising of a more subtle kind. Take the following example: THE PRICE OF ELIGIBILITY “Take heed all you sophomores: If you want to be in your class play next year you'd better be sure that your grades are O. K. this year. “Three juniors are now wishing that they had paid more attention to their last semester, for they have been given parts in the junior play and then had them taken away, and all because their grades last semester were not quite satisfactory. “So take warning sophomores. Next year will be too late. Be sure that you make at least three B’s and no failures this year.” Rumor and gossip grow on fractional knowledge and misun- derstandings. Direct statement and answers to pupils’ questions in an “Editor’s Column,” can make for a clear understanding. The right kind of an exchange column can make for cordial relations with other schools. Probably every school has, or comes to have, both worthy, and sometimes less worthy traditions. The paper can aid either in fostering, or, if necessary, in breaking with, traditional ways of treating freshmen or antiquated types of com- mencements. Thoughtful and fair-minded handling of school news can make for a civic pride based on real knowledge rather than for idle or ignorant boasting. The handling of the advertising prob- lem can make for a great weariness or for friendly co-operation on the part of the business men of the community. 102. National Association of Secondary-School Principals Educational Publicity. The patrons of the school and the tax payers need to know what is going on in the high schools. The expansion of high schools has been so rapid during the last decade that many of these citizens do not know what high schools are doing. School newspapers that are well written and full of the throbbing life of the school will be read by the patrons of the schools. Parents read, or have read to them, what is published in the school newspaper, for in the course of a year many of the items concern their own children. Likewise the uncles and the cousins and the sisters and the aunts have to read, or listen to, what is written by or about their young friends. By careful planning, the school, through news and editorials can make known its educational policy to its patrons and at the same time be reasonably sure that what is published is read. All high schools need educational pub- licity ; the school newspaper furnishes one means of securing it. It is curious, but it is a fact, that most writers and speakers on school publicity have ignored the part played by the school news- paper. In such a newspaper there can be an all-year-round oppor- tunity to educate the pupils in the high school—and they wili soon be voters—as to the needs of the school. After all, the satisfied cus- tomer is, in the long run, the best advertiser, and when this satis- fied customer tells in print the achievements and needs of the school, a real campaign of educational publicity is under way. Some individuals and some publications, however, are awake to the real work of the school newspaper in the community. “The essence of good publicity,” as Clyde R. Miller puts it, “is to see that the interesting story also contains information of importance made interesting.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer expresses its edi- torial opinion in this fashion: ‘We can think of no better adver- tising for a wide awake high school than a weekly newspaper, alert to news value, vigorous in its editorial utterances, clean in its point of view, and attractive in its physical make-up.” It has often been said that the school newspaper does render the school the kinds of service that have been enumerated in the preceding paragraphs. For the sake of accuracy, it should be stated here that there is a favorable opportunity for the newspaper to render such service. The paper can do it if the school through an able adviser and through intelligent faculty co-operation, dis- eo eo Eleventh Yearbook 103 covers to the pupils at the right time what can be done and a successful way to do it. Producing the paper can be an educative experience. From the school’s point of view, the type of paper described in a preceding paragraph by a quotation from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is emi- nently desirable. A single issue or a whole volume of the paper, however, is not the final test. The school is an educational institu- tion and if the production of the paper is not a real educative experi- ence for the group producing it, and to a lesser extent for the whole school, the paper has no place in the school. The adviser is, after all, a coach. The coach teaches the players who themselves play the game. The adviser teaches the staff, including the far flung line of reporters, what to do and how to do it but the adviser does not write, or re-write the paper. In many, perhaps in most schools, with a turn over of something like seventy-five per cent of the staff every year, there will be a need for a kind of censorship on the part of the adviser. The opportunity, however, for the adviser to do most of the censoring is at the time of planning the paper. Likewise at the meeting of the staff to talk over an issue just off the press, guidance, probably indirectly given, as to what is and what is not good form, can be effective. What are the values of the paper to the individual pupils? To consider the benefits of the paper to the school is not enough; the school does not exist for itself but for the education of its pupils. The benefits to pupils can be considered under three heads. Learning to write. One of these benefits, in a situation where the paper grows out of a course in newspaper writing, is that the course furnishes a favorable opportunity for pupils to learn how to write English by writing it. It is probably impossible to teach any- one how to write literature. However, it is possible to teach a pupil to be accurate, simple, concise, and clear in his writing. In a school paper everyone from the cub reporter to the editor writes for a waiting reader on a subject that he knows about—a “familiar world of people and things’—rather than on subjects that lack personal appeal. He is interested in his newspaper article and he must master such fundamentals as spelling, sentence structure, and paragraph- ing, or his contribution will be re-written or killed. He must be able to distinguish between the important and useless for news 104 National Association of Secondary-School Principals purposes. What he writes must be interesting or it is nothing. The interest that the writer has helps carry him through the hard prac- tice of learning to write by writing. While he must write from an impersonal point of view, the motive for writing is within himself. His success or failure brings its own reward. Practicing the qualities of the good citizen. There is also an- other kind of benefit to the pupil. A thesis of this paper is that it is the business of the school to furnish a favorable opportunity for the pupil to practice the qualities of the good citizen here and now with satisfaction to himself. There may be character values in “careful, painstaking news gathering.” At least as Grant M. Hyde puts it, “Searching for facts and truthful presentation of facts is a much better training than mere writing out of one’s own head—especially if the head is empty.” * The school journalist must be accurate; if necessary, his co- operating associates force him to be. He must be able to carry out directions, to practice “self-restrained liberty,” to know something of human nature, to be diplomatic in interviews, to respect confidence, to carry responsibility willingly assumed, to observe accurately, to discriminate, to form an intelligent opinion. Miss Huff holds this opinion: “The man who cultivates his garden gets not only the garden products, but he grows in health and strength. So the school journalist develops ingenuity, individuality, self-control, per- sonality, moreover, strength of character.” * The one who knows high-school newspaper work can easily recall many instances in which the young journalist practiced such qualities as have been enumerated here and that he probably practiced them with satis- faction to himself. It may be that for the pupil the by-products of newspaper work are of fundamental importance. Learning how to read newspapers. The values of journalistic work in the high school lie not only in developing a kind of writing ability and in furnishing satisfying practice of certain qualities of character but it does present a favorable opportunity for the pupil to learn how to read newspapers. A knowledge of the problems involved in producing a paper, enables the reader to have a keener *Journalism in High Schools. The Scholastic Editor, 5: No. 4, p. 6, January, 1926. *Huff, Bessie M.—How to Publish the School Newspaper, p. 2. Eleventh Yearbook 105 appreciation of successful achievement. What to read, how to read, and what to believe, are all important. Democratic government seems impossible without newspapers, yet sometimes it seems impos- sible, also, with some kinds that exist. The school attempts to teach pupils to read but as a rule it makes no attempt to help them directly in the field in which they will do the greater part of their reading. The surest way to get a better press is for the people to demand it. The taste and desire for a better type of newspaper can be taught in every high school; perhaps some day there will be such teaching. Clyde R. Miller thinks that, “It is interesting and en- lightening to try to visualize the effect on America during the next generation if every high school in the nation sets itself to the task of trying to have every graduate a discriminating reader of the public press.” * The school newspaper can do something to help people know what to read, how to read, and what to believe. Finally, work on the high-school newspaper 1s not vocational. It is quite probable that some few will find their life work here and, if wisely guided, will find also the stern necessity of real preparation for it. High-school work on the newspaper may serve as one means of enabling the pupil to explore his own interests, aptitudes, and abilities and at the same time enable him to explore, somewhat, the field of journalism but the high school can no more educate and train the journalist than it can the doctor or lawyer. True, some high- school graduates can do newspaper work probably quite as well as some newspaper workers are now doing it, but the teacher who en- courages a high-school pupil to go directly into journalistic work, in which writing after all forms but a small part, is doing violence to both the pupil and the profession of journalism. While the first school of journalism, in an academic sense, was formed no longer ago than 1908, the idea that the way to study journalism is “to help a printer wash the type after a student has dumped the editor’s waste basket” has long since gone by. Lawyers no longer learn law by sweeping out a law office and helping the old lawyer draw up a few papers. Neither do prospective doctors begin by washing the doctor's buggy and helping a gentleman of the old school mix his pills and *Miller, Clyde R., and Charles, Fred.—Publicity and the Public Schools, p. 141. 106 National Association of Secondary-School Principals powders. These days are gone, fortunately, forever. The pupil who goes from the school newspaper to cub reporting is unduly handi- capping himself and will probably find he is in a blind alley. At the same time, if the newspaper is to serve the public in promoting the general welfare, as it can and should, it must have workers of broad education, wide experience, and professional training. What shall the school newspaper publish? The answer is, nat- urally, that “most perishable of all commodities,” the news. Any- thing ‘that happens in which people are interested is news and the best news, says Harrington, “is that which carries the most interest, significance and importance to the greatest number” or to cite a successful editor quoted by Miller and Charles, “News is what happens to-day that interests me. The editor's problem is to multiply me by you and divide by the number of columns. News flourishes where there is contest and conflict whether it is between nations, between the accused and the law, in a World’s Series, or in the subversion of the conventional that results in a dramatic situation. It is the unwise school paper that, either in content or make-up, attempts to imitate the average city daily. Yet the principle that determines news is the same. It is recognized, of course, that there must be system in gather- ing the news; that interpreting the news and discussing current events will form a large part of a vigorous editorial page or column; that feature stories are hard to write but worth all the effort they cost ; that the exchange column can tell of activities in other schools that are of interest and worth to the paper’s readers; that inter- views, wisely chosen, are sure to be read; that while age may wither, custom cannot stale the discreet use of personals, besides they help the circulation ; that an editor’s column provides for comment, more newsy and in a lighter vein than editorials; that the story of an athletic contest may lead to an understanding of the whole athletic program; that being funny in a humor column is a serious as well as a difficult matter. The Humor Column, Since the humor column has such possi- bilities and since it has received such scant treatment in nearly all discussions of school papers, it may be worth while to note what is being published in some representative papers. First, so far as humor is concerned, there seems to be something in the name of the inate omic on Eleventh Yearbook 107 column. The Polygon has the Weakly Gasp’, the South Side Times has Southern Spice?, the North High Oracle has Ice Chips*, the South High Beacon has Flickers and Flames*, The Commerce Budget has Debits and Credits®, the Roosevelt Record has On the Hunt’, Tulsa Life has Krax’, Blue and Gold has its Poem Tree’. What do these columns contain? As Lawrence Murphy* points out, in an analysis of a dozen humor columns in as many daily papers, a fourth of the material in these columns is nearer tears than smiles, another fourth is purely informative, the remaining half of the material is devoted to such items as poetry, news, or a humor- ous turn on a political event. The best of the humor columns in high-school papers are attempting to find their humor in their own school situation. The humor editor can recognize that “Men must be taught as if you taught them not, And things unknown proposed as things forgot ;” that a mixture of the serious is helpful along with the gay; that he cannot be tolerated if, as Borah puts it, he “ ‘cribs’ risque witticisms from comic publications, dresses them up in local colors, and presents them as his own;’* that there is no place for the vamping of the Twenty-third Psalm; that he is not to work over or clip old jokes; that he should welcome contributions; that while he watches for comical occurrences or listens for witty sayings, he must be fair, cleanminded, and avoid sarcasm, invective, and ridicule; that the humor column can be a joy and delight or that it can be just as flat and stale as ditch water. Finding a name. The naming of the school paper, and the naming of children, is a kind of personal matter for the school or family. It is possible that some papers like some children dislike their names. The name, as Harrington points out, should be “dig- nified, neat and informing” and where possible should be associated 1The Polytechnic Preparatory Country Day School, Brooklyn, N. Y. 2South Side High School, Fort Wayne, Indiana. 8North High School, Des Moines, Iowa. *South Side High School, Cleveland, Ohio. 5West Commerce High School, Cleveland, Ohio. 6Theodore Roosevelt Intermediate School, Wichita, Kansas. 7Central High School, Tulsa, Oklahoma. 8East High School, Cleveland, Ohio. *The Serious Business of Being Funny, the Scholastic Editor, April, 1926. *Borah, Leo A.—News Writing for High Schools, p. 159. 108 National Association of Secondary-School Principals with the name of the school or town. To what extent do the follow- ing names meet such a standard? The Empire Herald, Empire Junior High School, Cleveland, Ohio; The Cole Junior Life, Cole Junior High School, Denver, Colorado; The Jeffersonian, Jefferson Intermediate School, Detroit, Michigan; The Adams Gazette, James A. Adams School, Coatesville, Pennsylvania; The Sketch Book, Washington Irving Junior High School, Des Moines, Iowa; Latimer Life, Latimer Junior High School, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the Longwood Ledger, Longwood Commerce High School, Cleveland, Ohio; Sky High, Asheville High School, Asheville, North Carolina ; The Senn News, Nicholas Senn High School, Chicago; The Clair- tonian, Clairton High School, Clairton, Pennsylvania. Newspaper names of an entirely different type could be quoted, but the X-Rays, Eye-Openers, School Defenders, and Tallahassee Ticklers, in com- mon with some children, have been tormented too much already. What organization should exist for producing the paper? First of all, it is necessary to recognize that the whole school, rather than any small group, is responsible for the paper and that in a larger unit, as in a city or county, the superintendent, and behind him the board of education, is responsible for the whole policy of school publications. This responsibility in a particular school may be vested in a board of publication which, subject to the principal, determines the policy for each publication in the school, the kind of paper, whether or not newspaper writing courses shall be given out of which the paper can grow, the selection of the adviser, who in turn is responsible, with the help of the pupils, for the selection and organi- zation of the staff. The Board of Publications. A school that has two or more pub- lications may find that these publications overlap each other in con- tent, organization, and appeal and that they may be conflict in policy as well as an unhealthy rivalry. The lack of co-operation in appeal to advertisers may tend to destroy both school and community spirit. A board of publications may help co-ordinate all conflicting interests and develop a school policy governing all school publications. Such a board may be composed of the editors, business managers, and advisers of all publications, the head of the English department, the adviser of boys, the adviser of girls, the director of extra-curriculum activities, the president of the student council and the principal or Eleventh Yearbook 109 his representative. This board is a policy-making group. In a small school there will be naturally a smaller number of members on the board but the principle is the same whether the school is large or small, whether it has one or four publications. Further if there is more than one school in a system there is a real need for co-opera- tion of all schools and the superintendent's office in developing a policy for the whole system. This idea of a central board has been worked out in many ways. The city of Cleveland has a Director of Publications who among other duties has advisory supervision of all Cleveland school papers. This director keeps individual schools well informed of all that is going on in the world of student publications. This city has an Association of Teachers of Journalism, a city-wide Hi-Press Club, a working co-operation with the Cleveland Advertising Club, and a series of local contests directed by the local newspapers and the schools. The Kind of Paper. The board can decide, also, the kind of paper to be published. Shall the paper consist of a single copy prepared by a group of pupils and read at a weekly meeting of a home-room, club, or class, or in assembly; shall it be copied and posted on one or more bulletin boards; shall it be a special column or section in the town paper; shall it be mimeographed ; or shall it be published as a school paper? In any event, how often shall it be published ? The adviser, preferably a successful teacher of English com- position, needs the kind of youthful zest, vitality, and nervous energy that enjoys an adventure. This is “a young person’s game.” Such a teacher must be the kind of person that gets other people to work. Since the co-operation of the whole school is necessary, the adviser must be able to work constructively and happily with other members of the faculty as well as with the pupils. The paper should affect every group, every activity, and every department in the school. Since nearly all advisers at the present time are comparatively untrained, probably nine out of every ten, the second question is, how shall the adviser be trained? If the prospective adviser is a college graduate with successful experience in teaching, preferably English composition, a vacation spent with a newspaper, country 110 National Association of Secondary-School Principals weekly or city daily, will help. A course for advisers of school news- papers as offered in some college for teachers during summer ses- sion, or an “extension’’ course, may help toward the desired training.* In fact, two faculty advisers, if they can and will work to- gether, may be better than one. If there are two, one should have charge of producing the paper while the other has charge of all affairs financial. Men and women advisers are as a rule equally good, or bad. In any event the adviser will have to do a great deal of self education. “The real test of an adviser’s fitness for his work,” so Miss Penney thinks, “is his ability to lead his pupils to develop the right attitudes, to set up the right standards, to accept the responsibility for making the paper as nearly ideal as possible.” Thereto she adds this cheery note: “A teacher who believes in youth and its possibilities finds in this relationship satisfaction and How is the paper produced? Some papers are written, edited, and published with very little faculty guidance in schools that have not as yet assumed responsibility for the paper. Other papers with a staff, or at least the editor-in-chief, elected by the student body, issue the paper under faculty supervision. In many cases those elected are chosen from an eligible list made up by the faculty. In still other cases the faculty directly or through the adviser of the paper select the more important officers who in turn select their assistants. The whole matter of choosing the staff depends largely on whether or not there are newspaper writing courses given in the school. There is a growing tendency for the school paper to grow out of class work and to carry in each issue such statements as the fol- lowing : “The North Central News, North Central High School, Seattle, Washington, published weekly by the class in journalism.” “The Weekly Scarab, East Technical High School, Cleveland, Ohio, published every Thursday during the school year by the *Cleveland School of Education offers two courses in school journalism ; one for undergraduates who will teach in the elementary schools and another for senior and junior high school teachers in service. *Penney, Edith M.—The Adviser and the School Newspaper, Teachers College Record, 27:894-900, June, 1926. a eS 111 Eleventh Yearbook students of newspaper writing and editing and printed by the boys of the print shop.” “The Argentian, Argentine High School, Kansas City, Kansas, published semi-monthly by the students of the Journalism Depart- ment.” “Pasadena Chronicle, Pasadena High School, Pasadena, Cali- fornia, published under the direction of the Department of Jour- nalism.” “The Dart, Ashtabula High School, Ashtabula, Ohio, published once a week during the school year by the Journalism class of Ash- tabula High School.” How is the staff organized? In those schools in which the paper grows out of the work in news, or newspaper, writing, or journalism classes, the chief members of the staff, at least, come from present or past members of the course. Some schools make one term’s work, frequently in the junior or the first half of the senior year, a prerequisite for the membership on the staff. There are often a large number of reporters; in some cases one for every home room. In some cases the staff is selected for the term, occa- sionally for the year, and in other cases the staff changes every week. There is a growing recognition of the necessity for all staff appointments to be made on a merit basis with a fairly strict system of promotions. In any plan the fundamental idea is a division of work and of responsibility. There needs to be first of all the teacher-adviser, who stimulates and guides by expert advice and by a wise, sympa- thetic, absolutely fair handling of the human element. In the begin- ning and the end, nearly everything depends directly and indirectly on the ability of the adviser. The experiences of the Manual Train- ing High School of Kansas City, Missouri, as well as of many other schools, shows that “brick without straw” * can be made but a real newspaper is not made without an adviser. How much does a newspaper cost? For those schools that mimeograph their paper or publish it in the town paper, practically nothing in money, but such schools lose the thrill, the adventure, of issuing a real paper. It is important to keep some healthy adventure *Bricks Without Straw—A booklet showing how a school “grew” a course in newspaper English and a print shop. Published by the school, 1919. 112 National Association of Secondary-School Principals in the education of youth. The Scholastic Editors shows that in a study of 91 papers (May, 1924) the average annual cost was $854.95. O. F. Nixon found in 1921-22 that 95 newspapers in accredited high schools of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools had an average annual cost of $951.58.* How is the newspaper financed? There are three ways; by subsidy, by subscription or sales, and by advertising. There may be some real need of a subsidy in the early stages of the develop- ment of the paper but, as a rule, the paper should be absolutely self- supporting. There should be no pay for anyone, including no com- missions for securing advertising. Advertising in the school paper has been considered by some business men to be an act of charity. Some solicitors of advertising for school papers have sold space instead of service and have based their sales talks on “loyalty” to the school. Advertising must be on a sound business basis. The school that sends, or permits, pupils to “beg” for advertising in its publications is alienating business men, lowering its own dignity, and destroying the self-respect of its “beggers.” Courses in Newspaper Writing. If a school expects to realize in the knowledge, attitudes, or habits of its pupils whatever of edu- cational value there may be in first year Latin, in geometry, in ath- letics, or in the school newspaper, it must provide guidance in the work to be done. The work may be curriculum, partly curriculum, or entirely extra-curriculum and the amount and possibly the quality of guidance may vary, but guidance is necessary. The point of view maintained here favors the present tendency of school newspapers growing out of regular courses in newspaper writing. Handbook. The handbook, vestpocket in size, attractive in makeup, should contain the information necessary for the intelligent orientation of the newcomer in the school. The production of the handbook furnishes a rare educational opportunity. How should it be produced? Early in the spring semester every home room can write out its suggestions as to what the handbook should contain. These suggestions can be brought together by classes and, finally, *Nixon, O. F.—An unpublished Master dissertation quoted by W. C. Reavis in the Twenty-fifth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part II, 1926, p. 148, 113 Eleventh Yearbook by all classes under the supervision of the student council. These suggestions, with such additions as the office thinks necessary, can be turned over to a composition class in English for final editing. By this process every one in the school, as well as the whole school, has a favorable opportunity to think through what a pupil, as an individual and as a member of a group, needs to know and to do in order to be a good citizen of the school. A handbook produced by the teachers, or by a few pupils, may be a well edited book but such a method of production misses a real educational opportunity. The school board is justified in presenting, free of charge, a handbook to every newcomer in the school. Every school, no matter how small should have a handbook of some kind. The Magazine. The school magazine, half “literary,” half news, has no place in school publications. If there can be only one publication in addition to a handbook, it should be a newspaper, mimeographed or printed. If the school desires and can support a magazine, it should be of the best literary quality the school can produce. The staff of the magazine should plan long in advance what it wants to produce and, while always open for volunteer con- tributions, should through its own staff and by assignment to special writers, or by contest, get the material it desires. The old plan of waiting, hoping for, expecting worth while material, and _ finally printing the best of what is offered always is a comparative failure. It is probably well to recognize that while high-school pupils can write commendable verse, sketches, feature stories, it is a rare pupil indeed who can write a short story. Have a real newspaper first ; then if there is a real educative experience that can be provided by a magazine, by all means have it. The Annual, The annual can grow out of the life of the school and be a resume of the achievements of the whole school and espe- cially of the senior class. There is no place in an annual for fiction and the type of feature story carried by the magazine or newspaper. If an annual is produced it should provide a real opportunity for education for the senior class and for the whole school. It should be the work of the pupils. It is not the place for the art department to run riot. Still less is it a place for appropriating the art work of professional engraving houses. The sponsors of high-school publi- cations in the state of Minnesota are absolutely right in refusing to 114 National Association of Secondary-School Principals consider in the state contests any annual that is not the actual work of high-school pupils. The state and interstate contests in school publications have had some exceptionally constructive influences ; however, the increasing elaborateness of annuals is not one of them. Further, when one considers how some annuals are said to be pro- duced, the question can be raised as to whether or not some schools are providing a favorable situation for the development of dishonesty among pupils. The annual is an inheritance from the college. Some high-school pupils and teachers have attempted to think through the problem for themselves. They have recognized that the annual costs far too much. Along with merchants, they have recognized that adver- tising in the annual is practically worthless to the advertiser. At the same time some schools have recognized that the successes of the school, and especially the achievements of the senior class, can and should be presented. An increasing number of schools have met this opportunity by getting out a special edition of the school paper. For example, for the mid-year graduation class at North High School, Des Moines, Iowa, the school paper, the North High Oracle, devoted the issue of January 28, 1927, to the senior class. Incidentally, in this school of 1000 pupils, 1400 copies of the paper were sold. There is a growing tendency to eliminate the expensive, traditional annual and to devote one issue of the school paper to the school and the senior class. Summary. According to the position maintained here: 1. All high-school publications should be supervised by one board of publications. 