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The Bulletin 


of the 


DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL 
PRINCIPALS 


National Education Association 





VoLUME 22 








_FEBRUARY, 1938 NUMBER 72 


A NEW TYPE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL 


JOHN A. SEXSON 


Superintendent, Pasadena Public Schools, Pasadena, California 


Three hundred years ago, the Boston Latin School was 
founded. This school has set the institutional pattern for sec- 
ondary education in America for three centuries. In the pub- 
lic mind the high school has always been regarded as an insti- 
tution designed to fit neatly into a perfectly planned educa- 
tional structure, consisting of a system of elementary schools 
below and a system of higher education above. Professionally 
informed persons know that this concept of the Boston Latin 
School, or of any secondary school at the present time, is at 
wide variance with the facts. The secondary school in Eu- 
rope, where it originated, was designed to give proficiency in 
Latin so that those who needed to do so could correspond and 
converse in a common language. By reason of its very func- 
tion, its services were confined to scholars, to gentlemen of 
leisure, and to occasional merchants and innkeepers who found 
themselves involved in foreign trade. 

This was the pattern of the Latin Grammar School which 
was transplanted to the American colonies, and which became 
the forerunner of the institution of secondary education that 
we have developed here. Someone has called it the people’s 
school with the scholar’s curriculum. The main difference be- 
tween the American secondary school and the European sec- 
ondary school was, if anything, that the secondary school in 
Europe actively served a larger proportion of the total popu- 
lation than did the secondary school in America. To corre- 
spond and converse in Latin, which remained to a large de- 
gree the function of the secondary school even after it was 
transplanted to America, was obviously of less benefit to gen- 
tlemen of leisure, to merchants, or to innkeepers in America 
than to those in Europe. The sole service was to scholars who 
were definitely preparing for the ministry or for other profes- 

















: DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS ([February, 


sional services. In fact, the whole purpose of the Boston Latin 
School was, as has been simply stated, “to prepare boys for col- 
lege.” Not only was it a college-preparatory institution, but 
its services were limited to boys only. In fact, the founding 
of Harvard College and the establishment of the Boston Latin 
School were part of the same action and may be considered as 
a single event historically. 

It is not an exaggeration to say that the American sec- 
ondary school was originally nothing more than a downward 
extension of an institution of higher learning and, as such, 
was not planned to articulate with elementary education below. 
Moreover, there is little evidence that the attitude of those re- 
sponsible for its founding or its administration ever thought 
that the institution was democratic in spirit or that it could be 
utilized for the service of large numbers of American youth. 
Its attitude was aristocratic, its clientele was limited, its cur- 
riculum narrow, and its spirit distinctly undemocratic. 

Almost a century passed before new social and economic 
conditions attained sufficient momentum to bring about a 
change in the educational pattern. By this time, a well-to-do 
middle class was demanding educational opportunities for 
larger numbers of children than the old Latin School was pre- 
pared to serve. The academy, well known to most of the older 
generation, was the partial answer. The purposes of the new 
institution, as stated by one of its boards of trustees, were: 
first, to give the youth an opportunity to receive a good educa- 
tion at home, and be under no necessity of going abroad for it; 
second, to qualify a number of natives to bear magisteries and 
to execute offices of public trust; third, to qualify a number of 
the poorer class to act as schoolmasters and teach children 
reading, writing, arithmetic, and the grammar of their mother 
tongue. Here we see the beginning of the movement to uni- 
versalize general education. The academy, however, reflected 
to a large degree the spirit of the old Latin School and could 
not shake itself free from the hampering traditions which, 
even up to this time, have surrounded secondary education. 
Evidence of this condition is easily discernible in any study of 
the curriculum of these academies, or in any survey of the 
student body served by them. 

The third movement in secondary education was the es- 
tablishment of the well-known American high school, the first 
example of which again is found in Boston, in 1821. It is in- 
teresting to note that the founders of this new institution 




































A NEw TyPE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL 3 






1938] 


again stated its function in very simple language. They said 
that this institution would give the parents of a child an op- 
portunity “to educate him for active life.” That is, the Ameri- 
can high school was designed to serve all parents and all chil- 
dren; its purpose was to educate for the whole of life rather 
than for a narrow and restricted phase of it. Strangely enough, 
even though the function of the institution was democratically 
stated and its services were contemplated as being available 
for all children, strict entrance requirements were set up, and 
policies were established, with respect to scholastic require- 
ments and a curriculum, which seriously tended to limit those 
whom the institution might serve. 

Some attempt was made to relate this new institution to 
the lower elementary school. In some cases, graduation from 
the elcmentary school was required for entrance. Little 
thought, however, was given to bridging the gap between the 
content of the elementary school and the content of this new 
secondary school. In so far as curriculum content was con- 
cerned, the newly established American high school looked en- 
tirely to institutions of higher learning and not at all to the 
needs of pupils nor to the offerings of the lower schools. It 
was dedicated wholly to literate education, to the mastery and 
recitation of knowledge. It concerned itself little, or not at 
all, with the needs of the individual outside the scholastics. 


This, in brief, has been the genesis of the institution which 
we have been struggling for the last century to develop into 
an agency which would make education free and acceptable to 
all American youth. It is not necessary for me to recite the 
long struggle against legal, religious, local, state, and even na- 
tional forces which the American people have been forced to 
make in their effort to establish a truly free system of public 
education. 

For more than thirty years, to my personal knowledge, the 
administrators of public-school systems, both elementary and 
secondary—but more particularly the principals of secondary 
schools—have struggled with the deficiencies of the estab- 
lished American high school. At one time, it has been a prob- 
lem of entrance requirements to institutions of higher learn- 
ing; again, it has been a problem of admission, or of bridging 
the gap between elementary and secondary education. All 
along there have been problems of acceptable scholastic 
achievement, of vocational education, of curriculum content, of 
method, of extra-curriculum activities, and of a thousand and 























4 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


one problems too numerous to mention, but all indicative of 
the fundamental fact that the secondary school in America, as 
we have attempted to administer it, is not adapted to the needs 
of present-day American youth and cannot be made to serve 
acceptably the needs of the American people. 

You are all aware of the unrest and dissatisfaction that 
exists to-day with respect to our high schools. The National 
Educational Policies Commission made some attempt to survey 
the movements that are now under way, having for its purpose 
the improvement of some aspect of secondary education. A 
perfectly astounding number of proposals, recommendations, 
committees, agencies, and experiments were catalogued, rang- 
ing from minor proposals, affecting limited areas of curriculum 
content and method, to major institutional reorganization. We 
are all familiar with the influence of the newly instituted jun- 
ior high school at the lower level of the secondary school, and, 
while somewhat less familiar with the movement, we are aware 
of the significant implications of the junior college as an up- 
ward extension of the public high school, and with those of the 
general college as a downward extension of the university. 

I call these examples to your attention to press upon 
vou the consciousness that the long-accepted pattern of second- 
ary education is, in fact, breaking up; that we in America 
must shortly accept change and innovation in this area; and 
that we must, therefore, as those charged with the responsi- 
bility for educational administration, supinely accept a new 
pattern of organization for secondary education, or assume re- 
sponsibility for the formulation of this new pattern, direct its 
form, and determine its characteristics. May I point out 
that historically we have never been able to adjust an institu- 
tional pattern in secondary education to changing social and 
economic needs. We gave up the Boston Latin School and 
founded the academy; we supplanted the academy with the 
public high school; and it is my opinion and my thesis that we 
must now abandon the high school as it exists in practically 
every community in America to-day, and establish in its place 
a new institution, designed specifically to perform functions 
and render services which, thus far, the American high school 
has not been able to offer. 

Specifically, after all has been said that may truthfully be 
said in defense of the high school, the fact remains that within 
it we have made little or no progress in vocational education. 
We have made a sorry farce out of our efforts to meet indi- 
vidual needs and to make adjustments to individual differences 


































1938] 





A New Type oF SECONDARY SCHOOL 


within the curriculum limits of our high school. If evidence 
of this defect is needed or desired, and I am sure it is not, the 
necessity for the establishment of the CCC camps a few years 
ago and for their present continuance is ample. 

Some of the specific difficulties and obstacles to meeting 
pupil needs in secondary schools as they are now administered 
may interest you. 


1. English, as now taught in the American high school— 
with its emphasis on formal grammar and the mastery of the 
classes—is a positive barrier to pupil adjustment. The substi- 
tution of a fine reading program, therefore, and the integra- 
tion of the whole program would go far toward removing this 
serious barrier. 

2. Mathematics, particularly algebra, is an insurmount- 
able obstacle to many children. The group taking mathematics, 
as now taught, must be limited, and a course of more practical 
mathematics should be provided for general consumption. 


3. Languages, as now taught, cause insuperable trouble 
for many children. Obviously, the difficulty here is one of 
content and method. 

4. Formal and meaningless courses, such as are now 
characteristic of typewriting, of work in shops and laborato- 
ries, and of physical education, are ineffective as learning ex- 
periences and thwart any approach to pupil need or interest. 

5. General science, when taught as an abstract sampling 
of the fields of science, is non-functional and makes trouble in 
efforts at pupil adjustment. 

6. The present endeavors in such fields as music, wherein 
all pupils are required to seek self-expression in this one me- 
dium, with no option, produces a great amount of disturbance 
and dissatisfaction. 


7. The absence of adequate and continued guidance serv- 
ice leaves innumerable necessary adjustments neglected and 
ignored, with accompanying inflexibility, lack of recognition of 
individual differences, and serious loss to students and to 
society. 

8. The continuing stress upon subject matter to be in- 
cluded upon scholastic standards to be met, special assignments 
to cover work missed or not covered by the regular instruction, 
insistence upon homework, and other pressures tend to defeat 
the purposes of the school as they relate to individual growth 
and development. 

9. Teacher-pupil friction is a factor of major importance. 
Particularly in the early years of the secondary school, the 
widespread prevalence of this condition indicates a lack on the 
part of the teacher of that understanding of child nature which 
is essential to the satisfactory meeting of child needs. 

10. The needs of children for a feeling of security, for a 
sense of belonging to the group, and for the consciousness of 

















6 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 





serving the group acceptably are not met. In fact, the pres- 
sure for formal compliance with adult-imposed standards 
of behavior and response destroys such reactions. The depre- 
ciation by the faculty and by adults of the informal contacts of 
students with students and with teachers and of the enlarged 
social program outside the school is a serious barrier to meet- 
ing these needs. 

11. There is wholly inadequate attention given to the mat- 
ter of how to study and what to study, and to the effective use 
of new devices of education, such as radio, motion pictures, 
sound pictures, the press, current literature, and forums. 