2. This board should be composed of the principal, the ad- visers, editors, and business managers of all school publications. 3. School publications should be a part of, or grow out of, curriculum activities. 4. The production of all high-school publications should fur- nish a favorable opportunity for everyone concerned to practice the qualities of the good citizen here and now with results satisfying to himself. Eleventh Yearbook THE PLACE OF THE JUNIOR COLLEGE IN OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM MerTOoN E. HILt, PrincipAL CHAFFEY JUNIOR COLLEGE, ONTARIO, CALIFORNIA It has been a great privilege for me to meet with the high-school principals of America at this great convention. As a native son of California, as one educated in its public schools and a dweller on one of the alluvial fans of California’s majestic mountains, I bring you greetings from that region characterized by Theodore Roosevelt as “west of the west.” Right in the forefront of modern institutions the junior college is rapidly taking its place at the apex of our free public school system. The junior college came upon us unheralded, the post graduates of the high school began to return for additional work in such ever increasing numbers that a new institution, the junior college, emerged. Gradually in all parts of our country the func- tion of the junior college became definite. During the past eleven years I have been administrating a California junior college, first as an integral part of the senior high school and later as a definite organized junior college authorized by law. The place of the junior college in our educational system has become evident as we have noticed the functions of this institution. The functions have ap- peared in rather a different way in different parts of our country, and this is to be expected, for public junior colleges will serve a different constituency from that of the private institutions. And as the junior college is largely a community institution, the varying interests of many communities will cause the appearance of many functions. In recent years the junior high school movement has resulted in bringing into our educational system a new institution which gives greater educational opportunities to our earlier adolescents. The later adolescents have had their educational work centered in two institutions, the senior high school and.the college. The public school system, beginning as it does with the kindergarten and end- 116 National Association of Secondary-School Principals ing with the education of the later adolescents, is experiencing a re-organization that will benefit young people everywhere. At the culmination of our public school system we now have the junior college in all parts of the country. In every state this new type of institution is finding a place. A community that can afford to offer college advantages to its young people should make a special study of the function of the junior college. The junior college is a finishing school for some and a con- tinuation school for others. There are many young people who enter junior college and continue one or two years with one point of view, further preparation vocationally for occupational life. Particularly has this been true in agriculture, music, home eco- nomics, commerce, and mechanic arts courses. In these departments young men and young women of mature age who have not had the privilege of a high-school education have been enrolled, also non- recommended high-school graduates have found their way into these departments, and have been able in one or two years to fit themselves for occupational positions that have put them forward economically. This advance in economic status of worthy young men and young women is worth all the junior college costs. There is a very good reason why institutions should be developed that will give vocational advantages to young men and young women beyond the high school. There are few institutions of collegiate rank that have in view training young people for business, agri- culture, home-making, and music careers. Those institutions that prepare young people to go out immediately into occupational life are usually schools where tuition rates are comparatively high. The junior college, recognizing its obligation to its community, can offer vocational advantages so that young men and young women and adults of the community can secure one or two years of special training that will enable them to be better able to do the necessary work of the world. For a decade past vocational courses have been given in different junior colleges, and it is possible to determine a definite contribution of this new type institution as a finishing school for young men and young women. They have taken such courses as will enable them to take salaried positions, and hold those posi- tions successfully. Such courses as the following have been given: citriculture, economic entomology, pomology, and dairy husbandry Eleventh Yearbook 117 in the department of agriculture ; stenography, typing, business Eng- lish, office practice, accounting, and commercial law in the depart- ment of commerce; foods and cookery, clothing and textiles, in- terior decoration, and art for the home in the department of home economics; auto mechanics, machine shop, mechanical drawing in the department of mechanics; voice, harmony, violin, piano, and pipe organ in the department of music. The courses just suggested are merely illustrative of what junior colleges can do and should do to prepare young people adequately for vocational life. The in- dividual institution should determine for itself, through a close relation with community life, what courses it should offer. The majority of students who enter junior college have in view doing two years of college work, similar to what they would do in an academic college or university. A large number of the graduates of junior colleges find their way into higher institutions. Some institutions send as high as 75% of their graduates to a college or a university. The junior college in these cases is an ex- tension of the high school upward for two years, and is a prepara- tory institution, the students preparing for the junior year of the higher institution. The junior college has a very definite function in getting more young people to go to college. Many of the young people who want to go to college could not afford the costs of the higher education. In a study made regarding the costs of sending high-school graduates to higher institutions it has been estimated that the average cost of sending a boy or girl away for one year is $750.00. Many spend more; many spend less, but this is a good average. The junior college will save for each student this amount, which will be sufficient to finance him the last two years at some higher institution. In this way many young men and young women are going to continue their higher education who would otherwise be deprived of such opportunity. There has developed during re- cent years a policy in junior colleges to prepare very definitely for the higher institutions. Courses in the sophomore year are made more rigid than those of the freshman year. Certain courses are set aside as distinctly sophomore courses, and because they are harder and because of the methods pursued by the teachers, they lead definitely to the junior year in the higher institutions. A great many young people graduate from high school, and do not receive 118 National Association of Secondary-School Principals the right preparation for college entrance. Either they have taken the wrong courses in high school and are not adequately prepared for the work of the higher institutions, or they have been un- recommended in the work of the high school. The junior college is an institution that should take hold of these young people, and give them either vocational work or intensive academic training that will prepare them adequately for university work. The young people of this sort need to be trained definitely to do the sort of work the university offers. From this point of view the junior college is a salvaging institution. In this way it works with colleges and universities in preventing so great an elimination during the first two years of the higher institution. The sort of courses that are best as salvaging courses are those in mathematics, including elementary algebra and plane geometry; English, including intensive instruction in grammar, composition and literature; social science, including modern and Arertican his- tory; physical sciences, including chemistry and physics; biological sciences, including botany, zoology and physiology; and foreign languages, including two or three years of elementary French, Spanish, Latin, and German. Where these courses have been offered they have been given intensively and much more is required of a student than is required in high-school classes. They have proven very beneficial to young people who have taken them, and they have also reacted satisfactorily on high-school students for those looking forward to college entrance. In the high schools asso- ciated with a junior college the students are led to strive harder than ever for college recommendation. The junior college has proven to be of a very great advantage to parents and to young people. Many high-school graduates are too young to enter the great universities. They would do better to stay at home for one or two more years and postpone university entrance. For these young people the junior college is a great blessing. It gives them college advantages, and holds them in the home under the most wholesome conditions. Later when they enter the higher institutions they are able to orient themselves more suc- cessfully. Eleventh Yearbook 119 The following age grade table indicates just what the situa- tion is with reference to the age of young people in the junior col- lege. This table is taken from the 1926-7 enrollment of a typical junior college, the Chaffey Junior College, which serves a “home” area of 225 square miles including 10 elementary school districts, and an additional area covered by eastern Los Angeles county, a portion of Riverside county and all of western San Bernardine county. Ages 16 17 18 19 20 21 Total J.C. Boys ...... 15 24 19 4 5 67 f Gin. 2 24 27 14 5 3 80 LG. Be: ssi 1 13 18 6 7 45 S Gib cs... 4 16 13 7 7 47 ic eer 1 2 0 10 18 31 Se, Girls ...... + 5 11 y 36 58 TOD viccavivncs 7 49 87 75 34 76 328 This enrollment shows that 21.7 per cent of the freshman boys are accelerated ; 38.3 per cent are of normal age; 38.1 per cent of the freshmen girls are accelerated; 35.5 per cent are of normal age; 31.8 per cent of the sophomore boys are accelerated; 40.9 per cent are of normal age; finally 45.4 per cent of the sophomore girls are accelerated, while 27.2 per cent are of normal age. The special students in junior college are on the average from two to three years older than the regular students. The special students come to junior college almost wholly for vocational opportunities. These facts justify the junior college as being an institution that will offer young people an opportunity to stay at home for one or two years longer. Again, the junior college has developed as a sort of apex to our system of public school education. It is going to make possible 120 National Association of Secondary-School Principals a better organization of our system of secondary education. It has been observed where high school and college students mingle on the same campus that two groups have normally formed without any effort on the part of the school organization to secure this grouping. High-school freshmen and high-school sophomores group together on the campus. They inter-mingle in social activities, and they are matched against each other quite often in athletic and Junior and seniors automatically have likewise forensic activities. It is interesting grouped with college freshmen and sophomores. to observe how these automatic groupings conform to the theorecti- cal grouping of early adolescents in the junior high school, and later adolescents in the senior high school and junior college. Where assemblies are arranged for the six classes of high school and junior college it is observed that speakers can normally interest upper classmen and lower division college students bette: than they can high-school freshmen and sophomores with juniors and seniors. In the freshman and sophomore years of high school, junior high school methods are very largely pursued, but in the junior and senior years of high school the methods are gradually changed to those that are more distinctly like college methods. In this way the junior and senior years will lead more adequately to prepara- tion for work in the higher institutions. In this way the educational theory, which dictates the grouping of earlier adolescents in junior high school and later adolescents in senior high school and junior college, is being upheld by experience and practice. A junior college is another educational community builder. It attracts to the community of the junior college many desirable citi- zens who are looking forward to living where they can keep their children home during one or two years of their college life. It means more teachers in a community, more money spent for com- munity development, a larger pay roll and more money spent with- in the community. It adds public buildings and renders a general service in making the district a more worth while place in which to reside. But apart from this purely practical function the junior college tends to raise the educational level of the citizens. Exten- sion courses are offered, lectures and concerts are further intro- duced, adults wishing educational advantages beyond the high school are brought into contact with the regular academic and vocational courses, and the men and women of the community secure those a nenemanetion _ Eleventh Yearbook 121 intellectual advantages that only accrue to those localities that possess higher institutions of learning. A very great advantage has been shown to be the increase in scholarship in high schools where junior colleges are attached to them. Teachers who wish to instruct in the junior college are re- quired to have better preparation and seek higher degrees. The college courses require more preparation and teachers are given fewer teaching hours. This reduction of the weekly teaching load results in increased study and research on the part of the teachers, so their scholarship and that of their students gradually approaches a higher level. But there is a definite reaction on the part of the high-school student body. High-school students are led to look forward to attendance in the junior college and to make definite scholarship preparation for it. The presence of scholarly students of greater maturity leads the younger students to aspire to greater scholarship; in this way the junior college becomes a stimulator of youth. Because of the additional training required of college teachers it is possible for the junior college to offer extension courses to teachers in the service. One of the great needs of teachers is fur- ther preparation for teaching. Many teachers find it impossible to take extension courses from the universities, and others find it impossible to attend summer sessions of teacher train- ing institutions. Junior colleges will come more and more to feel a definite need in offering teachers courses in history and economics, in literature and art, in principles of teaching, and other educa- tional courses. This is proving to be one of the outstanding func- tions of the junior college, and our public school educational sys- tem is destined to be greatly impoved because opportunity for ex- tension courses will be universal. During the last decade the number of students in our second- ary schools has greatly increased. Each year there are thousands of high-school graduates who cannot under present conditions gain an entrance to higher institutions. In California alone during 1926 there were more than twenty-one thousand students graduated from the high schools of the state. Institutions must be developed to take care of this vast output of the high schools. Junior colleges must be created to take care of this increase in numbers. 122. National Association of Secondary-School Principals In the years to come this function will become of greater im- portance, and it is necessary that communities wishing the right sort of education for their youth make ample provision by building and equipping these very important institutions known as junior colleges. Junior colleges in California have been developing in a slightly different way from the manner in which the same institution has developed in various portions of our country. There are about thirty junior colleges in our state, and only two or three of these Public junior colleges have developed with us along are private. Under our four lines, and there are about as many distinct types. law of 1907 and amended ten years later high-school districts hav- ing an assessed valuation of three million dollars or more are per- mitted to organize junior college departments which will contain courses approximating the lower division subjects of our state uni- versity. We have at present in California fifteen junior colleges of this type where the organization is a definite integral part of the high school. They receive no special state aid, tuition is not per- mitted, and the district can not be bonded for junior college pur- poses. In 1921 a new law was enacted which made possible the establishment of three types of junior college districts-—the county junior college, the district junior college, and the union junior col- lege. Up to the present time in our state no county junior college district has been created, but under this law there have been created fourteen district junior colleges where the district lines of the junior college.district are co-terminous with the district lines of the high school district. There have been created two union junior college districts. At the present time there are several other districts in the process of formation. The new law also provided that junior college district boards could contract with Teachers’ Colleges for the education of junior college students, and so we have five junior colleges as integral parts of Teachers’ Colleges. The junior colleges are developing very clearly along three lines with us—as an integral part of the senior high school, as a separate two year institution, and as an integral part of a four year teachers’ college. Where junior colleges are connected with high schools they First we have six year institutions are developing along two lines. which include the grades nine to fourteen, or five year institutions including grades ten to fourteen; and there is being urged upon us Eleventh Yearbook 123 at the present time the four year institutions including grades eleven to fourteen. One of the largest junior colleges of our state, the Pasadena City Junior College, has announced that it will work out its junior college on the basis of grades eleven to fourteen, and they have gradually eliminated the earlier high-school grades in their institution. There has been some talk within the last two years in some of the larger centers of developing the junior college into a four year institution making possible the granting of the Bachelor’s Degree. This proposal has not been considered favorably as yet. Under the existing law such an institution can not be developed. What is the future of the junior college? At the present time we can only give a partial answer, but I am convinced that the junior college is a community institution primarily, and it will find its place in every community that can afford to finance it, and there are bound to be various groupings to fit into the varying needs of community life. It has been pointed out that two year institutions can not permanently endure. They have always showed a tendency to become attached to some other institution. At the present time in our state they are in some cases associated with advanced col- legiate work, in some cases they are associated with strictly sec- ondary schools, and in some cases they are moving along as two year institutions independently and with marked success. It is very interesting to consider their relation to other institu- tions. The universities of our state have been very considerate of the junior colleges, and very helpful to them. They have sent out their visitors to aid the faculties of the junior colleges, and some of the universities view the junior college as an institution that some day will furnish all of the lower division work required so that they may spend all of their time with upper division and research work, but yet we can see no indication that many four year colleges and universities will eliminate lower division work. Those familar with college enrollment realize that during the past there has been an elimination of college students during the freshman and sopho- more years. The presence of a large number of junior colleges in our state has resulted in putting into the junior years of four year colleges enough junior college graduates to maintain the balance of numbers in the junior and senior years. As the junior college 124 National Association of Secondary-School Principals is a purely democratic institution the influx into the senior college of large numbers of junior college students has had a wholesome effect upon college life. The junior college has a very definite relation to the high school. It tends to round out the secondary school system of a community, it inspires high-school pupils to go on with their further educational work, and it enables many high-school boys and girls to make decisions earlier in their high-school life to go on with their educational preparation beyond the high school. The question arises, “What becomes of the junior college product?” It has been my experience in viewing the graduates of eight classes that approximately seventy-five per cent of the gradu- ates continue with advanced courses, while twenty-five per cent go immediately into occupational life. The most of those who attend junior college for one year only go into occupational life. Finally, I wish to point out that the junior college fills a special need in community life by providing means of extending educational oppor- tunities to adults who in the past have not had the advantages of a college education, and to other adults who wish to improve their economic status and advance along vocational lines. Extension courses are being offered in almost every department, and through association with the university certain credit courses are being given that give advanced credit beyond the sophomore year of the college. A great deal might be added as to the place of the junior college in our educational system. It is clear that this institution is des- tined to assume a very important place. The next decade will see many changes, for to-day we are in the midst of educational re- organization and no standard type of junior college has yet been determined ; but among the institutions of the future one of the greatest, located in the main centers of each state as a regional edu- cational “service station” will be the public junior college. Eleventh Yearbook 125 THE PROBLEMS OF THE NINTH YEAR Mito H. Stuart PRINCIPAL OF THE ARSENAL TECHNICAL SCHOOLS, INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA The ninth year presents, we believe, a greater number of puzzling problems than any other one year of the whole school system. The first of these has to do with the subject of promotion from the eighth to the ninth year. We might call it the ninth-year entrance problem. A few years ago practically all of our schools were or- ganized on the plan of an eight-year continuous program in what we chose to call common school branches, the ninth year beginning an altogether different but almost equally rigid course of instruc- tion called high school. Everything conspired to make the break as complete as possible between the two. We had formal common school commencements with orations, bouquets, diplomas, and all the accoutrements which we could conjure up to make the youngster feel that something big was entirely finished. The high schools loomed up as entirely distinct institutions in a different building (except in small villages), different instructors, different adminis- tration, different studies. To make the breach more complete, compulsory school laws, when we had any, usually read—“until fourteen years of age or until the completion of the elementary school”, giving the boys and girls the feeling that the state regarded the common school training as essential, the high school as strictly a matter of choice. This, in a way, made a legal break just before the ninth year. We have come to realize the mistake in all this. This is the time when boys and girls are just entering adolescence. They are naturally restless; they feel the pull of outside affairs; they want to be men and women; they are impatient at the thought of years of training. We have come to see that we should not make it easier for the child to quit school at the beginning of adolescence, but should so connect the year together that going on will be the one natural course. The first big problem of the ninth year, then, is how to connect it in the strongest, most natural way with the years which precede it. This cannot be solved without going down into the seventh and eighth grades and definitely making ready for that which is to come 126 National Association of Secondary-School Principals in the ninth so that the seventh, eighth, and ninth years may be welded together into one period. It is for this purpose that the junior high school has sprung into being. It begins in the seventh year before the child has matured, at a time when the compulsory school law is in full force, introduces departmental work, high- school methods of teaching and administration. It anticipates the child’s desire for grown-up ways. It has as its aim to weld to- gether the completion of the grades and the beginning of high school. Also it introduces a number of vocation-finding courses to the end that the child may be ready to select intelligently what he needs to study in the senior high school. The rightly conducted junior high school therefore solves perfectly the problem of ninth- year entrance and also goes far toward doing the even bigger task of inspiring children with strong enough purpose to go on inten- sively after the ninth year. The junior high school, then as an intermediate institution connecting the six-year elementary school with the three-year senior high school, is offering a set of solutions for all the ninth year problems which is entirely worth considering. The writer, however, is taking for granted that this audience is fairly familar with the 6-3-3 form of school organization. It is worth while perhaps to know more than one road to a given goal. The second road, no better in itself, may be much easier of access from your starting point. So here is a second plan which has the same objectives and some measure of success in attaining them. We might call it the 6-2-(1 plus 3) plan of organization. That is to say that, while outwardly there is the old form of eight-year grade and four-year high school, the grade school is in reality organized into six year continuous elementary and two-year departmental units and the high school carries the ninth year as a one-year, sub-unit connect- ing the departmental grade work with the following three years of high school work. The 6-2 grade plan is, I think, fairly familiar. The Indiana- polis schools are used as illustration because the writer knows them best. They have, for many years, been organized on an enriched departmental basis throughout the seventh and eighth grades, for- eign language, general mathematics including algebra, social science, industrial art and home economics courses being included. In fact, all the exploratory courses in the early part of the junior high school i rarer) rT ST bea rrr errr en en Tern 127 Eleventh Yearbook program have been incorporated. The schedule has been so ar- ranged that promotion is largely individual based upon ability. All this prepares the way in method of administration, in type of teacher and in subject-matter for high-school work. To make the bridging over to the ninth year more complete, the compulsory school law of our state now specifies sixteen as the age limit, except by special permission. In our state this permission may be obtained only on necessity. So the legal right of a child to break his training comes more often with us at the close of the ninth year rather than at the beginning. For that reason a ninth year organized as an in- tegral part of a four-year high school has its distinct advantages. So in the Technical High School of Indianapolis we are trying out this form of organization. The very fact that the pupils have usually the choice of going on or quitting somewhere near the close of the ninth year has led us to organize that year as a distinct sub-unit of our high school. We choose from our high-school faculty a group of the finest teachers, paying special attention to personality and strong human interest. These make the problems of the ninth year their problems and with the principal outline together what subjects to give, in what ways to stimulate school interest, school loyalty; how best to give intelligence in choosing subjects; what outside activities to encourage in order to develop initiative ; how to use the faculty and older pupils to train these beginners. Something like this is our curriculum for the ninth year, though this curriculum is in no sense unusual. English of some kind is required. It ranges from the time-honored literary type to the practical and applied. Mathematics offers for selection com- mercial arithmetic, general shop mathematics, as well as the formal division of the subject. Other subjects in the list are four foreign languages, social science including group and occupational civics, vocation finding courses in building crafts and metal crafts. The vocational civics is a study of occupations which the children may be most liable to choose, stressing those peculiar to our locality. The kind of training needed to enter each set of occupations is taken up and the possibilities of our own curriculum viewed in connection. Each pupil is expected to choose what he thinks his most probable life choice and to study in some detail the subjects best pursued in preparation. Do you think this is too early for so momentous a 128 National Association of Secondary-School Principats decision? The child does not. He is ready to consider life as a whole and he is going to think out what he wants to do either with or without guidance. This decision can later be changed, if need be, with more intelligence than if never tested out. The vocation finding course in building crafts is just what its name implies. It is a view of the crafts in that line, giving enough insight into them to enable the pupil to judge which one he would like to pursue. Dr. David Starr Jordan reminds us “there’s all the difference in the world between the elements of a subject and its fragments.” We find to give insight into different lines to be- ginners requires the help of some of our very strongest, best equipped teachers. The same plan is followed in home economics, in commercial lines, and in metal crafts. It is well to aid the alert boys and girls entering manhood and womanhood, to satisfy their craving to begin a life-work by showing their own aptitudes and how to develop them. There are other lines offered—art, music— but these are sufficient to show the principle on which the curriculum is arranged. This curriculum presupposes something which is not quite true yet. But it ought to be true and we have so much faith in our colleges and universities that we believe it will soon be true. That is that our higher institutions will so recognize the wisdom of mak- ing the ninth year one of special preparation and inspiration of purpose that they will withdraw any specific entrance requirements for that year. The higher institutions, as well as the associations having to do with the standardization of high schools for college entrance purposes, are becoming more and more convinced that college entrance requirements should relate only to the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth years, thereby leaving the ninth year as well as the whole junior high school free from college specifications. We who work with problems of boys and girls of this age can hardly wait for a universal change of college entrance upon this new plan. Since the ninth year as a sub-unit carries as electives algebra and foreign language as do the eighth and ninth years on a less inten- sive basis in the junior high school, it would seem that any scheme of college entrance based upon the upper three years should carry a provision to admit one unit each of algebra and foreign language completed below the tenth year without otherwise involving the lower year or school in any manner whatsoever. For example, Eleventh Yearbook 129 the college might require twelve units to be completed in the upper three years with the proviso that a year of algebra or a year of foreign language completed earlier than the tenth year could be added to the preparatory program, increasing the total requirements from twelve to thirteen or even fourteen units depending upon the number of units so included from the junior grades. Such a plan would solve the problem of college entrance as it relates to the ninth year and would leave the public schools free to deal with ninth year children with respect to their interests and their needs. To return to the care of the pupils in the ninth year in the school. We have touched on the kind of curriculum used. But it is very hard to give an idea of the ways in which the whole high school, both teachers and pupils, are used to further the interests of this ninth year sub-unit. They are the beginners; their training becomes the project of the whole school under the leadership of this special ninth-year faculty, much as a well-ordered family all take part in teaching the tiny newest comer. Some of the finest training the seniors ever receive comes in their attempts to inspire in the beginners the standards and ideals of the school. Let it be noted in passing that many a youngster just ready to break over the traces is often started down the right road by a boy or girl just a little older than he is. Likewise, the whole faculty is humanized and kept to the main point of why they are teaching given subjects by this questioning, human contact. I do not know which it helps more, the beginners to feel that they have older brothers and sisters in the school and friends on the faculty, or the older pupils and faculty to feel that they must be brothers and sisters or real friends. Taken all through, the atmosphere of helpfulness in the whole school is one of the greatest assets of this plan. But there is no plan which works entirely. Perfection in this world seems to be only relative. The means taken to solve one problem gives rise to another. Raising the compulsory school age to include the ninth year means that the ninth year must carry a considerable number of youngsters whom no alluring bill of fare is able to captivate quickly enough to prevent home failures. Also restless beginning pupils choose some subject unwisely and are un- able to carry them. Sickness, truancy, and change of location add 130 National Association of Secondary-School Principals to the number. . Entrance Items 2. Parents’ 3. Father’s business address... 4. Parents’ 5. Father’s 6. Parents’ 7. Parents’ 8. Years parents have been in the Eleventh Yearbook Co Ot a ar reerr er) ele business telephone..........|....... BIRR DIACE 6 6.0 6 vic cc cede e006 fevssece nationality. ........c0ecceee feces Uses(See 1st page for meaning) IV I BOUNONM eS one Rated ene woees a WEG SEER o osc cae cts ceeeeowe bese 9. Years parents have been naturalized. 10. Father’s occupation...............0¢{ i 11. Are parents living?........... Pe eat | eae ‘EZ, Parents attitudes. «5. 6s occ cveccese 66 bien 13. Guardian (parents also called nest 14. Address of guardian.. Sededes Home 1. Language of the home.............. 2. Home surroundings................+: 3. Home duties of pupil................- 4. Is mother employed outside of home?. Immediate family 1. Brothers and sisters—older.......... 2. Brothers and sisters—younger....... 3. Number of brothers and sisters...... 4. Occupation of brothers and sisters... III. ATTENDANCE INFORMATION . Absence summaries............e.ceeeeeee . Tardiness summaries..............see008 Days present summaries..............+2+ ; OCR) GENO CAGE. ns sc ccccvcncsesveces . Daily attendance record................. . Reasons for irregular attendance.. IV. ENTRANCE, GRADUATION, - LEAVING 1. Date of school entrance............. 2. School entered from................ 3. Credits upon entrance............... 4. Classification upon entrance......... 5. Date of school entrance each year.... 6. Credentials for entrance............. . Graduation Course taken... ..ocss cc csvsccceseees Course entered..............eceeeeee Date of graduation.................. Rank in graduating class............. Course graduated in................- Class of 19... ; Summary of ‘graduation ‘requirements aving and returning 1. Date left school.. 2. Reason for leaving. . 2 Date re-entered.. a. To what school?....... . Date of transfer to ‘other school. cK eae II | III 145 V {VI 146 National Association of Secondary-School Principals Items 5. Suspended . 6. Reinstated . 7. Date of transfer to ‘senior “high school. A. Facts regarding past schooling Grade last attended.................|....- 2. Date of a... ae 3. Other schools attended . Standing at last school.. . Date of leaving last school. . , . Elementary school graduated from| . Date of elementary school gradua- 1. a0 om V. GENERAL tion ee eo aa. Date of admittance to. bb. Grades attended in. f. Other high schools attended. . aa. When? .. bb. When? -ssersrressrssrsrseeeey . Time and place of classes 1. Room number of each class.. 2. Hour of each class.. C. When and by whom record is r made 1. Signature of person making record.. 2. Date of record ee ee . Other schools + sn ll meee T= nds be “ho | D. Miscellaneous eS ES Seren Seren eer re ae ee eee ee eee 3. Name of superintendent. . RP) Sister, eee 4. Name of principal.. Peet Sey DRE: 5. Outside readings in English. i, SER CE 6. Interview with parents.. ere ae ee 7. Conference with pupil. ..... 2. ...< ++ ecceocsefecseeese 8. Subjects like best... ....00660 0000000 leccecece[eceeceee 9. Subjects like least... ye eS ee 10. Subjects very good in. eS ES ee 11. Subjects very poor in. i>, en ee 12. Space for general remarks. . Be AES RWS : ses(See 1st page for meaning) VI Please answer the following questions by writing either yes or no on the lines provided for the answers. Do you believe that a list of all subjects taught in a high school should be printed on the permanent record card? 2. Do you believe that a list of all required subjects should be printed on the permanent record card? . Do you believe that blank space should be left for writing in the names of all subjects taken by the pupil during his high school COULSE? oo.....eeeeeeeee . Do you believe that where junior high school reorganization has been effected the junior and senior high school record of a child should be included on one record card? ................ . Do you believe that a permanent record card should provide space for records beyond the time ordinarily required to complete the high school course? ................ NOTE: should be provided? one year, two years. If your answer to question 5 is yes, how much extra space Underline one of the following: one-half year, Eleventh Yearbook REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON GUIDANCE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS The committee on educational and vocational guidance appointed by President M. R. McDaniel, begs to submit the following report : 1. We wish to commend to the further attention of the mem- bers of the association the report of Professor Jesse B. Davis, pub- lished in the Ninth Yearbook of the National Association of Sec- ondary-School Principals, which sets forth a working program of guidance for secondary schools. This report was endorsed by the Association, and in the opinion of the committee it includes all the essential features of a modern guidance program. The need of the Association is not another program, but a detailed study of the prac- tices now employed in different schools and the means and agencies through which guidance may be made an integral part of secondary education. 2. The committee, therefore, recommends that the Association approve a comprehensive study of guidance during the ensuing year with the idea of preparing for publication a report of current prac- tices and procedures in educational and vocational guidance in junior and senior high schools. The report should include studies and in vestigations of the various aspects of guidance, such as: Methods of aiding pupils in the choice of curriculum offerings, (methods of classifying pupils for effective classroom instruction, means of ar- ticulating the guidance work of the secondary school with that of the elementary and higher schools, types of guidance organizations, forms employed for recording guidance data, the qualifications and training of counselors, the technique of counseling and guidance, the use of school and community activities in providing exploratory and integrating experience, procedures of efficient placement and follow- up, and means of enlisting the co-operation of the entire teaching force and the public in promoting the guidance program of the school. 3. The committee recommends that it be allowed more time and that it be empowered to undertake the working out of the program suggested, and that the Association provide the funds nec- essary for carrying on the studies and for publishing the report. 148 National Association of Secondary-School Principals 4. Because of the vital importance of this work to the im- provement of the secondary school, the committee urges that all members of the Association give their full co-operation by furnish- ing the chairman of the committee, reports, forms, and information pertaining to the guidance work carried on in their schools. Signed for the committee, Ws. C. REavis, Joun H. Bossuart, EpWARD RYNEARSON. Members of the committee who were unable to be present: Jesse B. Davis, MERLE Prunty, H. V. Kepner, A. F. Bristow. THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL CURRICULUM A CRITIQUE OF THE FIFTH YEARBOOK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE NATIONAL EpuCATION ASSOCIATION Puitie W. L. Cox, Pu. D. PROFESSOR OF SECONDARY EDUCATION NEw YorK UNIVERSITY I. Four years ago the Department of Superintendence issued its first curriculum yearbook. Succeeding yearbooks have dealt with problems of the elementary curriculum. The 1927 Yearbook, The Junior High School Curriculum, is a product of the Co-operative Plan of Curriculum Revision. Part I, dealing with the Place of the Junior High School in the American Program of Education was prepared by the Research Division of the National Education Association and contains seven very valu- able chapters dealing with: The American Program of Education Extent and Growth of the Junior High School Movement Shall the Junior High School Be Freed from the Responsibility of Direct Preparation for College? Eleventh Yearbook 149 Articulating Junior High School and Senior High School The Junior High School Teacher Junior High School Costs A Justification of the Junior High School Part III contains reports of ten subject committees: English, science, mathematics, social studies, foreign languages, music, art, home economics, industrial arts, and commercial education. An eleventh committee report on physical education was to have been included, but illness of the chairman has prevented it. After each subject committee had worked independently for several months, the chairman of all committees met for a two-day conference in Washington. Each committee, however, was left free to organize its report along the lines which it deemed would be most helpful to local course-of-study committees. Since research has proceeded much further in some subjects than in others, it was impractical for any two committees to follow exactly the same outline. The material tentatively presented by all of the committees is tich in suggestions. Jt is submitted for criticism and for study. A critique of this Yearbook is the task assigned to me. Ob- viously any just analysis or evaluation of this imposing work is impossible in a thirty-minute address. The first reaction of the reader is one of deep gratitude to the committees for the pains- taking work that they have done and for their earnest efforts to be constructive and helpful. In this volume, many valuable studies and practices recommended or suggested are made available for curriculum committees to adapt and utilize in their local schools. Il. A critique implies the need of criteria. Any attempt to analyze and evaluate this comprehensive study of the junior high school curriculum would be pointless and futile unless we first set up the standards for judging its plan, its method, its recommendations, and its unity. Such rules, tests, or standards must be derived from a dynamic steering philosophy of education and must be consistent with the practices to which the most progressive junior high schools aspire. 150 National Association of Secondary-School Principals Let us then set forth five fundamental questions regarding the curriculum in the answers to which criteria should be sought: 1. Of what does the junior high school curriculum con- sist ? 2. What does it aim to accomplish? 3. How may such a school curriculum affect most ade- quately the social and leisure behavior of the pupils? 4. What organization of the curriculum is desirable and feasible to accomplish its purposes? 5. How shall its modification be undertaken? 1. Or Wuat Does Tue Junior Hich ScHoot CurricuLuM Consist? The thing the child does is the thing he learns. How he learns it and how he likes what he learns become integral parts of what he learns. Hence, it is obvious that the curriculum by which the junior high school seeks to affect the lives of its boys and girls must be broadly conceived. It must not be limited to words, facts, processes, and ready-made “ideas” to be memorized. Whether we desire it or not, the school curriculum actually includes all that a child does in connection with his school. Hence, CRITERION I The curriculum includes all of the activities and experiences provided or encouraged by the school whereby all the children at the dawn of adolescence may learn to participate effectively in civil life and whereby each one may realize, harmonize, and express him- self adequately. The junior high school is a vital social environment. Active and educable young people cannot be prevented from acting and experiencing. Even if the school neglects or refuses to accept the obvious responsibility for intelligent and vigorous planning to en- courage and direct their activities and experiences, the children will, nevertheless, develop abilities and interests as a result of their school experiences. Under a regimen of opportunism and laissez- faire, however, there is little probability that they will all of them be socially desirable traits. Intelligent, purposeful control through a socialized curriculum is essential, and each “subject” should con- . tribute to such a control. Eleventh Yearbook 2. WHat Does Tue Junior High Scuoot Aim To ACCOMPLISH ? “Education in a democracy ... should develop in each in- dividual the knowledges, interests, ideals, habits, and powers where- by he will find his place and use that place to shape both himself and society toward ever nobler ends.”* He should develop his per- sonality primarily through core-activities designed for all pupils to promote associational living, institutional orientation, health, use of the language tools, use of natural law and environment, appre- ciation of beauty, and practical efficiency in every day affairs, and through joyful adventures in special elective fields of science, linguistics, art, vocation, and the like. Hence, CRITERION II The junior high school curriculum as a whole should be so planned as to promote directly and effectively the universal attain- ment of the objectives of education. 3. How May Sucu A Scuoor CurricutumM AFFEect Most ApDE- QUATELY THE SOCIAL AND LEISURE BEHAVIOR OF THE PUPILS? Training is specific. There is no assurance that any skill or attitude or information learned in any class will affect the behavior of the pupils outside the class. But the boys and girls are actively engaging in many and varied experiences in school and home, on playground and: dance-floor, at pool-rooms and moving picture shows, in church and in library, in lunch-room and assembly, in student council and scout troop—always and everywhere, asleep, awake, or day-dreaming. Only in the utilization and application of the information, attitudes, and habits fostered by the curriculum is. there any assurance that school learnings will actually promote de- sirable civic participations and self-realization. CRITERION III It follows, therefore, that the junior high school curriculum must be so conceived and operated as to reinforce, guide, and dircct the activities of pupils, both within the school and in rela- tion to other educational activities outside the school. * U. S. Bulletin, Bureau of Education, Bulletin 1918, No. 35: Cardinal Principles of Education. 152. National Association of Secondary-School Principals It can thus encourage and “prepare pupils to do better those desirable activities that they are going to do anyway” and “reveal to them higher types of activities and make thenr both desirable and, to an extent, possible.” 4. WHAT ORGANIZATION OF THE CURRICULUM IS DESIRABLE AND FEASIBLE TO ACCOMPLISH ITS PURPOSES? The degree and kind of curriculum practice and instruction that any individual pupil needs in order to participate in the social life of school and home and church and playground may differ from what are needed by any other individual. Furthermore, the needs of each one differ from day to day and even from hour to hour. The adaptation of formal instruction so as to meet these ever fluctuating needs is to be encouraged. But after all, formal in- struction is an artificial, clumsy, and at best, an ineffective pro- cedure. It may serve for teaching spelling or fractions, but not for controlling attitudes and social behaviors. Education is not gained by receiving instruction; it is growing and reconstructing one’s experiences. Education happens inside of a child; his con- nective system is constantly modifying itself by trials and errors and by trials and successes. The curriculum simply furnishes a friendly environment of encouragement, stimulation, and satisfac- tion for desirable reactions necessary for the attainment of edu- cational purposes. Hence, CRITERION IV Educational purposes to be accomplished should determine the contents and methodology of curricula and courses of study. These purposes should be reflected in the names given to the courses and curricula and should indicate goals that are socially desirable and that offer the completest self-expression to particular types of individuals. If this criterion were accepted, schools would not start out with formal subjects to be taught, but with purposes to fulfil by means of courses and curricula planned in view of the attainment of these objectives. “We have thought more about our subject than about our object,” says Glen Frank. “Subjects” should never be thought of nor taught as ends in themselves, e.g., studying grammer to learn grammar; “Subjects” should always be thought of and taught as Eleventh Yearbook 153 means for promoting associational living, health, social intelligence, appreciations, and home-membership. If they were so thought of and so taught, their activities would always be constructive and pur- poseful. Then the school would teach, the “teacher” would be merely an agent of the school in promoting the growth of pupils toward the goals of education. In our most effective junior high schools this is indeed what actually takes place. In an atmosphere of friendliness and en- couragement and partnership, there are community undertakings— assemblies, athletics, clubs, newspapers, Scouts, traffic problems, care of locker-rooms and toilet rooms, library support, parents’ nights, school gardens, ad infinitum. These expressions of social life are at once the products of, and the instruments of constructive education. In this varied life of the institution each may find a niche-—dull or bright, mechanic or artist, athlete or aesthete, printer, policeman or politician; the contribution of each according to his gifts is welcome. This is life in a purified, idealized, embryonic community. The institution teaches, the subjects are organization centers, and the teachers are the pupils’ friends and sponsors, their partners and interpreters. The teachers need understandings that are infinite, and such understandings to develop in almost all teachers who become partners and sponsors of their pupils in the promotion and performance of constructive educational activities. 5. How SHALL THE MODIFICATION OF THE CURRICULUM BE UNDERTAKEN ? Simultaneously with the mechanical listing of courses of study by so-called “authorities”, the real junior high school curriculum has evolved independently. Through the continuous modification of the daily schedule, through new assignments of teacher-energy, and through discriminating appreciation of teacher-services, prac- ticing pioneers have promoted school morale, have encouraged cre- ative education, and have adjusted the school’s offerings to the abilities, needs, and interests of the individual children. Curriculum modification through painstaking researches, through pronouncements of the prophets, and through official mani- festoes have frequently resulted in changes in the words memorized, examined, and forgotten. Curriculum materials may seem modern, but the spirit and method and standards of achievement may still 154 National Association of Secondary-School Principals be verbalistic and futile. The hand is the hand of Esau, but the voice is the voice of Jacob. So long as teachers are unconverted, changes in school room practices are slow and slight. Wherever the institutional life becomes the curriculum, how- ever, the changes made by pupils and teachers together are sweep- ing and fundamental and deeply significant. Unfortunately, few superintendents and college professors even know them for what they are. CRITERION V Changes in the curriculum will best be made empirically by pupils and teachers, encouraged and advised by administrators, re- search specialists, and educational philosophers. This partnership will become much more effective if the advisers mentioned will try to understand the progress that has been made, and how little of it is due to the self-annointed “experts”. III Let us now examine and evaluate the contributions of the Fifth Yearbook in the light of these five criteria: I. The junior high school curriculum includes all of the ac- tivities and experiences provided or encouraged by the school where- by all of the children at the dawn of adolescence may learn to participate effectively in civil life and whereby each one may realize, harmonize, and express himself adequately. II. The junior high school curriculum taken as a whole should be so planned as to promote most directly and effectively the uni- versal attainment of the objectives of education. III. The junior high school curriculum must be so conceived and operated as to re-enforce, guide, and direct the activities of pupils, both within the school, and in relation to other educational activities outside the school. IV. The contents and methodology of the curricula and courses of study should be determined by their purposes. V. Changes in the curriculum will best be made empirically by pupils and teachers, encouraged and advised by administrators, research specialists, and educational philosophers. When we come to apply these criteria in judging the adequacy of the Fifth Yearbook we find it necessary to distinguish clearly _— chat ee ee Eleventh Yearbook 155 between Parts I and III. Part I consists of chapters dealing with such aspects of the junior high school—its place in the American program of education, its extent and growth, its relation to the senior high school and college, the preparation of teachers, cost ac- counting, and its success. Part III is made up of the reports of the national subject-matter committees. It is to these reports that our criteria apply directly. The English Committee was in a peculiarly fortunate position. Not only were its chairman, Superintendent Gosling, and four or more of its members keenly alive to junior high school problems, but also its field has been characterized by numerous progressive movements and rational researches. In this report there are listed the trends in the language-composition aspect, the reading-literature aspect, and the testing and measuring aspect of English work. This is followed by resumes of recent research studies that are pecu- liarly suggestive for course-of-study building in the junior high school. Tentative conclusions and logical, clear, and forward-look- ing recommendations follow. Best of all are the suggested ac- tivities and occasions for direct training in relation (1) to home- life, (2) to school life, (3) to church life, (4) to community life, and (5) to recreational life. So far as any subject-matter committees report can accord with the criteria that have been stated, this English report must be placed in the first rank. Throughout it stresses the activity aspect, the social purposes, and individual expression (Criterion I). The contributions to the attainment of domestic, civic, and leisure time efficiencies is directly indicated (Criterion II). The relation of the English class activities to the institutional life of the school and to the pupils membership in home, church, recreational, and civic groups are the basis of the recommended activities (Criterion III). Both the subject-matter and method recommended by the Committee are appropriate to the purposes for which the English course of study exists; the subject is obviously an omnibus sub- ject, but the committee has kept each phase or “group” by itself. (Criterion IV). Whether the committee would agree with Criterion V is not quite clear, but there are evidences that the suggested activities would in fact be curriculum practices only as the pupils and teachers re-created them in response to their felt needs. Here is a report of outstanding merit; it is helpful in the most valuable way—it encourages its own modification in practice. 