12. There is serious question as to whether the present 
program of physical education builds enough muscular to offset 
the emotional disturbances occasioned by many of the situa- 
tions developed. 

13. The present basis of and reasons for required courses 
needs reinterpretation. 

14. Pupil participation in the formulation of school policy 
seems advisable, at least to the extent necessary for some ra- 
tionalization of the involved situations. Pupil understanding 
of school policy is necessary for a satisfactory acceptance of 
these policies by the student. 

15. Finally, there is need for an interpretation of school 
for students; a personalization of the educative process to the 
end that the growth and development of students along socially 
creative lines shall be furthered. If this is not done, the school 
is to that degree non-functioning. 

The discussion of the obstacles to an effective program of 
public education, adapted to the needs of all children, might 
be extended indefinitely. No effort has been made to produce 


a complete, or even a representative list. The ones mentioned 
were culled at random from core studies made of failing stu- 
dents. They are symptomatic of deep-seated defects in the 
present secondary school. They are to be found in every sec- 
ondary school in America. The tragedy lies in the fact that 
so many secondary-school administrators, supervisors, and 
teachers are oblivious to them. 

My city has broken with tradition. It has abandoned the 
traditional American high school entirely. The high school, 
as you know the institution, has been supplanted by an eight- 
year secondary school, beginning at the seventh grade and ter- 
minating with the fourteenth grade. It is organized into two 
four-year units. The lower unit consists of grades seven, 
eight, nine, and ten; the upper unit consists of grades eleven, 
twelve, thirteen, and fourteen. You would blind yourselves to 
the salient features of the setup if you thought of the lower 
unit as a typical junior high school or the upper unit as a typ- 
ical junior college. 




































1938 | A New TYPE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL 7 





The lower unit is now definitely a preparatory unit, not a 
terminal unit. No student contemplates leaving school at the 
end of the junior high school, and none do. The average pupil 
completes this unit at about sixteen years of age—two years 
of enforced school attendance are still before him, and he nec- 
essarily enters the upper unit. I do not need to point out to 
you the holding power of the situation. Despite the fact that 
the student at the end of the lower unit has for all practical 
purposes completed the required courses, or their equivalents, 
of the traditional high school he must face the choice of one 
of two programs and pursue it for at least two years. At the 
end of that time, he finds himself at the mid-point in a four- 
year course—within two years of graduation and with a di- 
ploma from an institution having a prestige equal to, if not 
greater than, that of most of the smaller four-year colleges. 


If the student selects a program of general education such 
as one entering a four-year college must choose, he will, at the 
end of two years, have entered upon several fields wherein ma- 
jor interests are likely to have developed. Few students volun- 
tarily abandon college at the end of the sophomore year, and 
far fewer leave our upper secondary school at the end of the 
sophomore year, which corresponds to the twelfth year in the 
traditional high school. The percentage of our secondary stu- 
dents now graduating from our fourteenth year compares fa- 
vorably with similar percentages for the twelfth year under 
the traditional organization. If, as is the case with more than 
sixty per cent of our students, they elect technical rather than 
general education, and plan that after graduation they will en- 
ter upon employment, they are far less liable to leave school at 
the end of the twelfth year, half prepared for employment, 
than if they had elected general education and had contemplat- 
ed college or university experience. The integration of student 
life and the educational program in these two four-year units 
of secondary education has to be seen to be appreciated. The 
vast difference between the traditional educational program 
and the students’ experience with that program is convincing 
evidence that reorganization was clearly indicated and that 
this particular innovation has intriguing possibilities. The 
most basic concept of this plan, usually called the six-four-four 
plan, is the frank recognition of the fact that the needs of 
youth cannot be met in a four-year secondary school which em- 
braces grades from nine to twelve, inclusive. Further, there is 





















8 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


an equally frank recognition of the fact that the thirteenth and 
fourteenth years, those now included in the two-year junior- 
college movement, are in reality secondary in character and, 
therefore, they logically belong to the high school and not to 
the college. They should, therefore, be attached to and organ- 
ized as a part of the public-school system and not as a part of 
the system of higher education. 

President Hutchins of the University of Chicago has stated 
the case for this organization as follows: “We have already 
noticed that the high school cannot be regarded as merely pre- 
paratory to college. Economic and social developments pre- 
vent it from being any longer regarded as terminal. The pe- 
riod of public education for the ordinary youth must be ex- 
tended by at least two years, since he will not be able to 
go to work until about his twentieth year!” 

You now have the description of a pattern for the organi- 
zation of public education that differs entirely in philosophy, 
purpose, and method of attack from either the high school or 
the college. The proposal is not that the high school shall take 
over two years of college work, but, rather, that the period of 
secondary education shall be raised from six to eight years— 
beginning with the seventh grade and extending through the 
fourteenth; the extension in time being made to permit the 
American public school to meet fully the educational needs of 
youth between the ages of twelve and twenty. You have, then, 
the picture before you of a continuous institutional pattern 
for secondary education which covers eight years and offers 
the opportunity to do an educational job on a wholly new basis 
and with unlimited possibilities for devising real solutions for 
some of the problems reported above. More than sixty per 
cent of these students are definitely not going further in their 
schooling. Their education is to be effected and completed 
within one situation, one school system, one supervisory unit, 
one curriculum prescription. 

All issues of entrance requirements, gaps, duplications, 
repetitions, poor preparation, and badly selected or badly mas- 
tered fundamentals are eliminated. There are to be no more 
excuses. Either we can serve these children and meet their 
needs or we cannot. Time does not permit me to discuss econo- 
my of operation, maintenance, and administration. It may be 
said in passing that we have achieved the lowest per capita cost 
per unit in California, and with that statement this phase must 
be dismissed. From the standpoint of public support and ap- 

































1938] A NEW TYPE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL 9 






proval, it must suffice to say that the community has spent 
over five million dollars for plants and equipment, over two 
million of which was voted at the height of the depression. 
Enthusiasm for the plan is most gratifying. From the stand- 
point of the students, it can only be said that eight hundred 
come from outside the district and more than three hundred 
come from outside the state, although no dormitory facilities 
are provided and no effort is made to house, quran or in 
any way encourage such attendance. 


May I conclude with a brief reference to the educational 
program in these new secondary schools. It is not too much to 
say that the philosophy and the patterns of these schools vary 
significantly from those of the typical secondary school. The 
most significant of these differences is in the point of view of 
administrators, supervisors, and faculty. For the first time i: 
the writer’s experience the approach is genuinely in terms of 
the growth needs of the individual. There is, without question, 
an acceptance of the democratic, social philosophy which de- 
mands that the program be based on the possibilities, the po- 
tentialities, and the effectiveness of the individual in solving so- 
cial problems. To this end and for these purposes the goal of 
the whole secondary program is the best possible growth of the 
individual in every aspect of his development. In these two 
fundamental concepts you have the solution to thousands of 
vexing problems of personal adjustment for pupils and a sound 
basis for guidance with respect to curriculum content and se- 
lection. 


* Add to this the acceptance by the staff of a psychology of 
learning that recognizes that: 


1. The individual student is a growing, developing being, 
bringing into each situation, new or old, a unique and complex 
personality, with which an effective adjustment must be made. 

2. Training or adjustment takes place most effectively 
when the individual is purposefully engaged in working toward 
self-determined goals related to individual problems, inter- 
ests, and needs. 

3. Unsatisfied needs result in emotional blocks that 
prevent effective learning. Unhappy, thwarted, insecure, and 
troubled students do not achieve satisfactory results either in 
school or out of it. Unless satisfactions are experienced by 
an individual he will not and cannot make the progress he 
should toward desirable goals. 





*Study by Dr. Margaret E. Bennett, Director of Guidance, Pasadena 
City Schools, Pasadena, California. 














DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 







A major portion of the time of the staff in our secondary 
schools is devoted to the study of the growth needs of children, 
evaluating the curriculum in terms of its contribution to the 
satisfaction of these needs and in guiding pupils toward those 
experiences which are most likely to satisfy their require- 
ments. Our slogan is, “Develop the whole persons.” We at- 
tempt to guide every individual toward the acquisition of be- 













EDUCATION OF THE WHOLE PERSON | 





| Basic Activities | 


Time — 38% | Time 62% 













Home 


| 


Church 








| Recreation 
| 


Purpose: The purpose of education is to develop the whole person so as to enable him to 
live usefully and happily. 












































































































Principles Research | Procedures Evaluation 
Develop desirable behavior patterns through: 
I Il V Ill Iv 
Physical Arts Cultural Arts Civie Arts Occupational Arts 
Healthy Intellectualised Socialized Vocationalized 
Individual Individual Individual Individual 
1. Health Problems. 1. Home Relationships. | 1. Governmental Struc- | 1. Modern Industrial 
Diet Mathematics tures and Functions. Order. 
Colds Economics Rational under- Vocational 
Sleep Sociol: standing of information. 
Breath control Psychology 2. Duties, Rights, and Educational and 
Voice 2. Home Art. Responsibilities of vocational 
Carriage ecapi the Citizen counseling. 
Sex relationships. Interior decorating More efficient in Social security 
2. Games Personal adornment Somanaiag ant national. Taxation. 
Tennis 3. Home Music. state, and 2. Technical Training 
Golf Radio programs. civic J nie nel for Specific Occupa- 
Badminton History and appre- 3. Contemporary Affairs. tions. 
Handball ciation of music. More intelligent Better preparation 
Wholesome 4. Survey of Literature interpretation of for gainful employ- 
recreation. Standards for mak- public affairs. ment. 
3. Dancing ing discriminating Panel and forum dis- | 3. Training in skills 
Grace ap - cussions. for Specific Occupa- 
Poise 5. Survey of Sciences tions. 
4. Swimming Scientific standards, Better preparation 
5. Automobile driving. values, and attitudes. for gainful employ- ; 
6. Survey of Social ment. 
Sciences. 4. Placement and ; 
Application of scien- Follow-up. 
tifie attitudes More advantageous ‘ 
to human affairs. entrance to gainful 
7. Foreign Languages. employment. t 
More sympathetic Better opportunities 
understanding of for careers in specific I 
foreign civilizations. occupations. 
U 
Committee on Education -- Dr. Nicholas Ricciardi, Chairman. 0 




















1938 | A NEw TYPE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL 11 


havior patterns which are so meshed and geared together that 

they function freely and effectively—without friction. We 
seek to avoid the Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde type of split person- 
ality—the individual who sometimes exhibits one set of be- 
havior patterns and sometimes another. We attempt to elim- 
inate mental travail and worry due to the thwarting, the inse- 
curity. and the lack of unification of mental life by developing 
social habits and affiliating the individual with the group; thus 
enabling him to share with others the purposes, goals, and re- 
sults of the school. It becomes his school. He helps to deter- 
mine its purposes; he contributes to its program; he codper- 
ates in its conduct; he is identified with its autonomy. 