156 National Association of Secondary-School Principals The Social Studies Committee has done a valuable piece of work in a field that is very difficult because of the competition of such vested interests as the geography teachers and history teachers represent. By the social studies is meant “that body of subject- matter which includes the present acts of men, their back-ground, and their outlook.” The section on objectives and other funda- mentals raises the issue; viz., citizenship requires more than in- formation, it requires better understanding, better attitudes, better civic habits, and better civic ideals. Hence, it requires practices involving feeling as well as memorization and intellectual problem solving. In some of the illustrative units quoted and in all of the general discussion, the committee takes definite position in favor of an activity basis as opposed to a memorizing and intellectualizing basis for the social studies. These activities, the committee recom- mends by inference, are to be planned in terms of the social ob- jectives sought: they will affect the school, home, and street attitudes and conduct of the pupils, and they will be modified by pupils and teachers—indeed, the modification of the units is in- trinsic to the units. The section includes adequate treatment of researches, prac- tices, and tests. The Junior High School Home-Economics report is based on the recognition “that students of the junior high school age re- spond with all their first fresh enthusiasm to the social appeal which is furnished by their desire to “stand well” with their mates and families and their associates in general”. The listing of recom- mended projects is almost sufficient to show how closely this report fits our criteria: “Budget project” for ninth grade girls; “mother’s helper” project for 7B girls; “home project” in the use of left- overs; a “summer vacation” project; a “bed-room” project. Here are projects that are true experiences ; their objectives are obvious ; they re-enforce and direct the activities of the girls both inside of school and in the home and community; their content and method- ology are precise practices that each girl needs for her success— hence pupils and teachers make their actual courses as they go along. The recommendations of the Committee on Music are in accord with our criteria. Glee clubs, orchestras, bands, chorus singing, and recognition of outside study of music are to be promoted to the end that people will sing in concert with pleasure and success, that es nant nmalia nn ne Eleventh Yearbook 157 “affective emotional states” will be utilized to reinforce and upbuild the strong elements of character, that the musical interests of the school may be articulated for the pupils with those of the home and the community, and that the mechanical and technical interests of children as well as individual musical capabilities may be en- couraged. The report deals also with administrative problems, adolescent voice, differentiations of opportunities and similar provi- sions without which their commendable program would not be complete. The chapter on Junior High School Art is written up by the inimitable Superintendent McAndrew. After a brief introduction the recommendation of activities and materials, tools, processes and methods are set up with the social objectives definitely stated for each activity. Since the criteria proposed in this paper are such ones as Mr. McAndrew has been urging for a quarter of a century, it is not surprising that this report complies with them all. “Few subjects”, the report concludes, “run more risk of becoming formal than does art. The motives of children, their desire to serve, must be given constant and joyful practice.” P Industrial Arts in the Junior High School is to be taught so as to promote the attainment of the objectives of the junior high school. While the: position taken by the committee is not very clear, they seem to sponsor the selection of industrial arts curriculum material on the (a) frequency of home activities (b) frequency of tool processes (c) economic and social status of the home (d) the frequency of adult activities in the community (e) the ability of the child, and’(f) the facilities of the school. The examples drawn from the Denver material are both scientifically justified and at the same time consist of activities planned in terms of objectives; they reenforce home activities; and their content and method are, in a sense, determined by their purposes. They do not meet the requirement of Criterion V however, for the method is apparently so rigid that pupil and teachers are powerless to modify it very much. The report of the Foreign Language Committee is a temperate, open-minded presentation of the problems that foreign language teachers are facing; viz., (1) prognosis, who should and who should not study a foreign language in the junior high school, and (2) when should the study of the foreign language be begun, and 158 National Association of Secondary-School Principals what is the shortest time that must be devoted to it in order to render the study profitable? Answers to these questions must be postponed until the findings of the Foreign Modern Language Study now being conducted are available. The spirit of the report is such as to imply a readiness to conceive the courses of study as activities for whoever should take a foreign-language in the junior high school, but the lesson units and courses quoted with apparent ap- proval seem to imply that the chief object of foreign language study is to learn it. This committee of ten has three dissenters to any foreign lan- guage work before the ninth grade. The report on the Junior Commercial Curriculum urges the sub- stitution of junior business training for other commercial courses in the junior high school on the ground that it gives an understand- ing of principles of business, inculcates habits of thrift, is adapted to the immaturity of the pupils, fits those who must leave school for such positions as are open to them, and serves as a try-out course. These are surely desirable qualities for a general course. The summary of recommendations (p. 438) seems also to accord with the five criteria. When the Committee sets forth an outline for an elementary course in business procedure and facilities, however, it is most dis- appointing. It is heavy with words and information. It contains no typewriting, no practice, no concrete, practical, executive, social practices. A similar criticism would be justified for the other sug- gested courses. The fine promises stated under aims find no coun- terpart in the outlines. The courses outlined have no connection with any of the promised outcomes, except possibly the first—an understanding of principles—and it is doubtful if so much verbalism assures much understanding. The Science Committee seems not to have been very successful in proposing a program to promote desirable habits or attitudes or skills. The report includes an adequate review of research studies in the fields of general science and general biology, and a biblio- graphy of articles and reports. Some illustrative units of work in junior high school science and lesson sheet material used in a Denver Junior High School are included. A few paragraphs, quite unrelated to the rest of the chapter, deal with the science program in the schools but they seem wholly inadequate. Information in ci anaes i we ne A ge Eleventh Yearbook 159 form of facts, “principles”,* biography, with such appreciation as may be hoped for piously, are the only outcomes emphasized. No spontaneous activities are suggested in this report (follow- ing teachers’ directions is seldom spontaneous) ; the only objective is information about science; no effort to direct or reenforce pupils’ outside interests and activities is indicated. Instead of pointing the way to better practices, the program proposed in this report is far less valuable than the actual practices in most junior high schools that offer general science at all. It certainly is far less promising than the work that Kelley did at Springfield, Mass., as far back as 1908. The emphasis in the Mathematics Report is on mathematics for the sake of mathematics; the problems are those of building on the six grade school arithmetic and articulating the work with the mathematics of the senior high school. In a lesson unit quoted from the Detroit Course of Study in Intermediate Mathematics social objectives are stressed, to be sure, and some pupil activities are indicated, but the committee has not included this unit to illus- trate this significant contribution, but rather to show how mathe- matics method and material may be differentiated for bright and dull pupils. IV RESUME: If one compares the inert material proposed by the science and mathematics committees with those of the English, home economics, music, and other committees, he is led to wonder why a new educational institution such as the junior high school finds room for either such conventional mathematics or conventional science in its core-curriculum. If the objectives of the school are health, social efficiency, worthy use of leisure, then there should be no place for mathematics to be studied as an end in itself or science to be studied as an end in itself or any other subject-to be mastered for its own sake, except possibly as a free elective. Subject-matter set forth to be learned and tested (and for- gotten) has no place in progressive education. The junior high * “No thought, no idea, can possibly be conveyed as an idea from one person to another. When it is told, it is, to the one to whom it is told, another given fact, not an idea. The communication may stimulate the other person to realize the question for himself and to think out a like idea, or it may smother his intellectual: interest and suppress his dawning effort at thought.” (Dewey’s, Democracy and Education.) 160 National Association of Secondary-School Principals school is young enough and vital enough to produce such an education as would be “the key to the new world.” Intellectual life depends on curiosity ; extrinsic subject-matter kills curiosity. We need vitality, courage, sensitiveness, intelligence, says Russell. Education as he knows it diminishes vitality, substitutes a conflict of terrors for courage, decreases sensitiveness, and kills curiosity. “I firmly believe,” he says, “that, by proper physical, emotional, and intellectual care of the young, these qualities could be made common.” This segregation of the curriculum by subjects is peculiarly unfortunate in the Yearbook, since the treatment nowhere permits the reader to get any conception of what the junior high school curriculum is—he never sees an educative philosophy at work on the whole child, much less on the student body which is itself the most potent educative agent. He sees only the science child, the history child, the mathematics child being severally “educated” (Heaven help us!) by algebra, biology, and history. Some of the reports—a surprisingly large number of the re- ports—give some evidence of sensing the mission of the junior high school. But there is in the Fifth Yearbook no co-ordinating report, no clear statement of what the school may furnish as a controlled environment, where subject mastering can be subordin- ated to the promotion of vitality, courage, sensitiveness, and in- telligence. In such a creatively controlled school extrinsic subject- matter would disappear because of its very incongruity with the larger program. Children would be ends of the training, they would never be subordinated to subject-mastering. In the preface of the Fifth Yearbook these appears this para- graph which indicates that the Commission may be aware of the danger of subordinating the curriculum to the subjects: “The junior high school is a new educational unit. It would be unfortunate if it were “swamped out” through com- promises with conventional procedures. In the preparation of this Yearbook the Commission has stood squarely for a for- ward-looking experimental conception of the junior high school curriculum, which, as one writer has said, “should be so selected, organized, and operated as to break down the line between curricular and extra-curricular activities, by introduc- ing the extra-curricular spirit into the curricular subject-mat- ter.” While Chapters IX-XVIII are organized on the subject Eleventh Yearbook 161 basis, the reader should not infer that this organization is indicative of a belief that curriculum content should be or- ganized in “water-tight” compartments. In the preparation of a yearbook which enlisted nation-wide co-operation, division of work was necessary.” If we professors and superintendents and principals will but have faith enough to keep our blundering and officious hands off the junior high school, the pupils and teachers will evolve a true curriculum in avery few years. Letus drop our oracular manners and become friends and sponsors and interpreters of the teachers and set them to educating themselves by means of a constructive job—that of being friends, sponsors, and interpreters of youth. And this is no small task; it requires patience, tolerance, and finesse without limit. But it is joyful, challenging, and inspiring—if med- dlers, so-called “experts”, and standardizing and examing and cer- tifying agencies will keep their hands off. Their interference de- presses and represses the children and teachers, and render te cur- riculum inert and futile. For the chief—indeed almost the only job of the junior high school boy and girl is to grow and be strong and normal, physically, emotionally, and mentally. Not Latin or mathematics or grammar or science, but life is his curriculum, and he must experience and reflect upon and experiment with life. Deep within each docile, word-memorizing junior high school boy and girl lies a complex system of nerves and glands, organs and muscles representing a population of 3,500,000,000,000 cells. Nature has worked out a pattern for harmonious co-operation within this immense popula- tion. He is an arrogant and dangerous and stupid meddler—no matter how “expert” a researcher he may be—who would thwart or prevert nature’s plan. And the more “scientific” and thorough and sincere and “efficient” he is, the more horrible are the outcomes. Now clearly Samuel Butler saw this over a half-century ago! Speaking of the boy Ernest, he says: « ... he believed in his own depravity;....he thought, at least, that he believed it, for as yet he knew nothing of that other Ernest that dwelt within him, and was so much stronger and .more real than the Ernest of which he was conscious. The dumb Ernest persuaded with inarticulate feelings too swift and sure to be translated into such debatable things as words, but practically insisted as follows— 162 National Association of Secondary-School Principals “Growing is not the easy, plain sailing business that it is commonly supposed to be; it is hard work—harder than any but a growing boy can understand; it requires attention, and you are not strong enough to attend to your bodily growth, and to your lessons too. . . . Never learn anything until you find you have been made uncomfortable for a good long while by not knowing it; when you find that you have occasion for this or that knowledge, or foresee that you will have occasion for it shortly, the sooner you learn it the better, but till then spend your time in growing bone and muscle; these will be much more useful to you than Latin and Greek, nor will you ever be able to make them if you do not do so now, whereas Latin and Greek can be acquired at any time by those who want them. “You are surrounded on every side by lies which would deceive even the elect, if the elect were not generally so un- commonly wide awake; the self of which you are conscious, your reasoning and reflecting self, will believe these lies and bid you act in accordance with them. This conscious self of yours, Ernest, is a prig begotten of prigs and trained in prig- gishness; I will not allow it to shape your actions, though it will doubtless shape your words for many a year to come... . Obey me, your true self, and things will go tolerably well with you, but only listen to that outward and visible old husk of yours which is called your father, and I will rend you in pieces even unto the third and fourth generation as one who has hated God.”’* Does this seem extreme? Those of us who remember clearly our boyhood and girlhood, or who now have children of our own must know that it is thus that Nature does her very best to protect youth from the stupidities of adults; and the school room practices are just as stupid whether sanctioned by tradition or based on some superficial research that masquerades as science. The purpose of education in a democracy reflects the pur- poses of democracy: “The purpose of democracy is so to organize society that each member may develop his personality primarily through *Butler, Samuel: The Way of All Flesh. Boni & Liveright. Mod- ern Library, p. 130. 163 Eleventh Yearbook activities designed for the well-being of his fellow members and of society as a whole. . . . Consequently, education in a democracy, both within and without the school, should develop in each individual the knowledge, interests, ideals, habits and powers whereby he will find his place and use that place to shape both himself and society toward ever nobler ends.”** THE ORGANIZATION OF THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL CURRICULUM Wa TER D. CockING DIRECTOR OF CURRICULUM, St. Louts, Missourt The Good Book tells us that Moses went up into a mountain to commune with God and that he came down with the Ten Com- mandments engraved on tablets of stone. In the mental picture gallery of most of us this awe-inspiring, superhuman patriarch of long ago with his white beard sweeping his chest, stands forever on the mountain slope holding the sacred tablets of stone. This great law giver of the ancient world has a prototype in education. Until very recent years, a superintendent of schools would sit in his sanctum sanctorum, commune with his own soul, and write a course of study for the system over which he presided. The curri- culum, like laws, was handed down from above and was supposed to be accepted without question. Many good laws and some good courses of study came into being in this way because there were wise and just law givers and educators. But achievement of this kind is regarded as a monument to its creator. A monument may be a thing of beauty and a joy forever, but because it cannot change with the life about it, it soon becomes a landmark of the past rather than a part of the living present. As time goes on tradition invests this creation of the past with a halo and any at- tempt to alter it in any way comes to be regarded as the desecration of a holy thing. In the hearts of the people of to-day there is still a chord that vibrates to the blind faith of those ancient people whose chief glory was the laws of the Medes and Persians which **U, S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin No. 35, Cardinal Principles of Soegntary Education, p. 9, Washington: ‘Government Printing Office, 1918. 164 National Association of Secondary-School Principals changed not. No one person or small group of persons, however wise, can understand and provide for all the needs of all the children of all the people in any school community. Only an infinite mind could have so vast a grasp and so great an understanding. We have but casually to examine the courses of study written by school superintendents and college professors not in daily touch with young children to discover the impossible tasks set for teachers and pupils. Words which may call up wonderful pictures to the imagination of an adult whose life has been full of rich experiences are only black marks on a white page to a child whose mind is furnished with mental images from a much more limited view of life. In the Annual Report of the Commonwealth Fund* is found this statement. -“America is to-day in a period of maximum rapid- ity of change in human habits of getting a living, making a home, spending leisure time, and performing the other recurrent activities that constitute life.’ If the junior high school is to maintain a place in the modern school system and effectively function in aiding in the unfolding development of children of early adolescence, its organization must be so attuned that it can be readily and eco- nomically adjusted to the needs of an ever-changing world. The problem of those who contribute to the revision of the junior high school curriculum is to provide-a practical working plan for con- tinuous adjustment of the school to the needs of boys and girls. The curriculum so often lags behind other change in the world about us that it is necessary first to describe a program of curri- culum revision for “catching up,” and second and more important, to outline a program for “keeping up.” Much of this paper is based upon our experiences and study in connection wii’ the pro- gram of curriculum construction which has been under way in St. Louis during the past two years and which has embodied all units of the curriculum from the kindergarten through the teacher training college, which has cost thus far approximately $100,000, and in which over 1,000 persons have been actively engaged with 2,000 other participating in an advisory capacity. . And now, without further discussion, a program of construc- tion for the junior high-school curriculum is proposed. *Commonwealth Fund, 1926, page 55. a sania stant nsavassdnatianaasan a ee me | Eleventh Yearbook 165 Who Should Participate in a Program of Curriculum Revision —The problem of curriculum construction is not solely one of who can best make the curriculum, but also of how it can be best ad- ministered. At the present time, more and more attention is given to this latter phase of the problem and there has come a changed idea as to who should participate in such programs. We are fur- thermore slowly but surely beginning to realize that to-day in a modern school-system all of the ability is not confined to those in high authority but that within certain limits, ability and experience is to be found all along the road and all who are in any way con- nected with the school system, the administrator, the supervisor, the classroom teacher, the pupil, the patron, and the taxpayer, should participate. The output of a program of curriculum con- struction which has embodied the best effort of all will probably be far superior to that which is made by any one or more of the groups suggested. Even if the administrator due to his wider experience, greater opportunity for learning, and possibly greater innate ability, could produce a better piece of work than it is pos- sible to produce through the co-ordinated effort of all the groups, still of what avail, because the important part of the program re- mains, that of administering the curriculum after it is made. To do that efficiently demands the intelligent and co-operative effort of all connected with the school system. Selection of Committee Personnel—One of the most important tasks looking to the success of a program of curriculum revision is the proper selection of the personnel of the committees. This selection should be based upon objective qualifications rather than upon subjective opinion. Committee personnel has often been selected by getting a small group of people in authority about a table and saying that “I will take this one and you will take that one,” etc. That day has passed and committees in the future must be selected because of the personal fitness of the particular mem- bers for the particular assignments. While it is recognized that it is extremely difficult to determine objective factors to guide in the selection of committee personnel, nevertheless, some may be sug- gested. Curriculum committees in St. Louis were selected on the basis of the following factors: 1. The amount of college training. It was determined that 166 National Association of Secondary-School Principals so far as this qualification was concerned a candidate must be a graduate of a four year college or university. 2. Major and minor in college. It was determined that in order to be considered for committee work the individual must have majored or minored in the particular subjects for which they were being considered for committee assignment. 3. Special courses in education. The standard was set that those being considered for work on the curriculum must have had a minimum of twenty hours in education. This standard was set for it was believed that those who were acquainted with the psychology of learning, the principles of teaching, modern methods of instruction, etc. were better prepared to do constructive work. 4. Experience. It was endeavored to secure committee mem- bers at the heyday of efficiency in the classroom. With this in mind, the following terminals were set: that committee members must have had a minimum of four years of successful experience and a maximum of twenty. 5. Recommendation of the principal or person in authority. Those in immediate authority were asked to list in order 1, 2, 3, those working with them as to their particular fitness for different committee assignments. In doing this, it was asked that the fol- lowing factors be kept in mind: Experience, training, co-operative- ness, openmindedness, sincerity, vision, originality, persistence, toler- ance toward viewpoint of others, ability to produce, ability to view all parts of the system in proper perspective, ability to promote team work. A composite of the factors thus suggested was used in determining the final committee assignment. Where several in- dividual members became available for a particular committee through the application of these objective factors, personal fitness then became the final determinant. It is noteworthy to observe in this respect that after the selection of 147 committees of 3 members each chosen in this way, no committee had to be abolished or its personnel changed. In other words, the committees produced. Furthermore, criticism usually pointed at the selection of commit- tee personnel was immediately removed because of the selection on the basis of the objective factors. It may be said, then, that there are three important factors which determine the fitness of an in- dividual to a place on any committee work on the curriculum, open- mindedness, ability to have ideas, and ability to develop ideas. Eleventh Yearbook 167 The Necessity of a Training School in a Program of Curri- culum Construction—We have already said that a successful pro- gram of curriculum construction will involve the co-operation of all connected with the particular school community in some part of the program. This places a tremendous responsibility upon those in charge of the program for the proper training of all who are to have a part. Work on the curriculum is somewhat specialized in nature and those who are to do that work must not only have latent ability but must have training in the work which is to be done. We consider it absolutely necessary that when a program of curriculum work is undertaken that a great deal of time should be given to the training of the participants in the problems and methods of curriculum construction. This involves a study of the history of curriculum development, of the methods which have been employed in the making of the curriculum, of the methods of re- search, as well as a thorough study of the particular unit of work in which the individual is to engage. The future success of the program, the development of morale, we believe to be largely bound up in the development of this particular phase of the work. Size of Committees and Size of Units of Work.—We are com- mitted to the proposition of small committees and small units of work. Two of the difficulties encountered in many programs of curriculum construction in various centers over the country have been: (1) that the units of work assigned to a particular com- mittee have been too large in scope to permit of any committee grasping them fully and bringing them to a satisfactory conclusion. For instance, if the field of English in the junior high school is composed of such units as reading, literature, oral speech, written speech, etc., it is idle to suppose that any one committee can handle equally as well all of these units as can different committees work- ing on separate units in the field. On the other hand, that if there are to be small units of work it is absolutely necessary that there be proper correlation of the work of the various units into one com- prehensive whole. There should be a continuous and ever-develop- ing process running through each phase of the work from the kindergarten through the high school. One of the drawbacks to a good deal of the course of study work in the past has been that the. resulting reports have been general and not specific in character. What the classroom teacher is asking of a course of study is that 168 National Association of Secondary-School Principals it may be so specific that she may receive help and assistance when concerned with a small and particular classroom problem. This cannot be achieved if the size of work assigned to a particular com-' mittee covers several units within a field and several years of work. Another of the difficulties concerning the work of curriculum committees has been that the committees have ofttimes been too large. If the work of any program of curriculum construction is to succeed, it is dependent upon the committees producing and com- pleting a given unit of work. This is difficult to secure where com- mittees are large in number because of the very fact that when many people are concerned, responsibility is shifted, opinion holds too large a place, and the result is that either the committee does not report at all, or hands in a compromise, an inferior piece of work. The ideal size of a committee, in my estimation, is not over three ; that one of these should be responsible for reading, reporting, carrying on the research, and that the full committee pass on each step of the program. In our St. Louis program there were six- teen separate and distinct committees working in the junior high school field. ° Research as a Part of Curriculum Revision—To the curriculum maker who would develop a program which is sound and which will stand up against the fires of criticism directed at it, the de- velopment of an extensive program of experimental research is absolutely necessary. Unless the program proposed can be de- fended from a standpoint that it is based upon facts and is de- veloped as a result of scientific research, it probably cannot succeed to any extent. Research becomes a vital and integral part of any program of curriculum construction. It may be of various types. In the first place, there is that type of research which deals with the gathering together of objective data which have been determined in the past and analyzing them in the light of present situations. In the second place, there is that type of research which is experimental in character, which attempts to discover under controlled conditions present facts and tendencies. In that part of a program of curri- culum revision where the attention is being paid to catching up, the research must be of such a character as will lend itself quickly and readily. It must not be such as will require a long period of time to show results. In a program of curriculum revision where. the emphasis, is on keeping up, the detailed methods of research Eleventh Yearbook 169 may be employed. In the third place, there is one other type of research which is of a great deal of importance in a program ot curriculum construction and which has two objectives: (1) the discovery of the achievement of pupils in any particular unit of content; and (2) the discovery of the extent to which the aims or purposes for which the unit of curriculum work is included are being satisfied on the part of the pupils through a study of that particular unit. The last is recognized to be extremely difficult but is all important in any program which is to bear the name scientific. Library Facilities—The universal laboratory of school is the library, the one unfailing source to which curriculum committees go again and again for information and help. In order to discover the practice elsewhere, in order to find the results of experimental studies, and to get the opinions of experts, it is vital that a large and comprehensive library of curriculum materials of every kind be secured. It is further necessary that a large part of. this library should be available when the committees go to work. It is neces- sary that someone be assigned the responsibility of the development of this feature for the purpose of finding information for various committees and for the purpose of discovering other information which might be available. There are at present in America over 14,000 different courses of study, several thousand pamphlets, and at least 2,500 different books dealing with the curriculum, all of somewhat recent date, which offer an opportunity of securing in- formation if the proper library facilities are available. The Form of the Course of Study.—The effectiveness of the course of study can be enhanced by the form in which it is pre- sented. The determining factor in deciding upon the form is its’ usableness. With this in mind, committees spent a considerable amount of time in investigating various forms of courses of study and in investigating the needs of teachers for a course of study and the use which they make of it, and finally, the use which they stated they would make if such a one as they desired were avail- able. The composite of the various investigations became finally the determining factor in deciding upon the form. As the major outcome of education may be said to be the equipping of the child with certain attitudes toward life, and as these attitudes do not blossom full-blown but slowly unfold through the development and acquisition of knowledge, habits and skills, ideals, and appreciations, 170 National Association of Secondary-School Principals it seemed well to so state it in the form of the course of study that it would be perfectly clear that the whole job of teaching is not con- cerned with the giving of knowledge, but is very largely concerned with the development of habits and skills, of ideals, and of ap- preciations. In the achievement of these aims through particular subjects, it was discovered that six factors would seem to be of value in a course of study: (1) a statement of the specific objectives of a particular unit of a course; (2) a statement of activities in which children engage through which these specific aims might be achieved ; (3) a statement of suggested procedure for the carrying out of these activities; (4) a statement of the desirable outcomes which are to be expected from activities carried on in these suggested ways —(the outcomes should be divided into two groups, direct and in- direct : direct outcomes are those growing directly out of the activity carried on for a certain purpose, and indirect or concomitant are those equally valuable which grow out of the activity but for which the activity was not alone carried on); (5) a statement of the equipment and supplies used in carrying out these activities; and (6) a selected bibliography both for the classroom teacher and for the pupils. The mechanical make-up of the course of study should lend itself to the major purpose in view, that is, the aiding of instruction in the schools. The final reports should be put up in such a form, however, that they will lend themselves to future revisions which may be made from time to time. In carrying out this particular part of the work in St. Louis, it was finally decided that the final reports should be printed and that some should be bound while others should be in looseleaf form to be placed in binders. If, the reports are printed in looseleaf form, so that a page or more may be subtracted or added at any particular point, the mere form of mechanical make-up lends itself to continuous revision, which is all important. It is practical, therefore, as well as necessary that the course of study which is to be used in the particular school center should be printed in looseleaf form in order that the revi- sions from time to time may be mechanically economical. The Cost of a Curriculum Revision Program.—A great deal of thought and attention has been directed to the financial cost of curriculum revision. That, however, is one of the least important Eleventh Yearbook 171 aspects to be considered because, as yet, we in America are spend- ing little money upon the development of our curriculum. During the past two years in St. Louis, we have spent over $100,000 on this work, but when that is compared with the cost of an athletic stadium for the use of our high schools, for instance, costing ap- proximately $500,000, or the erection of one elementary grade school building, the approximate cost of which is $400,000, or the erection of a junior high school building for colored pupils in the city of St. Louis, which is now practically ready for occupancy, and which has cost approximately one and one-half million dollars, it may be seen that after all, the relative cost of curriculum construc- tion in America is extremely low. Most of our American centers are paying more money each year for architects’ fees, for the de- signing of buildings, than they are paying for curriculum work which has to do with the designing of what a pupil shall study. On the other hand, the cost of the program should be care- fully considered. If teachers and others are to be released from other school duties for a time to do special work on the curric- ulum, the cost will be comparatively heavy as contrasted with the type of program where the work is to be done in addition to other duties. We hold if significant and outstanding work is to be done, for a time at least those engaged in the work must be released from other duties so that they can give their entire and uninterrupted attention to the work which they have in mind. It would be a serious mistake from the standpoint of the profession if a spirit should get abroad in the land that all service on the curriculum should be paid service. The spirit of willingness to serve should be developed among the teachers of this country and it should be emphasized that there is no higher service which they can render than that of giving time and consideration to the matter of what should be taught and how it should be taught. Program of Continuous Revision—lIt is fundamental that a successful program of curriculum construction must be continuous in character. No longer must American communities be concerned with the task of catching up. That time is over. The big problem confronting the curriculum maker in the America of tomorrow is that of keeping up. To that end we must have a program of con- tinuous revision. The rapidity of change in our social and economic life makes it necessary that such provision be made. The changing 172 National Association of Secondary-School Principals character of our school population, the increasing school enrollment, the length of school attendance, the variety of types of pupils who are coming to the school, and the diverse social and racial environ- ments, call for continual educational changes. The purpose of the curriculum should be to give the pupil that which will develop the best in him. Many of the educational policies of the past can be maintained. Much that was done in the past can no longer be ap- plied and should be eliminated. The modern curriculum should seek to create an environment made up of real life situations and to that end should show a gradual development and improvement. The particular program best adapted to a community will depend upon the conditions to be met and the situations to be encountered. The Morale.—One of the rather intangible yet most important factors in the success of any program of curriculum construction is what may be called morale or esprit de corps. Unless the sys- tem as a whole and the committees in particular have the will to put over the program suggested and unless they have the spirit and feeling of personal responsibility for the success of the pro- gram, it will not be the large success that it might have been. The method of securing the proper morale cannot be told in words. All that can be said is that such a spirit and attitude toward the work must be secured if the program is to be successful. In considering morale, it is not enough that we have an in- dividual spirit. We must develop a group conscience. We as in- dividuals must feel that we aid not alone ourselves but the whole group. And that as we fail so the welfare of the group is impaired. Esprit de corps is not the spirit of single individuals, it is not the gusty spirit of passion that blows now one way and now another ; it is the steady onpush of the group. It is the trade wind compared with the squall—the consistent, dogged, united, triumphant attitude of the group toward what it must face. Typlady says “an army is more courageous than the individuals that compose it.” And so the curriculum worker who is a member of a group engaged in a like activity will gain a corporate spirit not his own which will send him to his work a better and more efficient worker for having come into contact with the whole group of curriculum workers. An officer on the West front had his son serving in the ranks of his regiment. He wanted a volunteer for a dangerous duty. His own son stepped forward and the father sent him on the task. Eleventh Yearbook 173 This was individual heroism. I have before me the picture of another officer who asked for a volunteer for a dangerous enter- prise, and the whole line stepped forward with hands uplifted to be given the job. Here was esprit de corps. Who creates morale? You and I do and all others associated _ with us in the same enterprise. Many things stimulate it, but those who create it are those who undergo the fatigue, do the work, who worry and think and slave. Esprit de corps is from within, it can- - not come from without save as a person may give ideas and thoughts to us. Men may have the same bodily strength, they may have the same ability, the same period of training, but most often the distinguishing characteristic of a man is his morale. To some the meanest task is an opportunity. Such workers always go strong. And so in the final analysis, we cannot emphasize too much that the success of any program after all finally depends upon the attitude of the group to the work to be undertaken. Without the proper morale the finest plans and program will come to naught. On the other hand, given the proper morale and even with inadequate plans and purposes much can be accomplished. EXAMPLES OF PROGRESSIVE CURRICULUM PRAC- TICES IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL. Mrs. HELEN WATSON PIERCE, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, Los ANGELES, CALIF. In selecting examples to illustrate current curriculum practices, an effort has been made to choose a variety of types. I. Meeting individual needs of children by adapting content and pupil activities to: A. Homogeneous groups in general. B. Community variations. C. A course in English. D. A group of adolescent boys in music. II. Special study made of mathematics and pupil experiences, in order to choose a textbook. III. Special study made to determine how content and pupil ex- periences can be most effectively used under the supervised or. directed study plan. 174 National Association of Secondary-School Principals I A. Inthe days when schools were organized with heterogen- eous groups, one curriculum for each subject seemed to suffice. A wise teacher gave special help to the slow pupil and gave the quick pupil something extra to do. Often the weak fell by the wayside and the bright one found mischief. To-day when homogeneous grouping is becoming the custom, the use of the same materials and pupil activities for all groups is not consistent with the underlying philosophy of ability groupings. The example that I wish to bring to your attention to show the adaptation of curricula to meet the needs of these various groups, is in the Thomas Starr King Junior High School of Los Angeles, that was organized last September. The school was started in a sec- tion of the city where most of the parents are neither extremely wealthy nor extremely poor. The median intelligence quotients is 104.6, with a range from 60-170. The children were first given the intelligence tests. The tentative grouping was made on the I. Q.’s. The results of educational tests were a basis for modification of this grouping. Further differentiation came about as the result of a health survey which was made to provide for physical needs. Chil- dren with defects such as poor posture, heart trouble, speech diffi- culties, and nervous ailments were given individual corrective work under specially trained teachers. Every effort was made to guide them physically and educationally during this critical period of their lives so that they might become normal. It was found desir- able to group together the overage children. Because of their ma- turity it seemed wiser for them not to mingle with the younger children. Boys and girls were separated. Some were lacking in mental capacity, others were educationally retarded. The former were given the same treatment as the slow moving groups. The latter were assigned to special adjustment work so that they could be placed in regular classes as soon as possible. The homes were visited by the home room teachers and the Whittier scale used in rating them. When the physical, social, and educational back- ground of each child was known and the potential capacity deter- mined, the recitation teachers studied each group to know how to adapt the materials of the curriculum and the pupil experiences most effectively to the needs of the groups. They constantly kept in mind that children, even in the same group, have varying capaci- - ties and special aptitudes and interests; that the junior high school 175 Eleventh Yearbook is the field for child development and not for subject development ; and that each subject serves as a tool to contribute to the develop- ment of the whole child. When the children had been grouped as carefully as possible, the program was made so flexible that pupils could transfer to groups better adapted to their capacity, interest, and ability. Teachers were given classes of the higher levels of children and of the lower levels in the same subject and grade, so that they could be conscious of the varying potentialities. The blocks of work to be covered were stated in terms of the average group, then modified to meet the capacity of the children of the lower levels of mentality, and enriched for the higher levels. Occasionally it was wise to accelerate a group when physical and social condi- tions warranted such procedure, and future plans for the children seemed to make it expedient. Psychology has not yet measured potentiality of pupils so ex- actly that it can determine content to be given to these varying groups nor has it developed the method whereby the pupils can master this content. As yet it is a matter of teachers’ opinions. The teachers of the social studies in the school of which I have been speaking reported the following differences that they have found from their experiences with the various groups: a. For the higher levels, teachers hold in mind training for leadership, the development of independent thinking, initiative and originality and the necessity of encouraging the bright-but-lazy chil- dren to live up to full capacity, and the limiting in stimulation of the over conscientious bright child. The activities of these children are mainly of an intellectual nature, namely : 1. They are capable of working with many thought prob- lems and nearly all facts to be learned are brought out through socialized procedure. 2. While they tire of having the same experiences again and again and want to do new things, they do maintain a sustained in- terest in work that challenges their best mental effort. Drill work is not popular with this group but when it is necessary to use it, the children enjoy it if it is camouflaged in the form of a game. 3. They are able to plan work, arrange it in topics or problems, and evaluate these, eventually making logical outlines. 4. They can originate projects growing out of their regular 176 National: Association of Secondary-School Principals discussions in greater number than they have time to develop. These are of the literary type, such as book reports, original poems and plays, debates. The children bring in a wealth of material. Not a great deal of hand work will be done, especially that which involves skill and not art. These children do creative work. They make artistic posters and models in clay. This kind of work seems to appeal to them because it satisfies their aesthetic taste. Occasion- ally these children have no aptitude for hand work. 5. These children enjoy elementary research work inquiring into sources of history and geography. Reports on special topics grow out of class discussions. b. For average groups, teachers hold in mind that there is need of definiteness in assignments, and concrete application of prin- ciples. They are also cognizant of the fact that some of these chil- dren may have social qualities that will produce leadership. 1. These groups are more stable in a way than the bright groups. They will dwell on a topi¢ longer and review it oftener, probably because it takes them longer to master it. 2. Socialized recitations may be used, but there must be study guide questions and outlines to bring out important facts in the earlier years. As the children gain power, they can make outlines themselves. 3. A number of the more talented like to prepare topical re- ports. However the teacher must help them in choosing topics and in looking up references. 4. Projects will be of many different types. There is gener- ally more hand work than with the higher levels. Many are origi- nal in choosing and working out projects, others need suggestions from the teachers. They are usually able to carry out suggestions that are given. 5. These children enjoy activity such as acting out historical plays, written by others. c. For the lower groups teachers hold in mind that personality traits and defects in this type of children play a large part in their conduct. Types of minds must be carefully observed. The reac- tion to one teacher or to one subject may not be an index to a child’s general nature. His home and social conditions influence his attitude. The stressing of certain qualities such as patience, determination, obedience to laws, co-operation, all of which are so Eleventh Yearbook 177 esseniial, have as much to do with what he learns as details of sub- ject matter. Every one must be trained to be a good citizen re- gardless of his mentality. Although personal disturbances are pres- ent at all levels, these groups are slower to respond to treatment. 1. Much attention must be given to fundamental processes of writing, arithmetic, and reading for comprehension. 2. They are able to grasp minimum essentials of work only. They should have study questions to help them get the important facts of the lesson. 3. They need drill to clinch essential facts. They do not dis- like drill as the higher groups do, but find it more attractive if given in a game form. 4. They are motor and memory minded. They make maps, act out plays, are interested in stories, memorize poems. 5. All work with this group must be by concrete example. Visual aids, such as pictures and graphs tend to hold the attention. 6. These groups are imitative, they lack the initiative to origi- nate. 7. Simple projects that these children can carry out must be carefully planned by the teacher. It is better for the whole group to work out one project so that each can contribute something. Special directions should be given. 8. Books to be read should be in story form. If textbooks are not available in this form, the teachers should supplement them with stories to explain book facts. 9. Sometimes these children have special talent. A child may be very good in music—an emotional subject—and exceedingly poor — in academic work. One teacher who has a low level group of girls in clothing writes the following: “1. They lack joy in work for work’s sake, which is found in higher level groups. They are listless, uninterested in any and all school work. They suffer from inertia—noth- ing is worth the effort. 2. There is a fear element. They have been scolded all through life for their mistakes. They must be praised as much as possible. 3. Frequently they have not the means to purchase ma- terials as soon as required. This slows the work to the mini- 178 National Association of Secondary-School Principals mum curriculum. Other work must be provided, costumes for dramatics presentations, school curtains, aprons for sale to cooking classes. 4. Very often their home standards are lower than those of the high level pupils. Poor work is more likely to satisfy them. Therefore they are required to do less work, but en- couraged to do it well. 5. There is no lure to sewing as a new thing. Low level pupils, in contrast to high, have had too many home responsi- bilities, including sewing. So from the very beginning they are allowed to make beautiful things, such as table runners, dresser scarfs, bed spreads, fancy pillows, drapes for the practice din- ing room, rag dolls for Christmas sale, little garments for needy children in school. They enjoy beautifying themselves by making dainty colored dresses, or making over old garments into attractive looking new ones. They like to complete one whole costume or garment, rather than to work on many and complete none. 6. They are not self reliant. They do not know how to plan, so waste time waiting for machines, etc. They ask ‘What shall I do?’ or ‘Will you start me?’ They must at least be led to try to think for themselves. It helps to read to them stories of resourceful people who did not ask ‘What shall I do?’ They like this. It seems to make a greater impression than just telling them. Dr. Grenfell’s Adrift on an Ice-pan and Be Square by Wm. Forbush are especially helpful. 7. Emphasis is placed on the socializing influences rather than on the making of garments. a. By assigning duties as monitors, to teach them to be reliable. b. By playing games—finding a certain thing in a cer- tain locker, to teach them: to follow directions. c. By instruction in personal hygiene. Through praise, patience, understanding and enthusiasm these low level girls are led to find joy in their work well done.” I B. Just as we attempt to meet the needs of groups and in- dividuals in the same school, so a large system must provide for differences in communities. In one school where 50 percent of the incoming class of 7B’s was below average mentally, the problem was Eleventh Yearbook 179 vastly different from the school just described. Here several groups were composed of non-curriculum pupils where adjustment work as low as the 3rd grade levels in arithmetic and reading had to be maintained. These children because of chronological age, social contacts, and need for activities in industrial arts, mainly pre-voca- tional, belonged in the junior high school groups. Material for these groups could not be that selected from the regular curriculum. A special simple course of a very practical nature in arithmetic, lan- guage, and social studies seemed best suited to them. A greater amount of time was given in the practical arts so that the basis of the course served as pre-vocational. Eventually special provision will be made for these children for further vocational work in a trade school or in an institution similar in nature. In another school where the community is largely Merican, the curriculum has had to undergo modification to meet the needs. Language difficulties must be overcome and fundamental processes mastered before any study of secondary subject could be attempted. Here the average Mexican girls who will probably marry early or go into factories to work are taught what they need. A cot- tage is equipped on the grounds in which the home economics teachers live. The girls are taught home making under these prac- tical conditions. Again, in another school where the enrollment is about 1,000, of whom approximately 32 percent are colored and only 10 percent from normal American white families, the curriculum has to be adjusted in another way. A vocational class for training chefs has become popular. The boys are divided into two sections. One group spends one week in the kitchen learning the art of cooking on a large scale, while the other group is in the classroom doing sup- plementary academic work. At the end of each week these groups interchange. The course is two years in length. About 50 per cent of the graduates have gone into work on steamships or diners or into kitchens of hotels, clubs, and restaurants. Statistics show that an additional 25 per cent of them have gone into this work-after they have tried something else. IC. In the John Muir Junior High School of Los Angeles a . special study of the English course was made by the teachers and counselor in order to determine sequence of blocks in content and successful methods of presentation. 180 National Association of Secondary-School Principals 1. There were diagnostic tests given in comprehensive reading and remedial work administered where needed. 2. A survey was made of the literature that would appeal to junior high school boys and girls, and a list compiled. Then in- teresting methods of presentation were suggested. 3. From a study of what the 9A pupils had mastered in gram- mar by the time they were ready to graduate, a minimum essentials course was compiled. Then the teachers endeavored to determine the amount to be taught in each quarter, and the sequence. They made a tentative course for each grade, then tested to find where the children were, applied the best methods they knew to enable them to master the content, and tested the results. The conclusion was drawn that certain parts were too difficult for children at the grade level at which they were being taught so a readjustment had to be made until finally a satisfactory gradation resulted. Pupils and teachers watched eagerly for results. One of the great values of this study was the realization on the part of the teacher that his own teaching ability is measured by the achievement of his pupils as determined by impersonal departmental tests. This served to stimulate him to a systematic study of his own possibilities as a teacher. 4, The study now in progress is in the field of composition. ID. One of the most obvious manifestations of the transi- tional nature of the junior high school period is to be found in the physical changes in the children. Especially is this true of the changing voices of adolescent boys. Vocally, there is little notice- able limitation in the girls. The voice becomes slightly deeper in quality and lower in range than in earlier years. Such seeming indifference on the part of Nature is not to be found with the boy voice, however. It is obliged to-go through a complete readjust- ment before meeting the qualifications of a man. A drop of ap- proximately an octave in range, with the development of a different timbre, brings about embarrassment and self-consciousness, which are evident throughout the entire period. Here is presented one of the greatest problems in individual differences. One school has at- tempted to solve this problem by frequent thorough tests of range and quality, and by the use of songs that lie within that range discovered in the children, so that each boy appears to advantage rather than to disadvantage. Careful choice of attractive two, three, Eleventh Yearbook 181 and four part songs composed especially for junior high school voices, with a knowledge of their limitations has made it possible to satisfy the desire of self expression with the realization that the task is being well done. The result of this adaptation to meet the vocal limitations of these boys has been great enthusiasm on their part. They delight in singing alone or with one or more other boys. Membership in these classes is at a premium. Many junior high school boys and girls are interested in instrumental music. The greatest limitation at this age is in technique. Material should lie within a comparatively easy range, and be of such nature that it shows evidence of accomplishment. Differences in temperament are in evidence. The leaders usually want to blow a horn or to pound onadrum. They feel the desire to make as much “noise” as pos- sible, thereby calling attention to their prominence or importance. The followers, generally of sentimental or imaginative disposition, prefer the soothing element of the stringed instruments. Because of this happy combination of humanity, it is possible to discover much interest in orchestra and band in the junior high schools, with the resultant satisfaction of gang spirit. II. What has proved to be a valuable curriculum help is the outgrowth of the study of another problem that faced our junior high school mathematics teachers a year or so ago. In the early days of the junior high school movement a general mathematics book had been adopted and had to be used for at least four years because of the state law. It was unsatisfactory as it did not pos- sess unity, but was a little bit of this and a little of that, as were most of the early mathematics books of this general type. Under the leadership of a member of the curriculum department there was formed a committee composed of representatives from each junior high school. They subdivided themselves into groups to work out: 1. Criteria for content Size of numbers used in books Vocabulary Illustrations Mechanical points—type—binding, etc. Tests, drill, summaries Analysis of content SNARE WN Presentation and discussion or methods 182. National Association of Secondary-School Principals The result is an enthusiastic group of teachers who will en- deavor to choose a text on pure merit and not on persuasions of book men. They have read all they could find on the subject, and analyzed their own experiences. Through their example other teachers are working along the same lines so that the next Latin text is being chosen in much the same way. Ill. The last example of curriculum practices to which I wish to call your attention is the work of the teachers of social studies in the Los Angeles Junior High School. Besides meeting the individual needs of children, the junior high school is a period where guidance should be constantly in the minds of principals and teachers. One phase of this guidance pro- gram is to teach children to study so that they may learn to think clearly. To bring this about a long classroom period has been adopted in many junior high schools. The profitable use of this time has been a serious consideration. Realizing the need of a clarification of principles underlying directed or supervised study, representatives of the department of psychology and educational research guided the activities of various subject committees to bring together, evaluate, and organize the best teacher experiences along these lines. The result was a publication of a handbook on directed study in social studies. The whole study resolved itself into an analysis of subject mat- ter and pupil activities. The problem was not “How many minutes should be devoted to the recall?” “How much time to assignment ?” “How much time to silent study?” but rather “What pupil experi- ences will teach a child to think out this problem for himself?” So the problem became a curriculum procedure. The teachers realized through this study: a. That the teacher’s job is not that of filling pupils with course of study materials, but one of guiding activity, enlarging and enriching their reactions. Children grow most as they have experiences, and not as the teacher dominates the thinking, or as there is a passive reading of text material. b. That the interdependence of the various subjects must be recognized as a child’s success in social science may be hampered by his weakness in comprehensive reading or in oral and written Eleventh Yearbook 183 composition, or in mathematical concepts. Special training in these lines using social studies content strengthens his whole thinking power. More and more the fact is conceded that if the child is to be developed as a whole, it is not through individual subjects, but through correlations with other departments. This is essential to the enlargement of each child’s capacity. Fusion courses are a recognition of this tendency. ce. That the curriculum must present a wide range of ma- terial from which teachers may select for varying abilities, school expectancy, local conditions, and temporal interests, and that each day’s work must be alive, up-on-date, connected with the child’s present experiences and not merely a preparation for “future life.” d. That social studies curriculum content is not to bring about a mastery of facts and skills primarily, but a mastery of habits of action, ideals, and attitudes of thought, and that provision must be made in the curriculum for three types of study and thinking. 1. Reproductive study and thought 2. Creative study and thought 3. Appreciative study and thought No matter how perfect the content of the curriculum may be, if the activities of the children to master the content do not lead to independent thinking, the big purpose is not achieved. Directed study, rightly administered, is the most effective way to accomplish this end. These few exainples of curriculum practices which I have had the opportunity to observe, illustrate how the junior high school teachers are attempting to meet the problems that are facing them. They realizing they have hardly begun to comprehend the vast possi- bilities of children at this age. They are open-minded, progressive, determined to fulfill the mission that James M. Glass has so ably expressed for us that our “Junior High School shall be the environ- ment for the controlled expansion of early adolescence.” 