At a recent conference a committee faced realistically the 
problem of setting up an educational program designed for the 
education of the whole person. The report of this committee 
is briefly presented as an example of our approach to the cur- 
riculum problem in secondary education. 

Such a program, if attempted, will demand new principles 
of evaluation. Any attempt to remake secondary education 
which is accompanied by the continued use of present-day rules, 
as measured by the existing standardized tests and evaluated 
in terms of college entrance and success, is doomed to failure 
from the outset. Time does not permit the discussion of this 
problem of evaluation, nor am I competent to develop the sub- 
ject. May I conclude with a plea for a concerted drive to 
evolve and apply more humane standards in our evaluation of 
pupil experience in our secondary schools. The tragedy of fail- 
ure at this stage of the individual’s life is one of the most 
alarming aspects of the whole problem of maladjustment in 
our modern society—wherein there is admittedly a tragic 

amount of maladjustment and thwarting of all those factors 
essential for the happiness of our people. 

I have no quarrel with subject mastery, with exact and 
ample knowledge, with adequate skill and effective technique 
of scholarship. These are needs as well as interest for a por- 
tion of our people. They do not, however, satisfy the needs of 
all. They are not the sole needs of any individual or of any 
group. It is, therefore, for the enrichment of the secondary 
school that I plead—for its extension as an agency of service 
to an increasing number of youth—in a hope, or as some even 
now declare, a necessity for all who are to live and to contrib- 
ute to the economic prosperity and to the cultural advancement 
of a truly democratic society. 











THE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL AND MODERN SUPERVISION 






































PAUL B. JACOBSON 


Principal University High School, University of Chicago 


DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRINCIPALSHIP 

The high-school principalship is the oldest administrative 
position in education, as it antedates both the superintendency 
and the elementary-school principalship. 

While the rise of the elementary-school principalship does 
not extend backward in point of time as far as does the high- 
school principalship, it began to emerge about a century ago. 
Due to the rapid growth of cities after 1830, school enrollment 
multiplied so tremendously that school superintendents, after 
they had been appointed, were unable to give time to the ad- 
ministration and supervision of the increasing number of 
grade schools, which, as a group, were growing rapidly. 

By the middle of the Nineteenth Century, the character- 
istics of the principalship in large cities is described by Pierce’ 
as follows: “(1) A teaching male principal as the controlling 
head of the school, (2) female and primary departments with 
women principals under the direction of the male principal, 
and (3) prescribed duties which were limited largely to disci- 
pline, routine administrative acts, and grading of pupils in 
the various rooms.” 

Gradually the principals were relieved of teaching duties, 
and the possibilities of supervision of the school by the prin- 
cipal were seen by the professionally minded. 

At times in the past there has been doubt in the minds of 
many as to the person responsible for supervision. In large 
cities supervisors from. the central office called at the schools 
as itinerant teachers, as subject-matter specialists, or as gen- 
eral supervisors. Sometimes they assumed administrative au- 
thority in connection with their supervisory activities which re- ce 
sulted in unfortunate relationships between the local principal 
and the central office supervisors. Present-day theory of Be 
school administration makes the principal the responsible head 
of the school; the person who is accountable for every phase of pe 
school work in the local building; the representative of the 
superintendent of schools; and the interpreter and executor of 
his policies with the local teachers. Under this plan of organi- 


-  -— ss ae on 





-_ ~*~ FAR 


Ss PD = ~~ ho 









1Pjerce, Paul R. The Origin and Development of the Public-School 
Principslship. University of Chicago Press, 1935. P. 9. 


12 


























1938] THE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL AND MODERN SUPERVISION 13 


zation, supervisors are staff officers connected with the central 

office on call by the local principal. Quite rightly, a principal 
who failed to take advantage of the available supervisory serv- 
ice and whose school was deficient should have an embar- 
rassing and difficult time to explain to the superintendent’s 
office why he did not use supervisory aid; nevertheless the de- 
cision whether or not to use it is his. 

Reavis' has found, in a study of the relationship of the 
principal to the central office in eighteen large cities, that the 
approved relationship exists, and he characterizes it as “‘one 
of the most successful developments in city-school administra- 
tion.” 

WHAT SUPERVISORS DO 

Of the many plans drawn up for principals or other su- 
pervisory officers to follow, all of them have stressed ciassroom 
visitation to some extent. Concerning the value of such visita- 
tion, there is disagreement of opinion. In general, the ele- 
mentary teachers have been more kindly disposed to classroom 
visitation than have the secondary-school teachers. 

Melby,’ in his study of supervision in a number of city 
school systems, found that principals were quite certain that 
classroom visitation was of great value, but the classroom 
teachers did not share this belief. 

The National Survey of Secondary Education’ concludes, 
in connection with classroom visitation, “The main ap- 
proach to the problem of improving classroom instruction is 
no longer the classroom visit with its inevitable ensuing con- 
ference. That approach is still an important one, but in out- 
standing schools supervisors are realizing, as never before, the 
potential aggregate benefits which may accrue from many 
methods of supervision proceeding simultaneously.” 

In theory, class visitation is always to be followed by a 
conference in the office of the principal. 

Hughes and Melby‘ found that the teachers reported that 


1Reavis, W. C. Relations of School Principals to the Central Ad- 
ministrative Office in Large Cities. Bulletin No. 66, Department of Sec- 
ondary-School Principals of the N.E.A., 1987. P. 364. 

2Melby, E. O. A Critical Study of the Organization and Administra- 
tion of Supervision—a Study of Current Practice, Northwestern Uni- 
versity Contributions to Education, 1929. Public School Publishing Co. 

’Engelhardt, Fred, Zeigel, W. H., and Billett, R.O. National Survey 
of Secondary Education, Monograph No. 11. U. S. Department of the 
Interior, Office of Education, Bulletin No. 17, 1932. P. 140. 

‘Hughes, J. M., and Melby, E. O. Supervisino of Instruction in High 
School, Northwestern University Contributions to Education, No. 4, 
1930. Public School Publishing Co. P. 32. 

















14 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 





conferences were held following only thirty per cent of the 
visits, arrangements for such conferences were casual, and only 
about one-third of the teachers felt that they had received help 
from the conferences. 

Clearly, then, the conference following the class visitation, 
which every principal will make as one of his supervisory ac- 
tivities, can be a much more meaningful one than it has been 
if the principal takes the time and effort to make it so; espe- 
cially if he has a supervisory program which deals with such 
vital problems as the curriculum and methods of teaching. 


































FACULTY MEETINGS 

Faculty meetings have long been ranked with classroom 
visitations as one of the chief sources of supervisory stimula- 
tion. Melby’ found that general faculty meetings ranked high 
in value in the opinions of principals but low in the opinion of 
teachers. This is quite understandable when one considers 
how many general faculty meetings degenerate into discus- 
sions of pupils’ personalities which are irksome to individual 
teachers not directly concerned with these pupils, or how fre- 
quently the principal rehashes administrative detail, which, 
if it must be presented to the entire corps of teachers, can more 
conveniently be placed in a bulletin. 

In one of the large schools near here the principal assigns 
teachers to committees for which they have shown preference. 
The committees investigate problems relating to school work 
and report back to the faculty, where the matter is discussed 
at some length if necessary. Most of these committee re- 
ports have been adopted as a part of school policy, to be car- 
ried out by everyone. One specific change which has been in- 
augurated is the hour period with supervised study rather 
than the forty-five minute period which had been the custom 
before. 





GROUP MEETINGS 

In the judgment of the principals, small group meetings 
are of greater value than general meetings, but their practice 
does not follow their belief.2 Here is another case where prin- 
cipals could easily make practice follow the belief of both their 
teachers and themselves. Certainly in large faculties where a 
representative group, say of intermediate grade teachers or 
social science teachers, can be assembled for a professional, 





1Melby, E. O., op. cit., p. 112. 
2Melby, E. O., op. cit., p. 112. 




















1938] 





THE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL AND MODERN SUPERVISION 15 







prepared meeting to discuss common problems, there is op- 
portunity for an intellectual leadership on the part of the prin- 
cipal which is not now utilized. 




































DEMONSTRATION TEACHING 

Demonstration teaching is ranked high' by elementary- 
school teachers as a way of improving methods of teaching, 
but high-school teachers are, at best, lukewarm in their re- 
sponse to it. High-school principals, also, are not enthusiastic 
about demonstration teaching. The survey of secondary edu- 
cation points out that demonstration teaching is, indeed, a rare 
procedure in secondary education. There seems to be abroad 
the notion that elementary-school teachers can profit from 
demonstration lessons, but that high-school teachers cannot. 
With this viewpoint I disagree entirely. 


I shall content myself with one illustration from the sec- 
ondary-school field. Perhaps all of you were present in St. 
Louis in 1936, when Mr. Roy Hatch taught a demonstration 
lesson in social studies for the Department of Superintendence, 
now called the American Association of School Administrators. 
Several thousand school administrators saw the lesson and 
came away with definite ideas to inaugurate in their local 
systems. It seems to me that a series of such lessons, taught 
by master teachers, would be far more helpful than many of 
the papers I have listened to at state and national meetings. 





CURRICULUM 
Many writers on supervision have urged curriculum prep- 
aration as being one of the most efféctive supervisory methods, 
and many of our larger cities have used it extensively. 


In a metropolitan high school, situated in one of the poorer 
areas of a large city, the principal is working diligently to stim- 
ulate the faculty to revise materials for teaching purposes or 
to prepare new materials which will function in the lives of the 
boys and girls who enroll in the school. An illustration of how 
the general science course for this school was prepared must 
suffice. From a sampling of the mental abilities of the pupils 
enrolled, it was found that the average mental age was two 
yéars below the chronological age. Data on reading ability 
revealed that many pupils were not prepared to read the ma- 
terial presented in standard general science texts. In order to 
determine how well children understood the meaning of com- 
monly used scientific terms, a test was devised, on which the 





















16 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 











median score was about fifteen per cent correct responses. A 
questionnaire to pupils showed that three-quarters of the par- 
ents were foreign-born and possessed a meager educational 
background. Sixty-eight per cent of the homes were stove- 
heated. Other commonly accepted comforts were found to be 
absent in similar proportions. Eighty-seven per cent of the 
children had home duties, such as “getting wood,” which in that 
district means bringing home anything combustible in the 
neighborhood which was not securely fastened. Cleanliness 
was a habit which these pupils had not acquired or were unable 
to practice at home, as running water was not available to 
many of them. From these facts it seemed clear to the princi- 
pal and teachers that instruction regarding food, clothing, and 
personal hygiene was more important than a study of trans- 
portation and communication. Knowledge in regard to heat- 
ing, ventilating, and proper lighting, as well as the causes, pre- 
vention, and cure of disease was more important for these chil- 
dren than that of astronomy, weather forecasting, or electric 
motors. Therefore, the principal and teachers of this school 
built a course, adapting from textbooks where possible, supple- 
mented by material written by the faculty and mimeographed 
for the children. The result is a course which functions in the 
lives of the pupils. They recognize it as of worth to them- 
selves. Among the items which have been considered in evalu- 
ating the course are the establishment of home workshops, re- 
ports by social workers of increased participation in wholesale 
community recreation, and improved habits of personal health 
and cleanliness.’ ? Of course, the revision of the general science 
course in this high school is not complete . . . it will never be 
finished as long as an alert principal provides professional 
leadership to a growing corps of teachers. 
TESTING 

It is certain that some form of evaluating pupil learning, 
teacher effectiveness, or suitability of the material in the 
course of study should be made regularly and systematically. 
Probably the most effective way is to use the best testing in- 
struments available. 

In the Survey of Secondary Education* the following con- 
clusion is reached: “although comparatively few super- 
visors are using tests as a means of evaluation, nevertheless 





1Pjierce, P. R. “Major Steps in Reorganizing a High-School Cur- 
riculum,” School Review 44: 655-66. 

2McCalmont, J. K. “The Instructional Background of General 
Science Puvils in a City Community,” School Review 44: 291-97. 
3Engelhardt, Fred, Zeigel, W. H., and Billett, R. O., op. cit., p. 163. 


























1938] THE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL AND MODERN SUPERVISION 17 


a large majority of those employing them estimate the results 
as very successful.” 


Satisfactory instruments were first available for mental 
testing, followed by achievement tests at the elementary-school 
level, and only recently, at the high-school level. Certainly any 
school which makes a pretense of adequate and cumulative rec- 
ords must include both mental and achievement testing in its 
program. The variety of excellent group tests for mental ability 
makes the choice of one of them difficult, principally because of 
their general excellence. In the secondary field there are at 
east two satisfactory achievement tests series: The Codpera- 
tive Tests, available with both independent (private) and pub- 
lic-school norms for nearly all high-school subjects, and the 
Iowa Every Pupil’s Tests, which furnish splendid regional 
norms for public schools of the middle-west in most of the sub- 
ject matter fields. Giving a series of achievement tests and 
considering the results carefully represent an excellent basis 
for beginning the supervisory program. Certainly one should 
compare the achievement of a school for which he is responsi- 
ble with that of similar schools—in the light of the abilities of 


the pupils. Similarly, one would wish to inquire why the pu- 
pils in a specific grade ranked, say, in the highest quarter of 


achievement in English mechanics and in the lowest quarter 
of achievement in mathematics, or why one teacher secures 
consistently high achievement records in a subject, while an- 
other teacher obtains much lower achievement records in the 
same field. Perhaps in the latter case there are differences in 
the abilities of the pupils. Perhaps there are additional values, 
not measured by the test, which are taught by some teachers or 
in some subject matter fields. At any rate, the testing pro- 
gram furnishes objective data with which to begin the program 
of supervision. 


I cannot leave the topic of testing without a plea for a 
reading test, to be given annually, since reading ability is the 
basis of successful schoolwork at any point in the school system. 
A reading-test record in connection with the mental ability of 
the class might well explain why one class or group was above 
or below the achievement of other pupils similarly classified for 
instructional purposes. And such test data furnishes the basis 
for a remedial program. Considerable has been learned and 
published about remedial reading at the elementary-school 
level. Most of this is readily applicable to the deficient readers 
at the secondary level by anyone who will take the time to read 

















18 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


the professional literature and to apply it. The fact that large 
numbers of deficient high-school readers respond to and profit 
from such instruction makes it imperative that more principals 
accept the obligation of caring for the defects in reading just 
as readily and promptly as they would carry out their admin- 
istrative duty in furnishing lunch to an indigent child. There 
is abundant evidence available that remedial instruction in 
reading, either undertaken with individual pupils, or in group 
work, will prove as profitable for retarded readers in the high 
schools as it has proved for elementary-school children, and 
there is some evidence, too, that the effect of the improvement 
is relatively permanent. 


SUMMARY 


In concluding this paper, which has dealt with the prob- 
lems of a principal in a modern system of supervision, I wish 
to make the following summary: 

1. The principal is the person responsible for the im- 
provement of instruction in a local school. 

2. The wise principal will concentrate his major emphasis 
on a few activities and will see that satisfactory results are 
accomplished. 

3. The provision of fresh and vital material to illustrate 
or supplement classroom instruction is one of the most prom- 
ising supervisory activities a principal can undertake. 

4. Such a program can, and will, include testing, class- 
room visitation on call and at irregular intervals, and planned 
and unhurried conferences when they appear advisable. It 
may and probably will result in some remedial teaching, and 
there will be group and general faculty meetings for which 
there is a purpose. 


WARNING 


The National Honor Society has met with such great suc: 
cess that imitations are springing up in different parts of the 
county. These pseudo honor societies seem to have largely 
a commercial objective to plan the exploitation of scholarship 
for financial ends. Members of our department are warned to 
beware of any society that offers to sell pins or emblems to 
pupils under the guise of scholarship, and are urged not to lend 
their aid or influence to such organizations. 

The Department of Secondary-School Principals recom- 
mends only the National Honor Society and the National 
Junior Honor Society. 






























A STUDENT EXCHANGE PLAN 


ROGER HILL 


Todd School, Woodstock, Dlinois 

The past year has found many of us at the inspiring busi- 
ness of reviewing once more the life and writings of Horace 
Mann. It is, of course, completely unfair to skip lightly over 
the amazing perspicacity, sagaciousness, and advanced peda- 
gogy of this intellectual giant and to dwell on those over- 
statements he sometimes made when offering his social cure-all 
of universal education. Probably we should realize that it is 
we who have failed rather than he who erred when we read 
prophecies such as the following: 

Were we to hear that some far-off land had been dis- 
covered where ... falsehood, detraction, and perjury were 
never uttered; where all the obligations growing out of 
domestic relations were sacredly kept; where the office 
always sought the wisest and best men for incumbents; 
where witnesses were true and jurors just; in fine, where 
all men were honest in their dealings and exemplary in 
their lives,—were we to hear of such a realm, who that 
loves the peace and the happiness that comes from securi- 
ty and order would not wish to escape from the turmoil 
and the violence, the rancor and the mean ambitions of 
our present sphere, and go there to dwell and die. And 
yet it is the opinion of our most intelligent, dispassionate, 
and experienced teachers, that we can, in the course of two 
or three generations superinduce substantially such a 
state of society upon the present one. 

Yes, we smile. But should we not, rather, blush? Few 
groups are as smug as are educators. Few groups have as lit- 
tle right to be. The high hopes planted a hundred years ago 
have blossomed into anemic posies. Every child attends school 
for eight years. Nearly every child attends school for twelve 
years. An unconscionable number of children attend for from 
sixteen to twenty years. And while radio waves clutter up the 
ether, thought waves have not multiplied appreciably. Polit- 
ical ballyhoo is still maudlin. The hand that writes the propa- 
ganda is the hand that rules the nation. 


Our elementary schools have taught a nation to read, but 
our secondary schools have made almost no beginning on the 
job of teaching a nation to think. Literacy has, to all practical 


19 















20 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


purposes, merely shifted the nature of. our dupedom. For 

the past few generations we have received our propaganda 
from the printed page rather than from the political platform. 
And now, as a final ghastly joke, the scientists have given us 
a new gadget which nullifies literacy. The voice of the radio 
is heard in the land. We have ceased thumbing pages; we 
thumb dials. Once more we can sell the nostrums and dupe 
the sucker without the aid of the printing press. The political 
spellbinder is back on the platform. The old medicine show 
(almost unchanged) returns to the American scene. 

All this has been retold until it is trite. And so, to the 
cure-all! Every article with such a preamble must inevitably 
conclude with the answer. Well, I have none. At least, if I think 
I have an answer, it is not the purpose of this discussion to pro- 
mulgate it. I do think, however, that I have one new technique 
to offer which is genuine, vital, and eminently pragmatic. Brief- 
ly, it is to take a chapter from the book of international stu- 
dent exchange and apply it to our own union of states and 
to our own vast and varied social complexion. Our high schools 
are to offer not only a cafeteria assortment of knowledge but 
at least one significant socializing experience each year. This 
is to be done simply by exchanging students. For example, a 
class from a metropolitan high school (say Chicago) will for 
one month of its freshman year visit and go to school in a 
small-town high school in (say) cornbelt Iowa. These stu- 
dents travel with their social science teacher, but, upon their 
arrival, they attend classes under the Iowa instructors. Their 
own teacher meets them one period a day for orientation and 
interpretation of their new surroundings, but for the rest of 
the day this teacher becomes a guest instructor in the Iowa so- 
cial science classes. Metropolitan Willie Jones becomes a 
house guest on the farm of Johnny Smith, sharing for one 
month his every experience. He drives daily with Johnny to 
and from school in the Smith flivver, stopping each morning at 
the milk plant to unload the six cans which constitute about 
half of the Smith income. He listens to Johnny growl a bit 
about the dollar and fifty-six cents a hundred, currently re- 
ceived, and, after having that translated into three cents a 
quart, is inclined to join the dirge. He offers to help with the 
milking the first night, but finds this a highly specialized skill, 
and compromises by helping get down the feed. 

“They git alfalfa and silage at night,” the hired hand ex- 
plains. “The alfalfa’s in the east bin. You'll havta climb over 












— CP ORK he lle ek 
























21 





A STUDENT EXCHANGE PLAN 





1938] 


the soybeans, but you can fork it down through a hole in the 
mow near the corner.” 

Then a climb to the eerie heights and pungent vastness of 
the silo, and the peculiar joy of dropping half a ton of shredded 
material down a forty-foot shaft. On Saturday corn must 
come in from the field. 

“There’s six hundred shocks in the south forty,” says Mr. 
Smith, “and we gotta get them in before the snow starts drift- 
ing too heavy. Johnny, you take the bay team over to Mengs’ 
and borrow their rack. We’ll hook old Dick and Dolly onto our 
wagon, and they’Il be safe for Willie to try his hand drivin’.” 

Two weeks later Willie is husking corn like a—well, if 
not like a veteran, still he’s using the hook on the husking mitt 
and not peeling the ear like a banana. He is amazed at the 
bushels those hogs in the feed lot consume at a crunching and 
is inclined to agree with Johnny that you can not hope to get 
rich feeding seventy cent corn to hogs even if they are bring- 
ing eight dollars on the market. 

“We'd be getting a real price for ’em,” says Johnny, “if it 
weren’t for the government going crazy with reciprocity and 
letting all the foreign beef and pork into our country.” 

It will be a year or two before Johnny’s class visits the cot- 
ton and the tobacco belt and learns that this oft-condemned 
tariff policy has enabled the southern farmer to recapture some 
of his lost foreign market and has kept him from bankruptcy. 

Before that time, however, in fact, this very year, John- 
ny’s class will return the visit of the Chicago boys. He will 
now be the guest of Willie, who will open up to him new vistas 
which will broaden the horizon of his thinking for life. Possi- 
bly he plays in the band in his own school, and the fifty cent 
popular concert of Conductor Stock will be his first conscious 
esthetic experience. Just the ride on the bus through Lincoln 
Park and along the Lake Shore Drive will be a thrill. If his 
teachers have discussed architecture with him (and they should 
be spanked if they have not) he will, perhaps for the first time, 
see in three dimensional weod, stone, iron, and steel exam- 
ples of oriental, Greek, medieval, and modern thought. The 
bustle of the stores in the Loop, the museums, the Planetarium, 

the Shedd Aquarium, and the site of the World’s Fair will be 
his to have for a month and to hold in memory forever. 

In a big city the experiences and the values which we pro- 
pose to grasp are so fundamentally different from rural life 

that the procedure of grasping them must be changed. Group 











22 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 






trips will be in order. Johnny will want to see the stockyards, 
although not necessarily the butchering because Johnny has 
done that himself at home and this is after all the least sig- 
nificant part of the yards. But he will want to see the tremen- 
dous, smoothly functioning machinery for marketing a nation’s 
meat supply. Here he can observe the law of supply and de- 
mand functioning before his eyes like ants in a glass-front 
colony. He will see the same law in action to-morrow when he 
looks down from the Board of Trade visitors’ gallery on the 
wheat or corn pit, but in what will seem to him a less rational 
manner. Bedlam and a thousand fists bursting in air will 
hardly look like buying or selling grain, but the hundreds of 
stock buyers and stock sellers, all with the badge of their fra- 
ternity, a fifty-cent hickory cane, do business over wooden 
fences in the yards in an understandable and Christian fashion. 
After these visits, Willie and Johnny will each have an insight 
into each other’s life and a sympathy for each other’s problems 
which will change the entire course of their adult thinking. 


But their other three high-school years will bring equally 
new and equally significant experiences. Willie and Johnny 
will not simply read a paragraph in their social science text 
about George So-and-so of Leadville, or Coalville, or Cotton- 
ville, or Orangeville, or Whatyouville. They will actually have 
the unique, memorable, and invaluable experience of—for a 
month out of their lives—stepping into George’s boots. 

I am convinced, through actual private-school experiments 
with well-to-do boys (experiments much less real than the 
public-school procedure advocated herein), that these experi- 
ences, properly interpreted by social science teachers of vision, 
can be the most illuminating, the most stimulating, and the 
most broadening part of a secondary curriculum. That is 
quite a flock of superlatives but they stand as written. 

Whether we believe with Hutchins of Chicago that a gen- 
eral education necessitates a knowledge of the classics and a 
mind discipline derived from the study of mathematics, or 
whether we hold with an increasing number of educators who 
insist that a glorified trade school is the curriculum summum 
bonum, still we all join hands in a circle and give lip service at 
least to the inclusion of some social studies which will inter- 
pret our world, our times, and our customs. And here, cer- 
tainly is the ideal introduction to sociology and economics. 


No, I offer this as no panacea for our educational prob- 
lems. The man who completely vitalizes our youngster’s years 














| 
} 
t 
J 
a 
r 
I 



























1938 | A STUDENT EXCHANGE PLAN 23 





in school will have to present a tremendous plan for universal, 

active, transitive participation in genuine life experiences. He 
will have to put children into some sort of a valid miniature 
citizenship. He will have to simulate a pioneering set-up for 
our youngsters, eliminating some of life’s cushions, and pulling 
out of their mouths some of the synthetic silver spoons that 
even the most humble are now born with. He will have to in- 
stitute some sort of back-to-the-chores movement. He will 
have to—but that is beside the point. My only contention now 
is that, under the exchange high-school plan, each year would 
bring one tremendously vital experience, an experience with 
life-long reverberations for each boy, and which would make 
wise and logical use of a set of machinery which is already at 
hand in our far flung, standardized national high-school sys- 
tem. 

I am convinced that no boy’s education is broad enough 
for citizenship without some first-hand knowledge of the many 
cogs which must be intricately meshed to turn our vast eco- 
nomic machine. Certainly a realization of the fundamental 
and basic nature of agriculture in any civilization is essential. 
Strange to say, but in very sooth, this can only be learned, or 
at least it can only be realized, by getting feet and fingers deep 
in forty acres of dirt. And to-day the great proportion of our 
youth is denied this common heritage of our grandfathers. A 
boy can spend much of his young life rolling along concrete 
roads between cornfields, and there it is—corn. But, after one 
month on a mid-western farm, the roadside has come to life and 
there it is—corn. And it will never be corn again. To those of 
you who were born in the city and first tasted pastoral delights 
after reaching maturity, the above will be crystal clear. The 
rest of you can only vaguely sense the tremendous significance 
I am trying to express. 

Much of the educational value of the trips will take 
place after the return to home classrooms. Experiences will 
be compared, modes of life will be discussed, philosophies of 
living will be evaluated. In short, the travel diet will be di- 
gested. Observation is both the raw material of science and 


the basis of esthetic appreciation. We have been making of the 
learning process an esoteric thing when it rests on something 


as primary as the use and acute sharpening of the five senses. 
An open mind with suspended judgment is our objective. To 
this end, instead of offering all ideas in predigested capsule 
form, we should encourage our youth first to observe and dis- 
cover facts and then to think clearly and precisely, to analyze, 




















24 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


to criticize, to weigh evidence, to check conclusions. 

I can foresee, of course, many individual conscientious ob- 
jectors, primarily mothers feeling that Willie will be contam- 
inated. To quote the classics, “I poohs at yer Mrs. Brown.” 
More learned brows will wrinkle at the prospect of our youth 
not being mature enough properly to evaluate completely for- 
eign mores, and while I do not pooh at Mr. Longface, I dis- 
agree most emphatically. With a social science teacher of sym- 
pathy and understanding to help shape reactions, I know from 
experience that negative results are non-existent. Johnny 
Gotrocks is not nearly so apt to sneer as the comic strips would 
indicate. For years I have taken wealthy boys on a tour which 
covered, among many things, the Kentucky and Tennessee 
mountaineer life. These boys from the Gold Coast have invari- 
ably been unanimous in their amazed admiration for the sim- 
ple charm, the obvious honesty, the open-hearted hospitality, 
the innate friendliness of these folk. “The traveled mind,” as 
Mr. Alcott told us, “is the catholic mind, educated from exclu- 
siveness and egotism.” Yes, the italics are added but justly 
so. All our findings have tended to bear out Disraeli’s view. 
“Travel teaches toleration.” 

In fact, although this is not necessarily a part of the plan, 
I am convinced that every well-to-do boy would greatly im- 
prove his future citizenship by living for a period in a very 
under-privileged home. As to the wisdom of the converse situ- 
ation, I can speak with no authority. I know that many con- 
servatives would feel it unwise. As one very wealthy friend 
said to me, “The plan has tremendous educational value, but the 
exchange should be between homes of approximate economic 
parity. Otherwise it will be a breeder of discontent.” Mayhap 
he is right. But Iam not so sure. If the word increased means 
increased skill in the art of gentle living, surely emulation of 
these amenities is desirable. As far as pure envy or possible 
rancor is concerned, does my friend believe that his double- 
chauffeured town cars, his yacht, his walled Westchester es- 
tate, and his wife’s society-column record are now hidden from 
the gaze of the poor? But this man’s scale of living would not 
figure in a public-school, anyway. And there certainly are 
things to be said in favor of a poor boy having an insight into 
the home life of the moderately wealthy. To cite just one, he 
would probably learn, as did wise old Amassa Delano, that 
“Virtue and vice, happiness and misery, are much more equally 
distributed than those are permitted to suppose who have 
never been away from home.” 







































A STUDENT EXCHANGE PLAN 25 





1938] 


To test the wisdom of any of these procedures would be a 
simple matter. In fact, the whole idea can be evaluated by 
cautious, experimental beginnings. Principals and superin- 
tendents who are interested can write to a central agency, ex- 
plaining the type of life situations available in the homes of 
their boys, and designating the sort of experience wished in ex- 
change. Until a better focal point can be found, I shall be glad 
to offer my office as barter headquarters. A few dozen of us 
can, in a few months, report findings indicative of future pos- 
sibilities. 

And the cost? Surprisingly little. Transportation is al- 
most the sole item. The cost of Willie’s food while visiting 
Johnny is borne by Johnny’s parents, but these folks save a 
like amount during the period of the return visit. Railroad fare 
for a trip of one thousand miles and return should cost no more 
than ten dollars. This figure is based on the reasonable as- 
sumption that our lines would, for a mass movement, grant 
fares of one-fourth of the existing coach rates. European coun- 
tries whose educational program includes the summer pilgrim- 
age have existing railroad rates for this purpose which are 
one-fifth normal. The price of a few textbooks will add this 
new educational tool. 

Now that we have mentioned it, why not adopt the summer 
travel plan and the European or Japanese pilgrimage? All 
right, why not? But the exchange-student plan would, to my 
notion, be much less expensive and much more valuable. No 
artificial situations are set up such as are inherent with a 
leader and his group on summer tour. No new machinery need 
be set up. We use the existing machinery of our vast high- 
school system and over-trained high-school faculty. The genu- 
ineness—the reality of actually living in another home in an- 
other community—transcends all rubber-neck excursioning 
and lifts the experiences out of the dangers which made Tho- 
reau describe most travel as being merely “counting cats in 
Zanzibar.” 