184 National Association of Secondary-School Principals WHAT ABOUT THE “SUB-MERGED ONE-TENTH?” Mr. Eucene S. Briccs, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, OKMULGEE, OKLAHOMA In our democratic organization in the public schools we find all types of human kind. The genius is-oftentimes given the great ovation. Ability is recognized and applauded. The superior group furnishes the leaders in regular classroom procedure as well as the officers in the “activities.” The direction in which the individual leads depends upon many factors well known to all who are present. At the other end of the scale or in the other margin is represented a group that is sometimes called the submerged one-tenth, the under- privileged, the specials, et cetera. From this group will come citi- zens of a commonwealth whose vote will count just as much as any vote cast in any election on any issue in America whether pre- cincts, districts, county, state, or nation. The “thinking few” are usually given the credit and usually deserve it for the successful passage of forward looking construc- tive legislation. Nevertheless, the future is in the hands of all the citizens. What are we doing for the margin? Do we measure our success as administrators by the achievement of all boys and girls of school age in the community? Do we see to it that the school is filling the needs of the individual as far as it is possible in our own community? Are we endeavoring to establish ideas and ideals in all of the boys and girls to the end that an intelligent, helpful, right thinking citizenship may result? “It is quite as much our responsi- bility,” says Thomas H. Briggs, “to secure interested activity as it is to classify pupils into groups, homogeneous with respect to abil- ity.” It is therefore our duty to see that our schools offer adequate training to every boy and every girl regardless of whether he falls into the genius, normal, or “sub-merged” group. In Okmulgee, Oklahoma the curriculum is built to fit the child for good citizenship. There are housed together in a special build- ing called the Lee High School all those boys and girls who are thirteen years of age and over chronologically who have not attained sixth grade classification. This is in reality a junior high school. The pupils are classified and known by section numbers, for exam- ple, 11, 14, 1-1, 2-1. Progress is made from section to section. There are no failures. Individual differences are very evident in Eleventh Yearbook 185 this group of maladjusted children. No group contains more than twenty. The academic subjects and practical arts are offered to all but in varied proportions based on abilities, aptitudes, and fu- tures. More than 50% of these children in 1925-26 came from broken homes. Many were bread winners. The rules and regula- tions of the school must be elastic. If an extra edition of the paper is suddenly to be distributed in the city and these boys are called upon, Lee School must see to it that they are permitted to go be- cause of the fact that they must be on their job. The rule and guide of procedure is embodied in a definite code interspersed with sympathy, understanding, and common sense. Eternal vigilance and supervision is in order during every minute of the day. However, there is a certain freedom that is increased gradually as the group proves capable of accepting it. Just whom would one expect to find in this school? (First), those whom the psychologist classifies as typically special cases; (second), those who on account of lack of opportunity to attend school regularly or who have changed schools so often that they are out of adjustment; (third), those who have language difficulties ; (fourth), those who are distinctly overage; (fifth), those having physical defects that impede educational progress; and (sixth), those who are too highly emotional. Elaborately equipped and furnished laboratories and shops are unnecessary. A few tools and adequate bench room and two or three simple machines are sufficient. Provisions must be made for changes from one job to the other because of inability on the part of these children for sustained attention. All do some home mechanics or home making work. Most of these boys and girls will have homes. Home happiness is an essen- tial. Child care, cooking simple foods, nursing, and plain sewing are offered the girls. It is surprising to know how many useful and decorative articles may be made from a five cent sugar sack. The plainest materials are used in the sewing classes. It would be not far removed from criminal to teach these girls to use silk and satin in their sewing work. General repair work, woodwork, sheet metal, and vulcanizing are courses offered the boys. Many of these boys have been able materially to contribute in a financial way to the home budget. 186 National Association of Secondary-School Principals SCHEDULE OF THE LEE HIGH SCHOOL 8:45] 8:55 9:40 10:20 10:25 11:10 11:55 12:45 1:20 2:10 3:00 Teacher8:55| 9:40 10:20 10:25 11:10 11:55 | 12:45 1:20 | 2:00 3:00 3:40 Shop | Gym Basket Shop Wells Shop 11 14 «(|2-1 «13 Ball 2-1 Gym | Shop Shop Print- | Gym | Shop Norris 14 1 14 ing 11-12 1-3 Math. Art Art Ind. Art Gillaspy 14 1-4 Art. 14 12 13 Home making Home making Girl Home making Dalglish section 13 section 1-1 reserve 1-2 Spelling Hitch Math | Math Math Music | Math | Math ym 2-1 1-3 1-4 leeclub] 1-1 11 14 Eng. Math | Read. Eng. | Math. | Read. Stotts 1-1 1-2 Sp. 13 Stories 1-3 13 11 Lang. Hist. Geog. Hist. Geog. Hist. Foulke Writ. Writ. Sp. Sec. Library] Geog. Lang. Sec. 1-2 12 13 14 Lang. Hist. Elkins Geog. Hist. Geog. Hist. Stories | Writ. Geog. Read. 1-4 ng. 11 1-4 1-2 Read. Read. Harris Citiz. Hist. Engl. Citiz. Sp. Girl res. Citiz. | Lang. 1-3 2-1 1-2 1-3 glee club 1-1 12 Sp. Washburn | Math. Science| Read. News |Hygiene; General] Hygiene 12 Sp. 1-3 | Sp. 1-2 2-1 14 1-1 Gym Gym Hostler 1-1 1-2 13 —_ shall advance.” this school. 1. The motto at Lee High School is “Everyone who does his best As mentioned above there are no class failures at Our system of classification provides :* A chance for pupils of the highest type of intelligence in our department to continue work in the regular high school, if effort and accomplishments justify. 2. That a child may be promoted regularly for a period of at least three years. 3. A means of keeping the feeble minded children in a group apart from the dull and borderline cases, and still allow- ing regular promotions to every pupil, regardless of his mental standing, who gives his best efforts. 4. A new terminology applied to classification of groups which bears no relation to the regular method of grade or high- school promotion. 5. A means of satisfying the parent with the new system of classification. *(A. Riechel—An unpublished study.) 187 Eleventh Yearbook Our pupils at the center are grouped into three main divisions ; the low division consists of boys and girls with an I. Q. below 70 and a mental age not above nine years; the middle group is made up of boys and girls with a mental age of nine or above who more nearly approach the normal in their school attainment and social reactions ; the third division consists of fifteen and sixteen year old boys and girls, capable of doing practical work equal to that offered in the junior high school, also a group which had been at Lee at least two years, and who were able to carry vocational courses as difficult as high-school courses, but whose academic ability would never advance to high-school level. The term “rank” instead of grade was chosen as one with most appeal for adolescent pupils, suggesting as it does the idea of advancement which may be achieved through effort, regular attend- ance, continuance in school and good conduct. Intermediate rank seemed best fitted as a name for the lowest classes. Six numerals are used in this rank allowing a promotion each semester for three years without placing a pupil at any time with the second group of pupils unless in the judgment of the teacher and principal a child is found to be improperly placed. This group of pupils is given daily three periods of handwork, one period of gymnasium, one free activity period (consisting of story telling, music appreciation and auditorium period) and three periods of academic work. Advanced rank designates the second class of pupils. Four numerals are used in this rank allowing a promotion each semester for two years, when the pupils are promoted to the superior rank. The term “superior” appeals to the older boys and girls who are with much more difficulty kept interested in school, but who have earned this distinction by continuance in school. Often a discipline case can be appealed to from this angle, and be encouraged to show “superior” behavior as well as superior scholastic attainment. To encourage better attendance and more conscientious school work, the motto, “The pupil who does his best never fails at Lee High” was given a place of prominence on the face of the report card. The statement “————————- record shows that he has com- pleted the ranks checked below, and is now working in rank ” was worded in this way so that the group in which a child was work- ing could be reported when the new classification became effective. 188 National Association of Secondary-School Principals It also reports to parents the classification of a newly entered child, and the progress all pupils make semester after semester. For in- stance, if the number of pupils would not justify a division in ad- vance I and also Advanced II one semester, the child could work with Advanced II this semester, and finish the incomplete work the following semester. The following grade card is used and is self explanatory : TO OUR PATRONS: The day is passing when a boy or girl can take his place among his fellows and succeed without school training. See to it that your children are well prepared to meet present day demands or a seri- ous cause for regret will be yours. We, of the school, make mistakes in training your children, just as you yourselves do, but we are trying and trying hard. What we ask from you is the highest type of co-operation which when rendered will enable the Ckmulgee schools to give your children the best possible education. After Examining Card, Please Sign Promptly and Return to US. Signature of Parent— eee nae SRO eee as MINE, ete ey ee Le LECTED ee ee aR Teed PUPIL’S REPORT CARD OKMULGEE CITY SCHOOLS School Year 192.... - 192.... “A Nation’s Chief Business is Education” REPORT OF see dteeeeee Lee High School a a ae record shows that he has com- pleted the Rank checked below, and is now working in Rank Superior Rank I Il II IV Advanced Rank I II III IV Intermediate Rank I II III IV Vv VI “The pupil who does his best never fails at Lee High” Teacher Adolphine Riechel, Principal Eugene S. Briggs, Superintendent Wiest Gen Second Sem. of el: majo A, B [- IS Eleventh Yearbook 189 REPORT OF SPECIAL CLASSES SCHOOL YEAR 192...-192..... OKMULGEE, OKLAHOMA ‘ g 2 i) a] # 8 a E 3 » 13 Oo] Sioa a 2 23 Z 2 STUDIES E| | glee | al €| 8/81 AE s| 2 9 Ea 2) 8) 26a 2) &/ 2/2) 48 | 3/8 ale : First Quarter § z Second Quarter E Average g First Quarter a Z Second Quarter i Average EXPLANATION OF GRADES: A—Best one or two in class. a tiaaay superior to that done by majority. of class. C—Good average work; the kind done by a majority of the class. ork poorer than that done by a majority of the class. | F—Work isa failure and will not be honored by promotion. vat ° B, C and D are passing les, A, Band C are entirely satisfactory. | D passes the pupil but indicates that he is doing poorly. TRAITS INFLUENCING DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER FIRST SEMESTER SECOND SEMESTER TRAITS First Quarter Second Quarter First Quarter Second Quarter Satis- | Unsatis-| Satis- | Unsatis- Satis- | Unsatis-| Satis- | Unsatis- factory | factory | factory | factory || factory | factory | factory | factory Regularity in Attendance Persistency in Effort Control and Strength of Attention Readiness to Accept Responsibility Co-operation and Trustworthiness in Group Activities Respect for Authority Respect for Rights of Others The slogan for the present school year is Character Development. With this aim in view we are bringing to your atten- tion certain traits which determine character. The co-operation of parents and teachers in correcting the shortcomings of pupils will do much to help them achieve a high standard of behavior which may be carried over in to adult life. 190 National Association of Secondary-School Principals Leadership is a relative term. Leaders of clubs in the activities are as sincere and serious as those in any other group of pupils in any school. Responsibility is gradually placed on the shoulders of those who can carry it with dignity. In the activity program “train- ing in and for good citizenship” is stressed. The group and the leader, the rules of the game, the winner and the loser, each has its place in the development of this program. Adjustment is more awk- ward and somewhat more tardy at times, yet it is nevertheless accomplished in the natural way. The teacher? Yes, a great deal of responsibility rests upon the shoulders of the teacher. Tact, sympathy, patience, ability to discipline are a few of the most needed qualities. He must be a “straight shooter,” a “square dealer.” Special preparation is desir- able but not absolutely essential. It is essential, however, that a teacher be inspired with a wholesome understanding of the prob- lem in hand. He must have a cheerful disposition that will save him from despondency that too often is the reaction from this con- tact. What are the desirable things these boys and girls will do in life? Where will these boys and girls be found in ten, fifteen, twenty-five years? Is it possible to set up definite (restricted) standards of attainment and achievement for them in any class recitation or unit of work? It may be; probably it is not. How- ever, the thing for these boys and girls to learn is to live a good life now, to be a good citizen now, to determine to build upon the good citizenship that is being acquired now for future enjoyment and satisfaction. The school, then, must prepare them to become economically independent—to pay their own way, to contribute to the common good—to practice team work, to consider the neigh- bor’s welfare, to find his place in the church and the state, and to fill that place satisfactorily. If all the rules that guide our present practice in the schools for all the boys and girls are to be broken in order to accomplish this for the so-called low margin, then they should be broken for the sake of the future citizen. Eleventh Yearbook FirrH SESSION The fifth session was held Friday evening in the Auditorium of Roosevelt High School. President M. R. McDaniel presided. The Reverend Ivan Lee Holt offered the invocation. Mr. Eugene Hahnel led a chorus of six hundred voices in the opening singing. CURRICULUM REVISION AND COLLEGE ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS WILLIAM MAarTIN PROCTOR PROFESSOR OF SECONDARY EDUCATION, STANFORD UNIVERsITY, CALIFORNIA There has been a widespread impression among secondary school principals that their freedom, in the matter of curriculum re- vision, is distinctly limited by the necessity of meeting college admis- sion requirements. This has been the occasion for a number of recent investigations of the existing situation. The writer was ap- pointed chairman of a sub-committee of the National Committee for Research in Secondary Education to make an exhaustive survey of the relation between college admission requirements and efforts to reorganize the secondary curriculum. It is the purpose of our committee to take the matter up from the standpoint of both the college and the secondary school. From the colleges we want to learn what their prevailing method of admission is: what changes, looking toward the lib- eralization of their requirements, they have made during the past five years; what their attitude toward the vocational and other new subjects of the high-school program of studies is; whether they would favor admitting to college on twelve units earned in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades; and what their reaction would be to a plan of admission based on rank in graduating class, re- gardless of pattern of subjects followed, provided such scholarship rating is supplemented by satisfactory score on college aptitude 192 National Association of Secondary-School: Principals test, such as the Thorndike, and high rating on personality score sheet. From the high schools we hope to secure data on their own graduation requirements ; whether they have made any effort, within the past five years to reorganize their high school programs of study in the light of the recommendations of the National Com- mission for Reorganization in secondary education; if so, what success they have had and what obstacles they have encountered ; if not, what causes have operated to prevent or discourage efforts at reorganization. We are also anxious to find out to what extent the vocational and other new subjects, if offered, are being elected by the students, and the influences at work encouraging or dis- couraging such election. When the data from these two sources have been gathered we are hoping that considerable light will be thrown on at least two phases of the problem: first, whether the colleges are tending toward a more liberal policy so far as specific subject require- ments are concerned, and are thus prepared to grant autonomy to the high school in the reorganization of its curriculum; and, sec- ond, whether the high schools are really taking advantage of all the freedom they now have. In the meantime, this convention may be interested in some of the preliminary studies that are being carried on, and some of the experiments that are being tried out have a bearing on the college end of the admission problem. It will probably be admitted, without debate, that the colleges must select their students. In the twelve year period from 1913 to 1925 there was an increase of 212 per cent in high school pupils, and of 305 per cent in college pupils. Indicating that the number of college students was increasing faster than the number of sec- ondary-school students. In other words, a larger percentage of our high-school graduates are now going to college than ever before. Not all who want to go are qualified to do college work, hence the necessity for selection. The basis of selection is the point at issue between the colleges and the high schools. Methods that have prevailed in the past have been the entrance examination, and the accrediting or certifica- tion methods. The examination method, best exemplified by the, Eleventh Yearbook 193 College Entrance Examination Board, is the simplest and entails the least effort and responsibility on the part of the college. It has, with certain modifications, been the prevalent method in the east- ern states. The disadvantage of this method is that it limits those who plan to go to college to the list of subjects in which the Board offers examinations, and tends to turn public high schools into mere coaching schools, where the candidates for college admission receive the lion’s share of attention. The various certification or accrediting plans have been most prevalent in the Middle West and Pacific Coast States. This plan has meant a considerable lib- eralization of admission requirements and the acceptance of quite a number of new subjects toward the fifteen required secondary units. There still remains, however, a very strong prejudice on the part of college officials against the newer subjects of the high-school curriculum. This results in the setting up of depart- mental prerequisites and specific subject prescriptions which tend to nullify the apparently liberal general admission requirements of the various colleges. What is really needed is a basis of selection which will pro- vide the college with students of superior ability, and possessing such habits of industry, attitudes toward life, and basic training, that the college can afford to spend upon them its resources, with some assurance that individual and social benefit will result there- from. What the high school wants is freedom to develop its program of studies with a view to the greatest good to the greatest number and the best possible returns to the community and state in which the high school is located. It ought to be possible to devise a plan of college admission that would meet the needs both of the college, as a center of research and advanced learning, and the high school as an institution primarily devoted to the individual needs of its pupils and the social and educational needs of its con- stituency. Since actual experiment has greater significance than any amount of theory I shall state briefly what is being done by a great university, which has set definite limits to its student body and is compelled to make drastic selection among those applying for ad- mission. The policy of Stanford University, since its foundation, has been to consider that “whatever is properly a high-school subject is 194 National Association of Secondary-School Principals to that extent proper and effective preparation for university study ; that the high-school curriculum is primarily a subject for determina- tion by secondary schoolmen; and that, aside from insisting upon high standards, the university should avoid all intent and appear- ance of dictation.” That statement may be called Dr. David Starr Jordan’s declaration of faith in the secondary school’s ability to work out its own salvation, if given the freedom to do so by the universities, Stanford has not only preached secondary-school autonomy for over thirty years but has been practicing the doctrine in the ad- mission of students in the following ways: First. No set pattern of high-school subjects is required for admission. The only definite prescription is two units of English. The other thirteen units, to complete the total of fifteen, may be made up in any way that meets the requirements of the high school from which the applicant for admission comes. Thus, students offering as many as seven units of so-called practical or vocational subjects have been admitted to Stanford and have made good. Second. Selection among those seeking admission is made on a competitive basis in which the factors considered are: (a) total scholarship rating, wherein high school grades are weighted, giving three points for an “A”, two points for a “B”, one point for a “C”, and zero points for lower marks. At least twelve of the units submitted should have been accomplished with a grade of “B” or better; (b) score in the Thorndike College Aptitude Test, wherein a rating of less than fifty, may cause rejection of applica- tion; (c) judgment of five members of Committee on Admissions, based on reading of all credentials, including character ratings by principals and teachers, and evidence of leadership in student activ- ities while in high school. Third. Any candidate, who is a graduate of a senior high school, grades ten, eleven and twelve, may be admitted to the com- petition on twelve units earned during those three years. If such a student completed a three year junior high school course and carried the full required program during the ninth grade with an average mark of “B”, he is granted three blanket units to make up the fifteen required by the American Association of Universities. This is a further step toward the emancipation of the secondary Eleventh Yearbook 195 school, since it releases the junior high school from doing pre- scribed types of college admission work. The plan of admission, above outlined, has been in operation since October, 1924.. Statistical research, carried on by the Direc- tor of Personnel, shows that there has been a distinct gain in the quality of students. For the year 1920-21 an average of 30.2 per cent of the Stanford student population were placed on probation or disqualified on account of poor scholarship. In 1924-25, the first year of the new plan, it dropped to 21.8 per cent, a gain of 8.4 per cent the first year. Another indication of the superior quality of the students selected under the new plan is found in that fact that the freshman class which entered in 1921, under the old plan, had a shrinkage, when they returned as sophomores in 1922, of 47.3 per cent, while the class entering in October, 1924, had suffered a shrinkage of only 21 per cent, when they returned in October, 1925. Of the three items in the Stanford scheme of admission, the total high-school scholarship rating, regardless of combination of subjects, has been found to be the most reliable index of college success, the Thorndike College Aptitude test ranks second, and the judgment of the committee members, ranks third. When all three items are combined, however, the result is a much more re- liable basis of selection than any that the university has heretofore employed. The Stanford method of admitting students on their total high school record without insisting on a particular combination of subjects, has made possible a comparison between the college success of students who entered with a straight academic record, and those who had had three or more units of practical or voca- tional work. The classes entering in 1921 and 1922 were followed through their entire college course. It was found that the average scholarship of the academic type student was 1.11, while the voca- tional type students had a scholarship rating of 1.09, or only two rating points lower. While the intelligence test scores of the academic students correlated more highly with college success than was the case with the vocational students, it was found that the high-school record of the vocational students was a better index of success for them than for the academic group. In other words the assumed superiority of the academic pattern of high-school subjects over the vocational patte1n, did not appear. Certainly three to five 196 National Association of Secondary-School Principals vocational units does not affect a person’s preparation for college unfavorably, provided his total high-school record reveals a high grade of scholarship. In spite of steadily rising standards of scholarship, which have made it increasingly difficult for poor students to remain in the uni- versity, the percentage of failure and elimination has steadily de- creased, and the average scores of entering students on the Thorn- dike test have increased more than ten points. The showing is best where the competition is keenest. Of the five hundred highly selected women students only one was dropped at the end of the Autumn quarter, 1926-27, and only eighteen were put on probation for deficient scholarship. Is there not in the Stanford plan of admission the suggestion of a way out? If there ever was a time when the newer subjects were not entitled to be accepted at par along with the academic subjects as preparatory training for the type of student who can successfully accomplish college work, that time is now past. A student who has covered in his high-school course three units of English, one unit of social science, one unit of laboratory science, and one or two majors of three units each from the academic fields, should certainly be permitted to select from three to five units of vocational work, without endangering his chances of secur- ing a college education. Especially is this true if his general ability and scholarship enable him to rank with the top third of his graduating class. There should be a new declaration of independence issued by the American high schools. It should set forth the determination of the secondary school to serve first its own community. It should insist that the college adopt a method of selecting its students which will permit the reorganization of the high-school program of studies along lines that are scientifically sound and socially desirable. If one university can make its selection of high-school graduates on the basis of high scholarship, without reference to specific subjects taken; mental capacity, as revealed by an aptitude test; and social promise, as shown by leadership in high-school activities and teachers’ estimates, other universities can do the same. When col- lege domination is ended there will be a new era of intelligent co- operation between secondary schools and colleges, to the great ad- vantage of both. Eleventh Yearbook 197 TO WHAT FACTORS OF INSTRUCTION SHALL THE PRINCIPAL GIVE ATTENTION Tuomas J. KirBy PRoFESSOR OF SECONDARY EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF IowA Outstanding in educational movements of the past decade and a half has been the extension of the scope of secondary education downward to include the junior high school grades and upward to include the junior college grades. This extension of scope is an expression of the faith of the American public in the importance of the role that high-school instruction should play in the expand- ing education of our American youth. With the additional assignment of duties to secondary educa- tion, has come enlarged responsibilities to the principal of the high school; and the degree to which he boldly accepts these responsi- bilities and aggressively plays his part in the development of a type of education first through the cirriculum which his school offers, second through the type of school and pupil management which he fosters and third, through the type of classroom instruction which he encourages and rewards as most effective, will decide whether this faith of the American people in the high school as such an important instrument in the development of their boys and girls is to abide and have opportunity to develop into the full grown power envisaged as its possibilities. It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss either the first or the second of these three roles in which the principal is to play a part, but rather to direct attention to the third in an effort to aid in projecting the type of classroom instruction for which he will strive, and in particular to set forth some of the factors to which he will direct his attention when performing his function as a supervisor, attempting to direct and improve instruction. It is no longer necessary to offer proof that the high school principal is to play the role of supervisor. All recent surveys, giv- ing expressions of the principals themselves, indicate that they re- gard the supervision of instruction as an important function in the proper administration of a high school, but in these same expres- sions the principals usually admit that this portion of their function is often neglected because of the performance of many other duties which they themselves admit are of less importance. 196 National Association of Secondary-School Principals vocational units does not affect a person’s preparation for college unfavorably, provided his total high-school record reveals a high grade of scholarship. In spite of steadily rising standards of scholarship, which have made it increasingly difficult for poor students to remain in the uni- versity, the percentage of failure and elimination has steadily de- creased, and the average scores of entering students on the Thorn- dike test have increased more than ten points. The showing is best where the competition is keenest. Of the five hundred highly selected women students only one was dropped at the end of the Autumn quarter, 1926-27, and only eighteen were put on probation for deficient scholarship. Is there not in the Stanford plan of admission the suggestion of a way out? If there ever was a time when the newer subjects were not entitled to be accepted at par along with the academic subjects as preparatory training for the type of student who can successfully accomplish college work, that time is now past. A student who has covered in his high-school course three units of English, one unit of social science, one unit of laboratory science, and one or two majors of three units each from the academic fields, should certainly be permitted to select from three to five units of vocational work, without endangering his chances of secur- ing a college education. Especially is this true if his general ability and scholarship enable him to rank with the top third of his graduating class. There should be a new declaration of independence issued by the American high schools. It should set forth the determination of the secondary school to serve first its own community. It should insist that the college adopt a method of selecting its students which will permit the reorganization of the high-school program of studies along lines that are scientifically sound and socially desirable. If one university can make its selection of high-school graduates on the basis of high scholarship, without reference to specific subjects taken; mental capacity, as revealed by an aptitude test; and social promise, as shown by leadership in high-school activities and teachers’ estimates, other universities can do the same. When col- lege domination is ended there will be a new era of intelligent co- operation between secondary schools and colleges, to the great ad- vantage of both. Eleventh Yearbook 197 TO WHAT FACTORS OF INSTRUCTION SHALL THE PRINCIPAL GIVE ATTENTION Tuomas J. Kirsy ProFEssoR OF SECONDARY EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Outstanding in educational movements of the past decade and a half has been the extension of the scope of secondary education downward to include the junior high school grades and upward to include the junior college grades. This extension of scope is an expression of the faith of the American public in the importance of the role that high-school instruction should play in the expand- ing education of our American youth. With the additional assignment of duties to secondary educa- tion, has come enlarged responsibilities to the principal of the high school; and the degree to which he boldly accepts these responsi- bilities and aggressively plays his part in the development of a type of education first through the cirriculum which his school offers, second through the type of school and pupil management which he fosters and third, through the type of classroom instruction which he encourages and rewards as most effective, will decide whether this faith of the American people in the high school as such an important instrument in the development of their boys and girls is to abide and have opportunity to develop into the full grown power envisaged as its possibilities. It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss either the first or the second of these three roles in which the principal is to play a part, but rather to direct attention to the third in an effort to aid in projecting the type of classroom instruction for which he will strive, and in particular to set forth some of the factors to which he will direct his attention when performing his function as a supervisor, attempting to direct and improve instruction. It is no longer necessary to offer proof that the high school principal is to play the role of supervisor. All recent surveys, giv- ing expressions of the principals themselves, indicate that they re- gard the supervision of instruction as an important function in the proper administration of a high school, but in these same expres- sions the principals usually admit that this portion of their function is often neglected because of the performance of many other duties which they themselves admit are of less importance. 198 National Association of Secondary-School Principals Withcut exception the writers on secondary education have emphasized the imperative need of the high-school principal assum- ing his obligation in the role of supervisor and if necessary, turning over to assistants and clerical force the multitude of duties which he alleges now keep him from performing this important function. Many principals are ready to admit their desire to supervise instruc- tion, but they also maintain that little technique has been developed through which an objective type of supervision can be administered. The speaker has been interested in high-school supervision over a period of years from the standpoint of one actually supervising classroom instruction, from the standpoint of one teaching univer- sity courses in high-school administration and supervision, and from the viewpoint of experimentation. At all times he has been inter- ested in those phases of classroom instruction which distinguish the superior teacher from the mediocre teacher and the mediocre teacher from the inferior type. It has been his constant contention that we must select those factors of instruction for consideration which show recognizable differences among teachers of differing grades of ability. In other words only those factors which show a high correlation with what is known as success in teaching should be introduced into the list of factors which the principal will con- sider. Another criterion by which to decide whether a given factor of classroom instruction should receive attention is the degree to which it is susceptible to isolation, to analysis and to modification. It is sheer waste of effort to spend time in striving for some quality in classroom instruction which can not be objectively defined, analysed, and found operating among teachers some where. No factor of instruction should be included in this list which is not recognizable, definable so that the same concept comes to the minds of all, and susceptible to modification. A third criterion for the selection of such factors of instruc- tion for consideration is to what extent activities can be devised by which to aid a teacher in acquiring the particular ability under consideration. Unless supervisors can set up some types of activi- ties through the performance of which a teacher may be given an insight into the factor under consideration, an understanding of its working, a grasp of differences due to its presence in varying amounts, and control of its operation, they cannot justify its pres- es an ae aE a i iecnddh Milena en eee ee timed Eleventh Yearbook 199 ence in the list of factors. In other words the factors of instruc- tion to which to give attention must be such that practice situations can be created through which the ability in question may be ac- quired. A fourth criterion that should be used in determining what factors shall be considered in the evaluation of teaching is, to what extent standards for measuring achievement in each can be devised. The supervisor is placing himself in the position of one giving in- struction to teachers in a variety of abilities, and to achieve known success as a supervisor he must have some kind of standards by which to measure the extent to which each factor is present in the complex called instruction. It is useless to include any factor in his evaluation chart of abilities which cannot be shown to exist in varying amounts and for which some standard, rough though it may be, cannot be devised for its appraisal. The following “Teaching Evaluation Chart” is prepared as containing those factors most nearly meeting the criteria that have been set up. Much experimentation needs be done to show the extent to which each factor meets the four criteria set up. Much has already been done as regards the second, third, and fourth standards but final decision as to the extent to which each of these enters into the first criterion, teaching success, that is into the ability to change pupils in desirable ways, remains a problem for further experimentation. If each principal here present will build up for himself some such evaluation chart, subjective though it may be in its early stages in regard to some of the constituent factors, he will be lay- ing the foundation for a type of supervision that will grow in ob- jectivity, as experimentation provides facts where good guesses now obtain. In so doing he will be compelled to ask himself such im- portant questions as, on which of these factors should we have more information and what role can the principal play in the accumulation of the knowledge needed to improve supervision. The speaker then presented the following “Teaching Evalua- tion Chart” for consideration, first showing the extent to which each factor met the four criteria set up and second offering sugges- tions for its use together with interpretations and appraisals. 200 National Association of Secondary-School Principals TEACHING EVALUATION CHART I, Skill in teaching as shown in: |High| Av. | Low Aim. a. Has he a specific aim definitely formulated for the recitation? bb nt. Biere 9 ane. bieeie onan 400k 0's 0 6-4 66s ene eee b. Or is the aim vague and NEE s 5 6co 6 ccscneesemcs c. Is the aim apparent in the procedure of the iG NERS o bsiin 50.60 6 :0:0-0.0:4.0:5.0'9'4:s 4.0 od vig 00:5 dal nee eae 2. Knowledge of his own and related fields. a. Does he shown a knowledge of the problem RE CII, 6 ke ee knives ss o0s-se ce eeneboes Eediaoencoss b. Does he show a wrenenend of the subject ROMNEY 6.0.0.4 000s cewhcecnsev cies esas eeeukeaas c. Does he shown a conerel knowledge outside of the field taught in other subjects and current |. a ann en ret ARPA AEDT cee. ohare, teem 3. Selection and organization of subject matter. a. Does he select significant and valuable portions of subject-matter for discussion?... 2.0... 6.650 oe lescsseee|ececeoce|eoceeees b. Are relative values of portions of the text recog- RM Ee ere nee) meen Samet (meee c. Are materials outside of text used? Are exact Mee Te ee rr arene, momen: iene, caeene d. Is record material readily available? .... 22... .. [eesseccefecceseee|ocoeeeee ) 4. Making the assignment. a. Does it present a stimulating problem?. ........ |---cs+-|ecsss00] sss b. Is the problem given a setting that is significant ee OI ree) NEL Sete eras c. Is the assignment more than an announcement of the number of pages in the text?... 0.6... 05 [eesseecefeceencee|oeeeeeee d. Is the assignment developed with the class?..... |........Je.ss[---s-0-+ e. Do pupils know what the assignment is?..... ... [e....20-[sssees-[eceeeees f. Are pupils led to accept responsibility for ac- complishing the assignment?........6. ci. c cee ese fecceesee[eceeceee|ecceeeee 5. Questions. a. Do questions show they were systematically planned and spontaneously asked? ...... 2.2... 44 Jescosssefecceeece|-oeeeeee (1) Thought provoking or trivial? .. 1... 0.6.5 Jeeceseseesceecee|eeeeeeee Mie ae | meen ere errey ene) amen: Aenean c. Is he facile in utilizing questions asked by SNES ic 56.6:5.55:5 55555 64bN ERS oO WMoa hae how aed Oe . d. Does he distribute his questions well among the i PRTONES OE TD HUMINT. 6 dsc t.s0 6 hio's5sscadseses cee e. — he avoid repeating answers given by pu- | Se ere ee eee Praenerie perenne | CME.) Serie.) Seer : f. Is the number of questions in keeping with good } thinking on the part of the class?... 0.2.2... 5 + leseesesefeceeeseefeceeeees i g. Are questions requiring summaries and organ- SEAN ILS © 6.5.4 4550.9 4 einen ea0o4' ss Hae eds wrote Sete tee es E 6. Economy in drill. a. Selection of points for permanent retention. b. Cc. d. a. b. c. Eleventh Yearbook (1) Do pupils help select such points and know WHE (NOU BROS. oc cseescusls cc euctscsees canes Economical methods. and means. (2) Does he prepare drills for fers points?.. (3) Does he realize that it is “right practice THOROE POMEGETE 66.60 cdcceccownaredioceexent 7. Illustration. a. b. Are illustrations used to clarify general state- GROANS 6 oie cae e 4 ee MEUREH eR RT Ree eee CHM EEEES Are maps, charts, pictures, objects, and apparatus CHSCHWORS CEEOT 6 6.855.660 cd Secdig ness neseceneees Are 7 verbal illustrations used by teacher and PONE 6. oo s Knees cecocudeslascnecevce savenneses Do the illustrations add force to the point rather than become central in attention?............... 4 oy class participation in the recitation. Do 8 pupils question each other and aid in conducting the recitation?...........cceeeeeeees Does the teacher dominate the recitation or do the pupils contribute in a large measure to its WUMIEOOEE 6 «6.6 casieacecs bcuececesueccuecuuennds . Knowing how children learn. a. Does he encourage self-attivity on the part of WMI oboe. ivantenn ee ccdd ocnerenne ccoeseeenee (1) Do pupils make recitations of good length?.. (2) Do pupils utilize a proper share of the time?. b. Does he provide adequate motives?............. c. Does he propose ene whose value pupils SOCOMNIIOE 5. eee cancaleccdeanersccuedicadeund d. Does he isolate ‘the point to be learned?........ e. Does he recognize individual differences in _abil- TBE (Oe TOOBIN Noe. cos ccccenadcecneees davecuvcdenvas 10. Use of adequate class tests. High | Av. Low NEALE SS SW 7 2 eI 202 National Association of Secondary-School Principals StxtH SESSION The sixth session was opened by community singing under the leadership of Mr. Eugene Hahnel. The president, Mr. M. R. McDaniel, presided. CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES IN THE HIGH SCHOOL Burton P. Fow er, HEADMASTER, TOWER SCHOOL, WILMINGTON, DELAWARE Like the old time melodrama, the subject of my remarks has a sub-title which is “The Return of the High School to Reality”. Why “return”? Since all subject matter must have once come from life, we may conceive of its return to a world of reality. This, in my judgment is the over-shadowing problem of secondary education. Only through reality can we get perspective, that is, the ability to see ideas and events in their true relationship. Our special sub- jects make this task difficult, since by the very act of concentrating in one field, the meanings of the whole become confused. How to get organic thinking without superficiality is indeed, an important problem for the general educator. Greater attention to the organi- zation of ideas, after the need has been established through first- hand experience, is one way to secure the advantages of both spe- cialization and integration. Every high-school principal should have frequent opportunities of visiting the elementary school. In this way, he will be con- vinced of the greater vitality, freshness, and enthusiasm which per- vades the best elementary schools. He will see curiosity and cre- ativeness as opposed to the passive acceptance of imposed ideas; he will see doing emphasized as an esesntial preliminary to thinking; he will see children to whom their work is a matter of over-whelm- ing importance, not a temporary annoyance. It is hard for us principals to keep ourselves free from the entaglements of high-school administration. Book agents and rec- ord blanks can be highly diverting factors. It takes determination to focus our chief interest on what is going on in the classroom. Too long has child development been the exclusive privilege of the kindergarten teacher. As one whose interest and experience have been for twenty years in high-school education it is disturbing to see children in’ oo > NE Ee TE Eleventh Yearbook 203 middle grades of our best elementary schools showing an ability to originate and organize ideas, to use materials, that is almost wholly lacking in many high-school classes. If clear thinking is the goal of education, then the high-school period is all too frequently one of slump instead of growth. While a mere statement of reasons for this condition may not be constructive it is worthwhile in passing to suggest that our comparative lack of progress in secondary edu- cation is probably due to three conditions: (1) the domination of college preparation; (2) the lack of professionally trained teachers ; (3) indifference toward the discoveries of educational science. Dr. Kandel in the International Yearbook of 1925 expresses this idea with great clearness: “The philosophy that at present underlies the reforms in elementary education must be applied to the education that succeeds it. The problem in a word is to discover a new con- ception of culture, a definition not in terms of so many subjects but in terms of activities adopted to the intellectural level of adolescents and having their origin in the activities, institutions, thought, and organization of modern society.” This does not mean, as I under- stand Dr. Kandel, the exclusion of our traditionai subjects but a “method of approach” that will make them more “vital, significant, and meaningful”. In “Sanderson of Oundle” H. G. Wells makes the observation that “there is many a rebellious heart lying still in the graves of dead school masters.” One of the pleasant perogatives of meetings of this sort is the chance it gives us rebels to make our protest while in the flesh. What are the conditions to which we object? Most principals will agree that the present typical high-school curriculum is heavily ridden by tradition rather than reason. Only a few reap the benefit of secondary education as at present con- stituted. To quote Dr. Kandel again: “It is as if a factory turned out a product, ten per cent of which is perfect, the remaining ninety per cent in various stages of completion to find a market as best it could.” We rebel against artificiality. We know our boys and girls are going out into a highly complex industrial world, yet a monastic conception of education still prevails in the majority of our high schools. As Newton Baker once said, “Education must come out of the cloister into the crowd.” 204 National Association of Secondary-School Principals This monastic idea is most prevalent in the rural high schools, where Latin, algebra, and geometry still constitute the classical core of the curriculum. We rebel against curriculum juggling by subject matter spe- cialists in the guise of progress. Such a course invariably results in compromise. I once heard a distinguished historian say that it is very easy for the general educator to make courses of study, because he knows nothing of the subject. One is tempted to retort that it is equally easy, if you know nothing of other subjects. For some reason or other specialization seems bound to distort per- spective. We rebel against the destruction of individuality which the lock-step procedure of our schools involves. It is as if the fact of individual differences were unknown. Recitations and passing marks, both archaic in their significance, still dominate the thinking of teachers and pupils. This indictment has an all too familiar sound. It is remedy rather than diagnosis that interests the modern, progressive high- school principal. Many of us have for years been restive under such conditions, but our inertia has the weight of centuries of solidi- fying subject matter behind it, each century taking us farther and farther from the original idea of education as a releasing of abilities, the transinitting of the best ideas; and nearer and nearer the ar- tificial conception of instruction as a process of imparting unrelated facts and developing unsocial skills. We must start then with a new conception of culture, which will lead boys and girls to live objectively. Through experience and activities, through a more dynamic approach to subject matter, through the simple principle of doing, the need for the experience of the past as stored in books will be realized. And from this in- teraction of doing and thinking, we shall get those attitudes which will manifest themselves by a questioning mind and a co-operative spirit. We shall have an adolescent education that will enrich both society and the individual. One distinct advance toward such a goal has been made in the modern high schol through extra-curriculum activities. Although too often tacked on, and grudgingly accepted by a certain propor- tion of every teaching staff, these “miniature realities’ are every- where giving elements of true education to American youth. Eleventh Yearbook 205 When we are able to link up more effectively such activities, and more specially the creative spirit of such activities with our rich heritage of the past we shall have gone a long way toward our goal of objective living. One concrete means for doing this, borrowed bodily from the elementary is the laboratory method of learning. Curiously enough the elementary school got it directly from natural science. Just enough experimentation has been done to give us a partial idea of the possibilities of such a procedure. There is a consid- erable number of progressive schools, both public and private, where one can see the traditional subjects of secondary education, given new vitality and meaning by the laboratory approach, that is by “activities.” Such activities are truly curriculum activities with the “extra” dropped off. Instead of detached outside interests they have become incorporated into subject matter itself. We are in a Latin class in one of our schools. What do we see? First, we see the customary classroom furniture banished to the attic. Environment is decidedly a part of education. Tables and chairs are the first sign of the community, workshop idea. The formal decorations of the past, consisting of a mutilated Hermes in a sombre carbon front framed in dismal black, familiar dusty bust of Julius Caesar, are still kept, but they have been brightened up by contrast with pupil-made charts, prints, friezes, by a beautiful tem- ple made in the shop in lieu of a taboret, by models of instruments of warfare used in Caesar’s campaigns. If we have to teach Caesar, let’s make him real. Latin as well as the Bible needs Bruce Bartons. Be honest, when you were reading Caesar, how vivid was your mental picture of a testudo? Suppose you had made one out of wood. Possibly the fourteenth chapter would have had to be read more carefully to get the needed picture. Possibly several books on Roman history would have had to be consulted to reproduce accurately such an ancient device. These new subject laboratories are predominantly places of books. I believe most emphatically that activities lead to books. Suppose you had been given the chance to be one of three pupils to make a frieze of the Helvitian campaign on an ordinary roll of wrapping paper, some twenty feet in length, I feel sure the daily assignment of translation would have become a living rather than a deadening experience. This Latin work shop then presents a cre- 206 National Association of Secondary-School Principals ative environment where children are stimulated through activities to “re-experience” the learning of the Latin language. Other activities in what has been customarily a world of utter abstraction may be found in the method of learning grammar and syntax. Large charts of derivatives, a plentiful use of the cartoon idea, books, entirely made by the pupils, vividly illustrating the baffling ablatives. A series of carefully printed charts showing the derivation of the words of Latin origin in certain classical pas- sages in literature, a sheaf of letters from the governor of the states, dealing with their Latin mottoes, a group of sculptures in soap and clay to illustrate the Roman divinities, a portfolio of char- coal sketches depicting the scenes of the Aeneid, all these are indi- cations of curriculum activities designed to make Latin real. This is not soft-pedagogy, this is not a sweetening process; it is making subject matter important to adolescent boys and girls. It is providing solid contest. It is clarifying ideas; it is hard work. If we are ever to get a genuine mastery of subject matter in any field in secondary education, it will come when we have enlisted the whole energy and enthsuiasm of our pupils. Does such a procedure in Latin exclude drill? Not at all. Mastery of any subject will always have drill elements. No for- eign language can be learned without vocabulary and grammar, but it is the merest truism of habit formation to say that such drill is most effective when a need is established and when satisfaction results. I have referred to Latin because it would seem to be an ex- treme illustration. Here I am not discussing the value of any given portion of subject matter, I am suggesting how we can make a bet- ter use of what we have. In the social sciences, the problem is simpler, because you are dealing directly with experience instead of tools. The major prob- len of the teachers of history, geography, economics, or civics is to give meaning to the content of books through a carefully chosen group of experiences. Field trips, map and chart-making, graphs, dramatization, clubs, group reports for problem-solving, visual aids, correspondence with children in other countries are merely sugges- tive of the innumerable possibilities of giving clear, vital meanings to man’s social relationships whether past or present. The old les- Eleventh Yearbook 207 son learning type of procedure in the rich field of the social science, is no more justifiable than reading about trees instead of going out to see what they look like. Frequently in our high schools, we are teaching by a description of experience when the experience itself would be more meaningful and quite as economical. Recently a judge of a federal district court asked me why civics teaching in schools seems to carry over little or not at all into out-of-school and adult conduct. The reason is doubtless that as commonly taught civics bears no relation to life. It affords no prac- tice in the principles taught. One might as well try to learn to speak French from a grammar as to acquire citizenship from a text- book. In both the social and natural sciences I should like to refer to a type of activity which not only gives good work habits and a large amount of useful information, but releases those creative impulses, which we are coming to believe are essential to social progress. Why, by the way, should the elementary school be the sole province of creative education? In American history, in civics, or in physics there are special interests developing throughout the course which the gifted stu- dents, at least, should be given a chance to follow. If Andrew Jackson is an appealing figure to a senior student, he should be given the opportunity over a period of several weeks to study this char- acter in all his relationship to the growth of American democracy. This may savor of the college seminar, but the senior high school can probably learn more from the method seminar than from any other sources. If in a given community the method of managing of public charities is that of campaign instead of by community funds, the investigation of the whole idea is with the range of ability of a group of alert pupils in civics. Similarly in physics or chemistry, some bit of research, pref- erably of a constructive character, involving the application of prin- ciples studied is an excellent means of giving a pupil those relation- ships to which we have referred. Examples of such constructive activities are: motors and dynamos, an electric hoist, a device for lighting electrically the Bunson burners in the laboratory, radio sets, etc. Such projects carried on concurrently with the regular work of a course are evidence of growth in the scientific method. All such enterprises afford an outlet for the inventive impulse, which 208 National Association of Secondary-School Principals is latent in most gifted pupils. Such research projects are prefer- ably spontaneous and self-initiated, but guided to assure the maxi- mum benefit. All curriculum activities that are wisely chosen are forms of creative effort. We create when we add new ideas to experience. It is the process not the product that counts. The planning of the student council, the original compositions in connection with any subject matter, the various forms of illustrative work already re- ferred to, in fact all clear thinking that is an evidence that we are contributing our own ideas to any experience is the very essence of the creative spirit. There is an danger in these days of enthusiasm for verse-writing and original musical compositions, that we may restrict and even destroy the greatest word in our educational vo- cabulary. It is only through varied opportunities for creative ex- pression that we shall preserve that curiosity or desire to know which is the foundation of all intellectual life. Doing is certainly one of the passwords to such an achievement. The use of the assembly as a form of curriculum activity has possibilities as yet only partially explored. The sharing with the whole of completed classroom enterprises is more than mere motiva- tion. It is reorganizing what has been learned for a new and worthwhile purpose. A class that has completed a semester in American literature can either take a written examination or make a public interpreta- tion of their appreciation for the benefit of the whole school. In my own mind, there is a little doubt as to which plan is the more valu- able. The eighth grade social science class that explains and exhibits to the rest of the school the pictorial history of the United States it has made, inspires the cultural life of the whole school. A more ambitious plan is for the whole school at least once a year to make a public demonstration in pageant form of the high spots of the year. When such a co-operative curriculum activity is unified by a great ideal such as international good feeling, the result- ing gains are evident to all concerned. There are at least five major problems in the improvements of secondary education: (1) The reorganization of subject matter; (2) Better individual adjustment; (3) The professional training of high-school teachers; (4) Closer co-operation between home and Eleventh Yearbook 209 school; (5) And a return to reality by the introduction of a wide range of truly curriculum activities. This last may not be the greatest but it is an important next step if we are going to send our boys and girls out into a complex changing world with a clear vision and a capacity and will for action. REPORT OF COMMISSION ON TEACHING INTERNA- TIONAL UNDERSTANDING IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS L. W. Brooks, PrincipAL, Hich ScuHoot, WicH1TA, KANSAS Your Commission, who, by the adoption of a resolution, was instructed to “survey the field of secondary education with refer- ence to the possible development of ways and means of implant- ing into the minds of the youth of the land the seeds of interna- tional understanding,” respectfully submits for your consideration the following report: Your Commission unanimously regards this matter as an op- portunity and an obligation of tremendous moment. We have found that there is little intelligent interest in matters of world-wide con- sequence. Teachers, and especially pupils, know little of such mat- ters as the League of Nations, the World Court, the Locarno Pact, the new map of Europe, movements for peace, and kindred mat- ters. Indifference prevails within and without the school. Enthusi- asts for world understanding are indulgently catalogued as extrem- ists, reds, bolsheviks, yellow pacifists. The unthinking de not dis- tinguish between a truth seeker and a bomb thrower. They regard either as a dangerous character who should be avoided or deported. ‘In the interests of civilization and democracy, the oncoming generation must have a new point of view: It must be more tol- erant and less bigoted; it must have more good will and less hate; it must be more scientific and less superstitious ;- it must be more constructive and less suspicious; it must be more co-operative and less competitive; and finally, it must have more religion and less theology. Not only can international matters be bettered by these changes, but social, economic, racial and religious situations also. 210 = National Association of Secondary-School Principals With the above statements in mind, your commission there- fore makes the following recommendations : (1) There Should Be a Thorough Revision of the Textbooks in History of the Various Nations. (a) The truth should be taught in preference to national- istic propaganda. Many textbooks leave the impression that the home land can do no wrong. We believe that young peo- ple should be taught the truth, not even omitting some of the errors which their forbears committed, and leave the conse- quent procedure to their own integrity and good judgment. For instance, a Scotch-Presbyterian historian would give an interpretation of the facts of the Reformation which would differ widely from that of a German-Catholic writer who had been brought up in a monastery. We do not wish to be un- derstood to belittle nationalism; each country has a right to be somewhat prejudiced in favor of itself, and should not for- get the national viewpoint, even while developing the interna- tional. One may be a good member of the family, and at the same time be a satisfactory member of the community. There is no real conflict between the welfare of any individual and the welfare of society, between the real welfare of any state and of that of the world as a whole. (b) Teachers of history and textbooks on the subject of history should divert the emphasis from the glorification of war to a study of the pursuits of peace. (c) Textbooks in history should be written by interna- tional committees of historians instead of by individuals. This practice would have a tendency to modify the provincial or parochial view point. In case of a disagreement, both sides of the controversy should be given, perhaps in an appendix. (This recommendation was suggested in the minutes of the Edinburg meeting.) (d) Textbooks in history should aim to develop signifi- cant world movements, rather than national movements, with the development centering around great personalities. They should contain complete historical accounts and analyses of the functions of such events and such institutions as the League of Nations, the Locarno Pact, and the Disarmament Conference. 