Yes, travel is excellent. Bacon was right when he told us: 
that “Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the 
elder a part of experience.” Yes, field trips are excellent. 
Few of us would argue with their increased use in progressive 
schools. But here would be super travel, super field trips. All 
experienced globe-trotters agree that the way to know a coun- 
try is to make your stay not in the Grand Hotel nor even in 
the American House surrounded with fellow tourists, but in the 
homes of the natives. Did you do some visiting when you were 





26 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


achild? Are not those memories the most vivid ones in the file 
of your mind? Have they not affected much of your thinking 
through life? But your visit was only a fraction of the experi- 
ence proposed for our boys. You visited relatives or friends. 
At least you visited in a home on the same economic and social 
level as your own. The exchange student will open doors that 
lead into a new world. J ama part of all that I have met. Yes, 
but most of our youngsters, rich or poor, have met pitifully 
little that is vibrant and living and contemporary before they 
file up to the speaker’s platform, reach for their diploma roll, 
and slip by pure accident into a job at the corner filling station, 
the neighbor’s farm, or father’s counting house. 

Despite the increase of extra-curriculum activities, the life 
led by high-school youth to-day is peculiarly secondhand. Its 
experiences are almost one hundred per cent vicarious and 
almost one hundred per cent sedentary. These experiences are 
taken in the movie pew, in the stadium bleacher, in the school- 
room seat. The automobile gives the boy his nearest approach 
to an active, firsthand experience and this, under ordinary cir- 
cumstances, a dwarfed one. But it is his most desired toy be- 
cause of an instinct as basic as that or ™ating; the passion for 
locomotion, the mercurial urge, the wanderlust, the age-old 
wish for seven-league boots. Huck Finn’s spirit is strong in 
every boy. And while we can not let them all take a year off for 
adventures and, fleeing Aunt Polly Pedagog, let them dissect 
America by bisecting it on a raft, still we can give them an ex- 
cellent view around several of the great bends. 

Yes, our academic life is indubitably sterilized of living 
experiences. Significant experiments in life infusion of vari- 
ous natures, such as the one at Antioch, are being made at 
many isolated points. Our efforts, however, have been infini- 
tesimal when viewed in the light of the millions of American 
school boys still fed largely on the husks of life, still flus- 
trated with little understanding of the society in which they 
live. 

Perhaps I am speaking out of turn. Perhaps as a private- 
school man I should stick to example rather than precept. Per- 
haps I should continue to hoe my own little garden and rejoice 
if I can finally develop one really superior row of perennials. 
But I find myself looking wide-eyed and awe-struck at the pos- 
sibilities across the fence in the field of public-school planting; 
a little envious at the very size and possibilities of the plot; 
and fired with a holy zeal to lay out a tremendous blueprint 
that may really alter the architecture of our society—fired 





1938) A STUDENT EXCHANGE PLAN 27 


with a holy zeal to mold a cosmic mass of human clay ; to splash 
on a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet’s hair. 

We have been told that the thoughts of youth are long, 
long thoughts. They are. Or at least they can be. But more 
commonly they are short, narrow, provincial thoughts. If we 
can broaden the outlook of youth’s imagination, we have molded 
cosmic clay. Education is merely the multiplication of appre- 
ciations. If Tommy Thompson can appreciate the subtle nice- 
ties of baseball skill more readily than I, he is to that extent 
educated beyond me. If I can appreciate a symphonic arrange- 
ment to the point of feeling it in my spine, while it gets no far- 
ther than Tommy’s ears, I am to that extent educated beyond 
him. But the greatest of all appreciations are the valuing of the 
other person’s point of view, and the awareness of sterling 
character traits in human beings—the ability to look beneath 
the externals of clothes, customs, idiosyncrasies of speech and 
manner, social and monetary differentiations, and know that a 
man is a man for a’ that. I know that boys, given a chance 
to get out of their own province and their own provincial 
thinking can do just that. (I say nothing about girls because, 
father of two adolescent ones, I still know nothing about them 


en masse.) And I know of no reason why the high-school ex- 
change-student plan, as here outlined, cannot do much more for 
public high-school boys than we, in our own school, have done, 
with recognized success, for selected groups in travel classes. 


STATE OF NEW JERSEY 
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION 
TRENTON 


SECONDARY-SCHOOL LETTER January 3, 1938 


To High-School Principals, Supervising Principals, 

City Superintendents, and County Superintendents: 

We have received numerous inquiries concerning the National Scholarship Infor- 
mation Bureau, P. O. Box 342, Elizabeth, New Jersey. This organization offers guid- 
ance information concerning scholarships, student aid funds, fellowships, and loan 
funds available in different institutions of the United States. The announcement of 
this service is addressed: ‘‘To All High-School Seniors’. We understand that the cir- 
eulars are in some cases sent to the president of the senior class rather than to the 
principal of the school. 

After a careful investigation of the possibilities of this service and of the resources 
of the people who offer it, we ider it ry to caution secondary-school principals 
against permitting this organization to correspond with bers of the student body 
of the secondary schools of New Jersey. The fee of one doliar for individual advice, 
based on a student’s application, does not seem justified. In any case, the service promised 
by the Bureau should be available free of cost to any of our public secondary schools. 

Very truly yours 


HOWARD DARE WHITE 
Assistant Commissioner of Education 




















A PHASE OF STUDENT GUIDANCE 


V. K. FROULA 
Principal, Roosevelt High School, Seattle, Washington 


Experience is the essence of which character is molded 
and personality developed. Character is never something 
apart from the activities of life itself. Therefore, the students 
of Roosevelt High School are encouraged to engage in codpera- 
tive democratic action throughout their corporate life, as a 
phase of guidance. 

This is, of course, only one phase of that important school 
duty. We also have a plan for counseling by all the teachers 
and by a few special functionaries, such as is becoming com- 
mon in schools under varying forms of organization. 

We are offering students of secondary level opportunities 
at productive activities in the realm of conduct and self-man- 
agement as a visible achievement in citizenship training. This, 
it seems to us, is a cogent means of guidance. There is an ele- 
ment of weakness in the plan of special functionaries for stu- 
dent guidance which makes it appear as if it were something 
added to the school’s regular program and not an integral part 
of its total function. The experience of students in concrete 
situations which approximate every-day life and wherein the 
ethical implications of personal rights and freedom are clearly 
brought out seems to us to belong in the category of group guid- 
ance. How else can young people so forcibly learn that no one 
is fit to govern who is not also ready to be governed; that the 
liberty of an individual is a means and not an end; that free- 
dom and discipline are not mutually exclusive? 

This school’s first two codperative organizations consisted 
of the Boys’ Club and the Girls’ Club, which functioned well for 
several years. It was discovered, however, that for some pur- 
poses joint committees of boys and girls had to be appointed, 
which called attention to the advisability of embracing the en- 
tire student body into one association with a cabinet, a council, 
and other subdivisions. 

The Council, meeting weekly, consists of two representa- 
tives from each home room. They constitute the legislative 
body of the school, where committees report and recommend 
measures for student conduct. Immediately after each meet- 
ing, they return to their rooms, where time enough is granted 
them for presenting the transactions of the council. When- 
ever special stress needs to be laid upon the recommendations 


28 





































1938] A PHASE OF STUDENT GUIDANCE 29 


of any committee, its chairman brings the matter before the 

students in assembly. 
One of the most constructive pieces of work by the council 

is action on the report of the inter-school committee dealing 
with Halloween. For several years some of our schools had 
been making efforts to bring about a more sane and sensible ob- 
servance of Halloween, but the results were rather poor. About 
three years ago the entire school system took a hand in the 
problem. Representative students of the nine high schools were 
called to the Board Rooms with their principals. The superin- 
tendent of schools, a police official, a fire marshal, the mayor, 
the president of the high-school council of the P.-T. A., and a 
member of the Seattle school board were also present. Simi- 
larly, on the same day, representative pupils of the junior-high 
and elementary schools were called together. The matter was 
presented by the adult members of the group, and the problems 
were turned over to the students, who devised ways and means 
to carry back to their respective schools. 

A meeting of the Roosevelt student council was called, and 
measures were recommended. Members of two service organi- 
zations volunteered to patrol the school grounds to discourage 
neighborhood pranksters. Parties of small groups were sug- 
gested and were held in homes. Larger parties to engage in 
innocent fun were arranged in field houses. Schools vied 
with each other for the best results in their respective districts. 
At an assembly, the chairman of the inter-school committee 
addressed the students and asked for their support. Some 
time after Halloween when reports on all districts had been 
completed, the student groups were again called together and 
honors were awarded to the district with the best showing. 
The change in the observance of Halloween in the entire city 
was remarkable, and has been so ever since that time. 

The Minute Service Club is a group of junior boys ren- 
dering a two-fold service. Its members are in charge of a cap- 
tain and two lieutenants. When the lunchroom needs to be 
cleared of tables to make room for a P.-T. A. reception, all that 
is necessary is to notify the captain. The next morning before 
school, the tables are put back in place for regular service. For 

banquets, father and son dinners, and other functions the 
tables are quickly and quietly arranged as desired. The other 
service which this group renders is a reforestation project, 
carried on in codéperation with the government’s conservation 
program. Every spring, the group, accompanied by one or 
more adults, starts out for an overnight trip in the Cascade 























30 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS ([February, 


Mountains, where several sections of logged-off land have been 
set aside for the care of this group. Two thousand tiny trees, 
provided by the United States Forest Service, are planted in 
regular rows each spring, furnishing the boys an object lesson 
in conservation. Incidentally, the whole school becomes con- 
servation-conscious by the preparations of these boys for their 
jaunt. 

The Patrol is another group of diligent workers. They 
take care of hall traffic, fire drills, and the proper parking of 
cars. Every driver of a car has to register with the patrol. 
This includes teachers as well as students. Thus, any car im- 
properly parked is easily identified, and the driver notified. 
The registration of cars, likewise, helps to control their use. 

The Revue Committee puts on one strictly student-man- 
aged vaudeville a year. About two hundred students partici- 
pate. The Committee, which is sponsored by a teacher, holds 
tryouts, selects participants, and puts together a series of per- 
formances on two successive evenings. Some of the music is 
composed and played by a special orchestra under a student 
leader. The Revue is strictly a student enterprise, different 
from the senior play, musical concerts, and the annual 
opera, which are coached by teachers and do not train stu- 
dents so much in initiative and self-direction. 

Without the valuable assistance of an efficient Stage Force, 
the performance described above would be impossible. This 
group is composed of a class in stage construction, meeting 
once a day, and on occasions working late into the evening in 
the preparation of stage scenery and equipment. Under the 
leadership of an industrial arts teacher, this group becomes ex- 
pert over the period of four years of service which most of 
these students render. Each member of this highly organized 
group has his special duties, and together they study lighting 
effects, color schemes, the manipulation of stage equipment, 
and the building of appropriate settings. The varied training 
and experiences of these students have helped many of them 
in securing employment. Closely associated with this activity 
is the Make-wp Corps, whose services have relieved the school 
management of many annoyances. The make-up corps stud- 
ies the art of different kinds of facial expression. Long be- 
fore the opera or play is ready for presentation, they have been 
studying the characters. About two and a half hours before 
a performance, each member of the corps begins making up a 
definite number of participants. 

A very different type of service is rendered by members 








1938) A PHASE OF STUDENT GUIDANCE 31 


of the Honor Society. Aside from its usual activities and its 
yearly banquet, this group has taken charge of a study hall for 
early morning study. But perhaps its most signal contribu- 
tion is the tutoring of backward or weak students. Honor 
study groups, meeting in the lunchroom during three periods 
and in vacant rooms at other periods in order to relieve con- 
gested study halls, consist largely of these students. 

Recently sixty-five students of the lower classes have been 
organized as Library Assistants, relieving the librarian of 
much routine work and allowing her to devote herself to spe- 
cialized duties. They act chiefly as pages and desk assistants, 
and a few upperclassmen serve in an advisory capacity in 
close codperation with the advisory board, and deal with stu- 
dents in need of advice on the proper use of books and correct 
behavior in the library. 

The Advisory Board was mentioned in the preceding 
paragraph. This is a small group of carefully selected stu- 
dents and ex-officio members, dealing with certain minor in- 
fractions. The group seldom recommends discipline. A good 
heart-to-heart talk with the offender is usually enough to bring 
about the desired effect. To the advisory board are referred 
cases of disorder in assemblies, study halls, hallways, and on 
the school grounds. These cases are usually of the kind that 
arises out of thoughtlessness rather than from any premedi- 
tated breach of discipline. 

The Rough Riders constitute a service organization of 
thirty-five seniors. Each one must be approved by his instruc- 
tors as to fitness and must maintain at least average scholar- 
ship. Twenty are voted in by outgoing members, twelve are 
elected by new members, and three are appointed by the fac- 
ulty adviser. Their duties are to support all worthy school 
activities and to set a good example to fellow students in con- 
duct and citizenship. They manage crowds at games, speak 
in home rooms in support of good sportsmanship, form Hal- 
loween patrols, and keep down rowdyism on athletic fields. 
Their sweaters serve as a means of identifying them for any 
service or emergency needing attention. 

The Vocational Committee arranges for an annual con- 
ference, in which some sixty men and women in various occu- 
pations take part in discussing with students their vocational 
ambitions. Preparations for the conference are made long be- 
fore its occurrence by means of bulletins, which give general 
information. Later on, blanks are filled out, indicating stu- 
dents’ first and second choice of topics on which they wish to 





32 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


confer. Rooms are then assigned according to the size of each 
group. Speakers are chosen and contacted. 

The Social Service Committee provides students opportu- 
nity to cultivate social chivalry. At the Thanksgiving season 
every room selects and provides for a needy family. As car- 
ried out, this is more than an impersonal participation in a 
charity. The history of the condition and size of each of the 
families chosen is told to the students, although the identity 
of the unfortunates remains a secret except to the drivers of 
the delivery trucks. A member of the room furnishes the box, 
all make contributions of suggested food stuffs, several pack 
the box neatly, and others carry the box to a numbered spot in 
the lower hall for delivery. 

The Movie Club shows ten-minute reels in the auditorium 
during the three lunch periods at a one-cent admission fee. 
When the out-of-doors is not inviting, these ten-minute pic- 
tures clear the halls of crowds. Incidentally, by this means the 
club has equipped the school with the latest type of talking 
machine. On special occasions, educational films are shown to 
certain classes. 

The Social Science Committee provides voting machines 
for the major elections, and so furnishes practical civic experi- 
ence to students. At an expense of ten dollars for setting up two 
machines, students are given first-hand knowledge of their use. 

Space does not permit more than a mere mention of other 
organizations and committees. Girls take their duties even 
more seriously than do boys. Their special services as ushers 
and ticket sellers are indispensable. As clerks, chosen from of- 
fice-training classes, they type letters and bulletins, and dupli- 
cate lesson outlines for heads of departments and other teach- 
ers. Girls in charge of designing and the making and caring 
for costumes contribute color and attractiveness to many a 
school function. Costumes, originally made for evening per- 
formances, are used over and over again for assemblies, par- 
ties, teas, and dinners. Their storage and distribution are a 
significant lesson in orderly housekeeping. 

This brief discussion of student experience in activities 
closely approximating life situations covers a phase of guid- 
ance not often stressed in such programs. Character is a by- 
product of life experiences. Therefore, it appears to us that 
any school which finds ways of enlisting its students in pur- 
poseful activities of coéperative service takes a long step for- 
ward in character building and vitally supplements its guid- 
ance program. 





JUNIOR HIGH-SCHOOL ISSUES 


DEWITT S. MORGAN 
Superintendent Indianapolis Public Schools 


In discussing the subject of junior high-school issues, I 
take it for granted that I can assume two things,—first, that all 
of us are aware of the contribution which the junior high- 
school movement has made to education, that all of us here 
hold the junior high school, as an institution, in high esteem ; 
and second, that we all recognize that progress and develop- 
ment must begin with a constructively critical attitude towards 
the junior high school, a calm appraisal of its results as meas- 
ured against its aims, and always a wholesome discontent of 
things as they are. 

The junior high-school movement is now more than twen- 
ty-five years old. The movement grew out of a fine philosophy 
concerning the special educational needs of pupils of what we 
now term the junior high-school age. The movement was based 
on certain sound conclusions which sprang from the de- 
veloping science of education. After these twenty-five years 
of trial and error, years of attempt to make practice square 
with philosophy, years in which we did not expect too much 
of this growing movement, the junior high school now presents 
itself as a youth grown to maturity, and with this maturity it 
is compelled to face issues and responsibilities which fully de- 
veloped institutions, just as fully developed individuals, must 
solve if they are to serve and continue to live. 

In 1930, Leonard V. Koos in his National Survey of Sec- 
ondary Education set forth nine major features of the organi- 
zation of reorganized junior high schools. The features were 
as follows: 


1. Special flexibility for admission and promotion of pu- 
pils. 

Arrangement of instruction. 

Program of studies. 

Extra-curriculum program. 

Educational and vocational guidance. 

Special features for articulation. 

Specially trained teaching staff. 

Supervision of instruction. 

Special housing and equipment. 

In reporting on specific practices, following a study of five 
hundred and six junior high schools, the report is in many re- 
spects disappointing. Many schools had adopted only a lim- 
ited number of the varied adjustments which were urged by 


33 


$2 90 SIS Ot em GO PO 


oe 








34 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


the active proponents of the junior high-school movement. In 
the majority of junior and senior high schools the distinctive 
characteristic was much more in the field of an extra-curricu- 
lum program than in any other major feature of reorganiza- 
tion. Especially neglected has been the adoption of compre- 
hensive guidance programs. The development of the use of 
reliable measures of ability and achievement and the develop- 
ment of practical methods of providing within the school or- 
ganization for special needs of the brighter pupils seem, ac- 
cording to the report, to have received all too little attention. 
I now quote from the conclusion of the Koos survey: “It is 
obvious from the data secured in the investigation that the 
movement for reorganization still possesses abundant vitality. 
It is also obvious that the movement has touched somewhat 
superficially most of the schools which have professed to be 
affected by it.” But this is the most important sentence in the 
summary: “Reorganization still has far to go before it will 
have accomplished what has been expected of it, even among 
schools which are already reorganized.” Of course, five years 
or more have passed since this report was written, but it is 
quite safe to say that the situation has not materially changed 
in that period of time. It seems highly desirable, therefore, 
for all of us who are interested in the junior high-school move- 
ment and in the good things which can be contributed to edu- 
cation by furthering the junior high-school program to outline 
clearly to ourselves certain issues which the junior high school 
faces in the coming years. The mere fact that a school is or- 
ganized on a six-three basis, as against an eight-four basis, 
does not of itself constitute a reason for reorganization. The 
essential question which must be answered is whether the ad- 
vantages which are claimed for the reorganized school are real 
instead of imaginary. 

At the heart of the reason for the reorganized junior high 
schools rests the philosophy that there is a special educational 
need to be served at the junior high-school age. This special 
need is popularly recognized as the need for the discovery of 
abilities. It is assumed that in the first six years of the school 
emphasis is to be placed upon fundamental processes and that, 
with the emergence of the junior high-school age, the youth 
needs to widen horizons and to get before him a picture of the 
opportunities which lie ahead. If this is to be done, an attack 
needs to be made upon two fundamental questions: First,— 
How can the process of the discovery of individual abilities be 





1938 | JUNIOR HIGH-SCHOOL ISSUES 35 


made more effectual? Second,—Even if we should make the 
process of the discovery of individual abilities more effectual, 
what can we do about the development of abilities in connec- 
tion with the school program, once they are found? The prob- 
lem which faces the junior high-school program throughout the 
country is that its fundamental purposes are frustrated be- 
cause of the standardized program of the senior high school. 
To reorganize the educational program at the junior high- 
school level in such a way that its finest purposes are fulfilled 
but not to give the youth of a community any opportunity for 
the training of abilities which have been discovered leaves the 
entire educational program at a stalemate. The action which 
the junior high school must take, therefore, in order that its 
purposes may be fulfilled, is to point the way and to show the 
necessity for curriculum adaptation in the years following the 
junior high-school program. For no matter how effective may 
be the work of the junior high school at the junior high-school 
level, and even if all of the nine features which the Koos study 
has pointed out were emphasized and carried to fulfillment, yet 
the program would fail to be of service if the adjustment of the 
higher levels of education were not efficient. 


Someone may ask, “Why should those in the junior high 
school feel any responsibility for the modification of the senior 
high-school program?” or, “In what way could those in the jun- 
ior high school have any influence in modifying senior high- 
school procedures ?” Perhaps the answers to those questions lie 
in what has happened in the relationships between the senior 
high schools and the colleges. The reorganization of second- 
ary education in the senior high school and the modification 
of practices at the senior high-school level are, strange to say, 
having vital influence upon college reorganization, and, if it be 
that educational thought from the senior high-school level is 
modifying college procedure, then it is correct to assume that 
educational leadership at the junior high-school level will in 
time have its influence upon what is being done in the senior 
high school. 


The junior high-school movement is based upon a philos- 
ophy which needs to permeate every institution at a level 
higher than the junior high-school age, and those of the junior 
high school who believe in this philosophy can have an impor- 
tant part in molding thought on education which will make the 
senior high school and even the colleges agencies to carry on 
the good work begun at the junior high-school level. 














36 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


A second issue which faces the junior high-school move- 
ment is the necessity for keeping its primary virtue from be- 
coming an educational vice. Specifically I mean this: The 
program of exploration and discovery at the junior high-school 
level involves the adoption of a program of education which 
is extensive in its nature. This very process of extension may 
be at the expense of processes which should be intensive in the 
interest of the child. Even more specific is this question: In 
the case of the pupil who has arrived at the junior high-school 
age, but who has not yet made a reasonable achievement in the 
fundamental processes, should intensive programs in those 
processes be abandoned in the interest of widening horizons? 
Should we leave a job half-done in one area in order to dis- 
cover new fields of interest for the pupil? On this point one 
can easily discover pronounced differences of opinion, but we 
need to dwell upon this question in order that many of the ac- 
cusations of the superficiality of modern-day education may be 
answered and proved untrue. 

There are many pupils who arrive at the junior high- 
school age for whom the major need is not exploration, but, 
instead, a continuing intensive program of instruction. It is 
contradictory to a fundamental tenet of education for the jun- 
ior high school to say that every pupil who arrives at the 
junior high-school level should be given exploratory experi- 
ences merely because he has arrived at that age. Of great 
importance is the question of educational maturity. If the 
guidance program in the junior high school be such as to really 
discern individual differences, it is probable that certain stu- 
dents in the junior high-school population will be retained in 
processes which emphasize the further development of skills 
in fundamental areas of learning and that other students will 
probably be kept at a level which emphasizes reading, writing, 
and arithmetic instead of spending time in discovering their 
abilities. 

Undoubtedly the junior high school should soon appear to 
be an institution dealing with special needs. To be specific, 
some pupils should be kept through the seventh, eighth, and 
ninth years on procedures which emphasize drilling on funda- 
mentals that are not yet learned; others should be kept par- 
tially at these tasks but with a slight extension of exploratory 
experience; and still others, who have shown superior ability 
and who within the first six years have attained a great com- 
mand of fundamental processes, should be exposed to explora- 








1938] JUNIOR HIGH-SCHOOL ISSUES 37 


tory and extensive procedures, as these comprise their major 
need. 

If we could face this issue and recognize that the junior 
high schools must deal with pupils as they are and not put all 
of them through the processes of exploration, but keep those 
whose needs require it at the learning of the three R’s, then we 
would be solving one of the problems which at present greatly 
perplex us and which have brought to the public school the 
much warranted criticism that we are not doing our funda- 
mental tasks well. It is just as important for the junior high 
schools to develop abilities as it is for them to discover abili- 
ties. Upon the sane solution of this issue rests the question of 
whether the junior high-school movement is going to contrib- 
ute to a prudent program of education according to individual 
needs. 

A third issue the junior high school faces, and which is of 
utmost concern, is that of how to establish at the junior high- 
school age habits of workmanship and skill in the various fields 
which the pupils will enter after they have left school. To my 
mind, it is highly important that the junior high school empha- 
size thoroughness in everything which it does. I need not pre- 
sent the facts which prove the strategic importance of correct 
guidance at the junior high-school age. At no later period in a 
lifetime is a person so plastic, so open to suggestion, and so 
ready to adopt habits of work and thought as he is in his 
junior high-school years. A boy who learns how to play golf 
at the age of from twelve to fifteen will keep his form through- 
out a lifetime. A boy who learns to play baseball correctly at 
the age of from twelve to fifteen will always keep his style. 
It is very likely that the records in baseball will show that few 
men ever became good baseball players who started to play 
after twelve years of age. One who learns in these early years 
to swim with the proper stroke has a great advantage. I am 
using these simple illustrations to emphasize the fact that 
habits of study and learning at the junior high-school age are 
of the utmost importance. We hear very often from college 
teachers in the graduate schools to the effect that their stu- 
dents do not know how to study, and the under-graduate col- 
lege teachers, the high-school teachers, and the junior high- 
school teachers make the same criticism. The chances are that 
all of these teachers are right. If there be such a thing as a 
time when pupils should learn how to study, it is probably at 
the junior high-school age, and if these habits and modes of 


















38 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS ([February, 


work are not developed at that period, it is very liable that 
they will not emerge at a later time. What these habits and 
modes should be is a matter that calls for a fuller development 
than this discussion makes possible, but one habit of work is 
of especial concern to the junior high schools, and that is the 
habit of thoroughness. The reason this is of especial impor- 
tance is that the junior high school has launched a program 
which at times tends to make thoroughness seem inconsequen- 
tial. A program which endeavors to broaden a pupil’s inter- 
ests may do so at the expense of making him shallow. This the 
junior high school dare not do, for, if it does, all of its finer 
purposes will fail of achievement. 

These three issues the junior high-school movement faces 
at present: First, can it bring about from its program of guid- 
ance and the discovery of abilities a method whereby the road 
for individual opportunity can be opened at the senior high- 
school level? Second, can it work as thoroughly and as en- 
thusiastically upon the development of unmatured abilities as 
it works upon the finding of new abilities in its pupils? And, 
third, can it form a program of work that will establish 
habits of study and workmanship which will carry over into 
the later activities in which its pupils will be engaged? 

If these three issues can be faced squarely, and if the prob- 
lems which arise under them are solved, the junior high-school 
movement will have made its greatest contribution to educa- 


tion as a whole. 


SEND CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE BULLETIN 


The Bulletin is interested in receiving from the offices of 
principals and others connected with secondary schools ac- 
counts of outstanding activities and accomplishments in the 
field. Items about significant developments in schools such 
as curriculum revisions, group studies, experiments, new 
courses, unique activities, problems and methods of solution, 
are appropriate for the news section. Many individual schools 
are making important contributions to educational progress. 
If your school is one of these, you can secure the educational 
recognition which it deserves by sending an account to the 
Committee on Publications, Department of Secondary-School 
Principals, 5835 Kimbark Avenue, Chicago. 

























MAKING A GOOD, SMALL HIGH SCHOOL BETTER 


KNUTE 0. BROADY 


Professor of School Administration, University of Nebraska 


A small high school is, or, at least, may readily be made 
a good high school. Although the justification of this thesis is 
not my chief purpose in this article, I feel that the statement 
deserves supporting. 

First, if we look upon education as guidance, and hence 
consider it as being largely dependent upon a purposeful, per- 
sonal student-teacher relationship, a distinct advantage ac- 
crues to the school which has a small enrollment. The boys 
and girls in such a school may readily and very naturally be 
given individual guidance. The instructors can know each 
pupil intimately. They have contact with their pupils not in 
jus tone class for only one semester, but in several classes, year 
after year, and not in classwork alone, but in extra-curriculum 
and community activities as well. The teachers in large 
schools, on the other hand, and the regular counselors as weil, 
find that elaborate and carefully planned machinery is neces- 
sary if important individual data are to be obtained and uti- 
lized wisely, and, even then, their guidance may lack the reality 
that comes with personal acquaintance. 

A second and related major advantage of the small high 
school is the closeness of contact that the school may readily 
maintain with the home of each of its pupils and with the com- 
munity as a whole. A school can never perform its functions 
with maximum efficiency unless its efforts are closely corre- 
lated with those of the home. The chief advantages that come 
from a close association of the school with the community as a 
whcle are the following: 

1. A pupil finds it difficult to get a true grasp of the sig- 
nificance and nature of community life unless in his 
thinking he can encompass the community as a whole, 
unless all of its machinery can be laid out for him to 
see and understand. Such a grasp must be obtained 
if understanding citizenship is to be developed. The 


child in the large city school can scarcely visualize or 

understand the municipality of which he is a member 
citizen. 

2. Educators are coming to realize that, if education is to 

have vitality and significance, laymen as well as teach- 

cf ers must contribute to the education provided within 

the school, and the community must furnish outside 

the walls of the school many of the experiences that 

contribute to the development of citizenship and voca- 

tional skill. The joining of the school with the rest of 


39 




















[Februcry, 





DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 


the community in providing suitable educational expe- 

riences can be accomplished much more readily where 

the organizations are small and closely knit, and where 
the school stands out as perhaps the central point of 
interest. 

3. The pupils themselves can contribute naturally and 
effectively to the betterment of small communities. If 
they have been contributors as adolescents, they are 
pretty sure to be contributors as adults. 

A third advantage of small schools is that the pupils in 
these schools associate daily with boys and girls from kinder- 
garten through high school. This is coming to be looked upon 
as a more nearly normal situation than that which prevails 
where there is a sharp segregation of age groups. Even in 
cities the community school of six and sometimes twelve grades 
is coming to be looked upon as a distinct advantage. 

I might go on to discuss other points of superiority pos- 
sessed by small high schools; namely, the opportunity for each 
pupil to participate richly in extra-curriculum activities, or 
the chance for pupils’ interests in the affairs of the whole 
school to develop unimpeded by cliques and class consciousness. 
However, enough has been said to indicate why the small high 
school is or may be a good high school. The important problem 
is how to make this good, small high school better. 

To get maximum value from smaller high schools, the ad- 
ministrators must cease looking uncritically to large schools 
for guidance in administrative and instructional practices. 
Techniques developed for city schools are often not at all suit- 
able for small schools. Administrators of small schools must, 
for example, solve their problem of vocational training in 
terms of conditions that prevail in their own schools and com- 
munities, and that is what they are not doing to-day. There 
is a demand for almost as great a diversification of vocational 
training in the small school, over a period of years at least, as 
there is in the large school. Yet small schools generally provide 
vocational preparation in only one, two, or three fields. The 
boards of education and the superintendents of these schools 
are thus handicapping their pupils by restricting their choices 
because they have continued to believe that vocational training 
can only be given in those fields for which teacher-specialists 
and the best-equipped plant facilities are available. This is not 
sound reasoning. For training in most of the vocations the 
small school should not plan to have its own teacher-special- 
ists. The teacher-specialists should be located in some cen- 
tralized place, perhaps at the state university. Training in the 








1938] MAKING A Goop, SMALL HIGH SCHOOL BETTER 41 


related work should be given by correspondence in the school 
itself, and practice in the vocation should be provided outside 
the school