211 Eleventh Yearbook (c) There should be included in these books abundant material to indicate the lot of the common people during war time. At present, accounts are limited to diplomatic victories, a few war personalities, and the acquisition of domain or economic advantage. The other side of the picture should be shown. (f) The extensive use of carefully selected periodicals should be increased to develop in the pupils the habit of keep- ing up with the times. For instance, at the present time, reading might be directed along lines that would help to an- swer some of the following questions: The truth about the situation in Mexico; The truth about the influence of oil in internationalism; Does Wall Street have any influence on the situation in Nicaragua? Why are our ships of war in Nica- raguan and Chinese waters? What is the cause of the mis- understanding between the United States and Mexico? The United States and Japan? It would not be necessary that these questions be answered with anything approaching finality. (g) All history should be built around great personali- ties. Heroes, especially peace time heroes, of all lands and their contributions to humanity should be made a subject of study. (h) True patriotism includes a fair criticism of one’s own country. If her shortcomings are not known, they can- not be corrected. (i) Here are a few additional topics that might be taught in history, that are not often included: World postal regulations. Ports of entry for ships flying the flags of their coun- try. Passports. Consular service. Ambassadorial and ministerial systems. Trade relations. Efforts toward conciliation. The Hague Tribunal. The World Court. 212 National Association of Secondary-School Principals (j) The aims of social science teaching should be so strongly stated in terms of ideals, attitudes, and appreciations that historical fact for its own sake would become insignificant. Most history teachers now teach the facts of history as an end whereas they should be but a means to an end and that end high ideals, right attitudes, and fine appreciations. A history curriculum written to serve these ends would use facts; but a different set of facts or with emphasis on different aspects of these same facts. With such aims gen- erally accepted, a teacher who still persisted in emphasizing international discord would stand out as one of the last surviv- ing educational wrecks of that period of intense nationalistic thinking which finds its modern inception in the work of the Louises in France, and its fruit in the tragedy of the recent world war. (2) The Encouragement of Contacts Between Peoples of Different Nationalities. (a) By correspondence between young students of dif- ferent countries through such instrumentalities as the Junior Red Cross and the Young Men’s Christian Association. Many such contacts have already been formed, with much friendly interest on both sides. (b) By exchange of instructors. Good will and amity may be promoted by exchange of teachers of different coun- tries. Teachers of history, economics, fine arts, geography, and foreign language would be especially fitted for such exchange. In rare instances pupils might be exchanged in a similar man- ner. (c) Encouraging both teachers and pupils to travel. Travel should be undertaken not merely for the purpose of seeing the scenery. Every effort should be made to form friendly contacts—teachers with teachers in foreign lands, and pupils with pupils. (d) By the establishment of travel camps after the plan of some of those conducted by the Y. M. C. A. Governments should have an active part in making these camps possible. (e) By the exchange of the school publications between schools of different countries. Eleventh Yearbook 213 (f) By the development of a system of international athletics. The Olympic Games have helped the nations to understand each other better. Most of this sort of activity must be on the college level, but some of it might be developed in the secondary schools. (g) By the encouragement of amity between different na- tionalities in our own community. Probably there is more toleration and understanding present in schools than anywhere else in America. Certaining our political, economic, social, re- ligious and labor organizations capitalize racial and ethnic dif- ferences. The school’s battle for tolerance is a losing one in the face of all that pupils hear and read outside of school. (h) By the use of radio. (i) By the use of suitable moving pictures. (3) The Utilization of Various Subjects in the Course of Study to Teach Better Understanding. Subjects which lend themselves well to this instruction are his- tory, economics, geography, government, foreign language, foods and clothing, commerce, music and art, literature, international law, biography, science, physical education. (4) Convincing the Teachers that This Subject Is of Paramount Importance, and Enlisting Their Co-Operation in Bringing it About. One principal says: “We must begin with the teachers . . . A book should be published which would treat of every subject now taught in our secondary schools, and show definitely and spe- cifically how these subjects may be presented to the pupil.” “Internationalism” may be the subject of several teachers’ meetings during the year. At these meetings, the suggestions of this report and other suggestions, may be presented in a way to arouse the greatest interest for the program. Every teacher in a secondary school should be thoroughly familiar with (a) The Covenant of the League of Nations, its history, operation and accomplishments. Regardless of a teacher’s at 214 (5) (6) National Association of Secondary-School Principals titude on the efficacy of the League no one could object to giving the pupils of his classes this instruction. Pamphlets of information are furnished by most governments. (b) The Locarno Pact. (c) The World Court. (d) The Herman-Jordan Peace Plan. (This is the Prize Plan originated by David Starr Jordan, for which he re- ceived $25,000 as a prize offered by Raphael Herman. It is a remarkable document for any person interested in international matters. ) Teachers’ training institutions should offer courses in for- eign relations, and teachers should be urged to elect these courses. Keeping in Touch With Institutions and Movements Looking Toward Peace. Here Are Some of the Organizations that Are Helping with Their Energy and Their Funds in the Big Program: The World Federation of Education Associations The Young Men’s Christian Association The Young Women’s Christian Association The Junior Red Cross The Boy Scouts (International Bureau) The Girl Guides (International Committee ) The International Council of Women The International Moral Education Committee The Catholic Young People’s Committee The Jewish Young People’s Committee The International Federation of Secondary-School Teachers The Brooks-Bryce Foundation The National Council for the Prevention of War Keeping in Touch with Publications Which Have a Bearing on International Matters. Books and magazines that are helping toward a better feeling between nations: The Moral Equivalent of War—William James. The Pepolopponnesian War—From Wells’ Outline of History. Eleventh Yearbook 215 Why Men Fight—Bertrand Russell. Modern World Setting—Jones Sleman. American Legion Histories—George F. Horne. A Trip Around the World—Lord Northcliffe. America’s Interest in World Peace—Irving Fisher. Minutes of the World Federation of Education Associations Edinboro meeting 1925. Full of material. Books of Goodwill—National Council for Prevention of War. The Jamboree—Published by the Int. Boy Scouts. World Youth—Published by the Y. M. C. A. at Geneva. World Y’d Boys—Published by the Y. M. C. A. at N. Y. Publications of Junior Red Cross. Many ideas suggested in this report are to be found in the above list of readings. (7) (8) The Use of Assemblies (a) Speakers from other lands; foreign consuls; next year speakers who are delegates at the Toronto meeting may be available to a great many schools. (b) Programs of foreign music. (c) Plays and pageants representing scenes of other lands. (d) The observance of goodwill day by appropriate pro- grams, display of flags of other nations, music, etc. _Dramati- zation of incidents such as Japan’s presentation of cherry trees to the City of Washington, showing friendship between the two nations. Brief Suggestions offered by People who Answered our Cir- cular Letter. “Avoid the extreme pacifist and the extreme militarist position. Take a conservative middle course.” “Utilize the moving picture.” “Organize international clubs of students.” “We must explode the theory that Christ came to save only the American-born white Protestant.” (9 — ‘216 = National Association ‘of Sécondary-School Principals “We should elect representatives to Congress who are pledged to the program of international good will.” __ “Students should be urged to desist from the practice of calling the foreign-born pupils disagreeable nicknames. Such words as Chink, Heine, Bohunk; Wop, Guinea, Hunky, Sheeny, Nigger, Frog, should be eliminated from the vocab- ulary of the American pupil.” “We should teach our pupils that every nation has a right to live its own national, religious, and cultural life; but that they need each other—each for its own development.” “Hold international nights with students of other nations.” “Encourage the reading of books of travel.” “Study the structure and functions of the governments of other nations.” “We can’t do much with the children; we must appeal to adults and especially to the newspapers to change their poli- cies,” “T don’t believe in your program; we have too much tol- eration now.” Your Commission respectfully submits the two following recommendations: (a) That this commission be continued for another year with instructions to carry on the studies; that an appropria- tion of $100 additional be offered to defray the expenses of research; but that the personnel of the commission be changed, with the hope that some one may be discovered who has both the -facilities and: the technique for investigation. (b) That this association elect a delegate to the Worid Federation of Education Associations to be held in Toronto next summer; that it pay expenses of said delegate, not to exceed two hundred dollars; and that it require from said delegate a full and complete report on the proceedings of that great meeting. The Commission is indebted to many people for the ideas herein contained. Among those from whom most valuable sug- gestions were received are: Dr. Augustus O. Thomas, of Augusta, Maine; President of the World Federation of Education Associations. Eleventh Yearbook Dr. David Starr Jordon, Palo Alto, California. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft, Geneva, Switzerland. Miss Elizabeth Apel, of Wichita, Kansas, who translate: into English, documents and letters ‘from foreign lands. The reader will find a number of proposals that coincide with recommendations made by the Edinburgh meeting. Some of these recommendations were suggested by the minutes of that meeting. Respectfully submitted, J. W. Frencu, Lincoln, Nebraska W. E. Wine, Portland, Maine (Chairman) L. W. Brooxs, Wichita, Kansas Committee. REPORT OF THE. NATIONAL COMMITTEE ON RE- SEARCH IN SECONDARY EDUCATION TO CO-OPERATING ORGANIZATIONS Presented by Wau. A. WerzeL CHAIRMAN OF THE Sun-CoMMITTEE ON UrBAN Hicu ScHoois The National Committee on Research in Secondary Education has developed during the year 1925-26 the program of work initi- ated during the year 1924-25. No new enterprises have been initiated. The Committee on Small and Rural High Schools has centered its efforts on the study of the junior high school in school com- munities of less than 2,500 total population. Through the United States Bureau of Education it has collected data on the distribu- tion of non-four-year- type high schools by states, population of district and type of organization by years. The results will show the tendencies for certain types of organization to appear in com- munities of given size and in specific states. A comprehensive ques- tionnaire covering organization and administration, supervision, extra-curriculum activities, the program of studies, guidance, provi- sion for individual differences, buildings and equipment, state policies and standards, and: legal’ status has been distributed to schools which agreed to co-operate, and usable returns are now available for approximately 125 schools. The data of these ques- tionnaires are in process of tabulation in the United States Bureau 218 National Association of Secondary-School Principals of Education. For supplementary data the chairman of the com- mittee has planned field visitation to approximately 40 schools in 10 states. This field work is planned for February and March of the coming year. The study will be completed and published during the coming year. The Committee on the Junior High School Conference, under the chairmanship of James M. Glass, has delayed its development of a program for the conference pending the completion of studies now under way through several organizations which give promise of furnishing significant material for a conference. At the meet- ing of the executive committee of November 13, 1926, it was agreed that the time is not now propitious for a national conference but it was agreed that it is desirable to hold an open meeting of the general committee at Dallas during the meeting of the Department of Superintendence. The general theme of this meeting will be re- search in secondary education. The Committee on Research Procedure, under the chairman- ship of Dr. A. J. Jones of the University of Pennsylvania, has com- pleted its task of preparing a monograph on research procedure and the completed manuscript has been offered for publication by the United States Bureau of Education. The standing Committee on Current Research Studies, under the chairmanship of Mr. J. K. Norton of the N. E. A., completed and published as a mimeographed circular a bibliography of studies in secondary education under way as of date December 1, 1925. This circular was distributed to schools of education and co- operating organizations. This committee has under way the com- pilation of a similar bibliography for 1926. The standing Committee on Completed Research Studies com- pleted and published as Bulletin, 1926, No. 2, U. S. Bureau of Education, a bibliography of studies completed during the period 1920-25. It has under way the compilation of an abstract of re- search in secondary education completed during the period Jan- uary 1, 1926 to June 1, 1927. The Committee on Large and Urban High Schools, under the chairmanship of Dr. Wm. A. Wetzel, has studies under way as follows : 1. A study of the relation between college entrance require- ments and efforts at curriculum reorganization in secondary schools, 219 Eleventh Yearbook by Professor William Proctor of Stanford University. Professor Proctor has undertaken to find out to what extent high schools are bound or restricted by college entrance requirements in their efforts to liberalize their programs of study. 2. A study to determine the degree of correlation between intelligence quotients and other ratings determined by tests, and school marks. This study is being made by Messrs. Willetts, Reavis, and Wetzel. The data may be found in another part of this bulletin. The Committee on a Study of Southern Association High Schools, under the chairmanship of Dr. Joseph Roamer, has planned and collected exhaustive descriptive data concerning high schools of the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. The data have been collected through the machinery of the Southern Association and will be tabulated and prepared for publication through the machinery of that association. The study planned is similar in nature to the quinquennial surveys of the North Central Association. It is contemplated that the final result of similar studies by regional accrediting agencies will afford com- parable data for the accredited high schools of the United States. The study when presented in a form acceptable to the Commis- sioner of Education will be published as a bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Education. The Committee on a Study of Educational, Psychological, Physical, and Social Characteristics of High-School Pupils, under the chairmanship of Dr. George S. Counts, has developed a plan for applying the proposed technique of the study to Kane County, Illinois. The following memorandum by Dr. Counts describes the situation in that county and indicates the nature of the contemplated testing program. The executive committee has, on the recommen- dation of the secretary of that association, asked that the North Central Association finance item IV of this proposed investigation which totals $744.00. The Bureau of Education has agreed to perform the services requested under item V of the memorandum. The executive committee feels that this investigation is a fun- damental piece of research which promises to afford a sound basis of attack upon a variety of curriculum and administrative problems. It hopes that regional organizations may find it desirable and 220 National Association of Secondary-School Principals feasible to use the perfected technique of this initial investigation and apply it to the territory of their own associations. MEMORANDUM OF THE STUDY OF THE TRAITS OF H1GH-ScHOOL STUDENTS After considering the situation in Will County, Illinois, and upon the advice of Dr. Hanna of the State Department, it was decided to make the investigation in Kane County. In Kane County are the following public high schools with approximate enrollments as indicated : IUGR RIO 6 ssc nisenGasias 1,000 WWE TRMIIOR, fics ence wawaioeeaen< 600 RUMI 615 ra se 246 National Association of Secondary-School Principals ne RENRERCEIEEEe _ i ss ahh ti 2 stl i SL sal REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON IMPROVING SCHOLARSHIP (Not presented at convention) This committee was formed two years ago to initiate measures i] to improve scholarship in secondary schools. In view of the great growth in numbers attending secondary schools and their wide dif- ferences in mental ability, the committee was asked to study and recommend plans for ascertaining the mental levels of pupils, for placing pupils in the proper curricula and courses of study, and for suiting the materials and methods of instruction to the ability levels recognized. The first conclusion of the committee was that recommenda- tions to be of real value should be such that any secondary school, large or small and in any locality, could improve scholarship by following such recommendations. In a short report presented last year the opinion was expressed that the following measures, uni- versally or widely adopted, would improve scholarship. These i were briefly as follows: (1) Outline the course of study in each subject so that the materials of instruction can consist of minimum essentials for those of low ability, with supplementary or different assignments for those of higher and varying degrees of ability. sie it ni (2) Determine as far as possible the ability levels of pupils. Use these in forming classes into homogeneous groups. If this is not possible, at least recognize the varying ability levels in the same classroom group and suit instruction accordingly. (3) Have an adequate system of advisership, so that educa- tional guidance can be applied to the case of each student, recogniz- ing his abilities and proclivities and seeking to suit instruction more nearly to the need of his individual case. The widespread conviction that the situation in secondary schools demands such measures has resulted in a great many experiments in many schools. (1) It is obvious that the actual content of any separate course of study (in English, for instance) will vary with different a Mae kia in 2 cathe Wal DL os eh ee stl Bidet on Eleventh Yearbook 247 states, systems, and individual schools, so that no uniform course is possible or desirable. Indeed, the very fact that teachers (or departments) in schools must prepare or adapt their own courses of study in order to suit them to varying levels of ability, constitutes an advantage in that teachers must constantly present material in fresh and convincing ways, department from conventional textbook outlines, and identify themselves vitally with the course and its presentation. A typical example of courses of study containing minimum essentials, and much supplementary material is the course in English for high schools, recently published by the Department of Public Instruction of the State of New Jersey. This is issued in two pamphlets, one for senior high schools (grades 9, 10, 11, 12) and one for junior high schools (grades 7, 8,9). In at least three New Jersey high schools (Trenton, South Orange, Plainfield), classes have been organized for some years on the ability level basis in other subjects, and separate outlines of work prepared accordingly. Principals and teachers in any secondary school, without any change in organization, may secure valuable suggestions for varying the assignments to different pupils by studying the “budgets” or “contracts” of work used in some of the schools that have been experimenting with the Dalton Plan or some similar scheme. In foreign language it has been found feasible to establish minimum essentials for Group I (or level C), to add extra readings and usually more of the prose composition for Group II (or level B), and to add extensive sight reading or prepared translation for Group III (or level A). Certain of the textbooks in algebra and geometry have two distinct portions, both on the same divisions _ of the subject, the one covering minimum essentials, and the other offering supplementary materials, This enables teachers to suit assignments to distinct groups or individuals. (2) A tentative “ability index” for every pupil is useful for teacher, principal, or adviser in dealing with the pupil, and for pur- poses of classification (whether it be in forming class groups or groups within a subject class). The committee finds that in practice the estimate of the previous teacher or teachers is usually an essen- tial part of their index, usually it is the most important part, and 248 National Association of Secondary-School Principals in any case should correct or supplement any standard tests that may be used. Homogeneous classes based on ability groups have been in operation for a longer period of years in the Lynn (Mass.) Classical High School than in most of the schools employing this method of organization. Princpal F. C. Mitchell strongly believes in the effi- ciency of the plan in improving scholarship. He recommends that when classes are thus organized “pupils who are found to be out of place in any division (class) of any subject at the end of each mark- ing period shall be changed to a division (class) doing work more nearly adapted to their ability. If a pupil is changed to a better division, he must make up the work lost and is changed ‘on trial.’ A pupil not doing the work satisfactorily shall be put back into a slower division until such time as he may gain reinstatement. In other words, there should be no permanent segregation, but always a possibility to do better until the best is obtained and maintained.” Most schools of considerable size can organize classes, at least in the first year or two, in homogeneous mentality groups. But this is not possible in smaller schools where only one or two divisions of a grade-subject exist, nor can the complexities of the school schedule even in the larger schools admit of any but mixed men- tality groups in many of the subject classes. However, within these classes the ability levels should be recognized and dealt with in instruction accordingly. Probably the first step in method in such a class would be to determine minimum essentials, and adequate and definite material for additional assignments to pupils who can do more than the minimum. (3) The committee has not attempted a re-statement of the function of guidance in the secondary school, but has confined its work to seeking examples of an adequate system of guidance that can be applied generally. It seems clear that except in very small schools, where the principal or an assistant can assume such duties, the home-room teacher is the pivot of a successful guidance pro- gram. Where it is possible for other teachers or officers, especially fitted for the task to interview students, the natural plan is for the home-room teacher to refer pupils to such a guide or counselor, when desirable. Otherwise the duty remains with the home-room teacher. Below are listed the duties of the home-room teacher mebilinir ste a wilisie sts tt Eleventh Yearbook 249 as a member of the guidance organization in the South Orange, N. J., High School. In explanation it should be said that in this school each class or group of about 150 pupils has a class guide who informs home-room teachers concerning curricula, checks pupils’ programs, gives information as to vocational and educational oppor- tunities, and in general acts as expert counselor for the group. In South Orange the duties of the guides and of the subject-teachers in relation to the guidance system are carefully worked out. The duties of the home-room teacher shall be: 1. To act in the capacity of adviser to all the pupils in his home room. 2. To study each pupil for the purpose of learning his needs. This shall be done by observation of his attitudes and habits of study, by the intelligent use of records and by conferences with guides, subject teachers, and parents. 3. In an attitude of friendliness, to evince a personal interest in the proper development of each of his advisees and to help to create in each a healthy and purposive attitude of mind. 4, Because of daily contact with his advisees, to be able to take advantage of the opportune moment when advice or suggestion will be most beneficial. 5. At the end of each 5-week period, to issue marks to his advisees, taking occasion to commend success or improvement as well as to confer with those whose records do not conform to their abilities. 6. To send informational letters to the parents and to make appointments to interview them when it seems advisable. ?. To endeavor to make clear to the parents the methods which are being employed for the assistance and benefit of the pupils and to enlist their interest and co-operation. 8. From time to time, to discuss the pupils on his advisory list with the class guide and to decide on methods of procedure. 9. To issue report cards. 10. To refer to the class guide cases which he feels can be more competently handled by some other member of the guidance organization. Respectfully submitted, Frances R. Nortu, Principal East Side High School, Paterson, N. J. 250 National Association of Secondary-School Principals CONSTITUTION OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS ARTICLE I—AIM The aim of this Association is to promote the interests of sec- ondary education in America by giving special consideration to the problems that arise in connection with the administration of sec- ondary schools. ARTICLE II—~MEMBERSHIP Any principal or executive head of a secondary school may be- come a member of the National Association of Secondary-School Principals upon the payment of two dollars. The annual dues of members are two dollars, which.shall be paid at the time of the annual meeting of the Association, or before April 1 of each year. A member forfeits his membership by failure to pay the year’s dues. The right to vote and hold office in the Association is open to all members whose dues for the year have been paid. ARTICLE III—COMMITTEES The president shall appoint a committee on resolutions and a committee on nominations. The committee on resolutions consist- ing of seven members to be appointed at least two months before the annual meeting; the committee on nominations of eleven to be appointed at the first session of the annual meeting. These com- mittees shall report at the annual business meeting of the Associa- tion. 2. Any principal or executive head of a secondary school may become a member of the National Association of Secondary-School Principals upon the payment of one dollar a year, provided such principal or executive head joins the Association through the medium of a state organization of high-school principals. Eleventh Yearbook ARTICLE IV—OFFICERS The officers of the Association are a president, a first vice- president and a second vice-president, a secretary, a treasurer (or a secretary-treasurer), an executive committee of the four officers named, ex-officio, and the three most recently retired presidents. Of the members of the executive committee, two shall, at the time of the annual election, be principals of junior high schools. The duties of the president, vice-president, secretary, and treas- urer are such as usually appertain to these officers. It is the duty of the executive committee to co-operate with the president in prepar- ing the program of the meetings of the Association, and in carrying out the actions of the Association. ARTICLE V—MEETINGS The Association will hold one meeting a year. This annual meeting is held at the time and place of the meeting of the Depart- ment of Superintendence of the National Education Association. ARTICLE VI—AMENDMENTS The constitution may be amended by a majority vote of those present and voting at the annual meeting . A proposed amendment must be submitted in writing at the preceding annual meeting, or must be submitted in printed form to all members of the Association thirty days before the annual meeting. In case the latter method is used, such proposed amendment must receive the approval of the Executive Committee before it can be printed and sent to the mem- bers of the Association. Sawat: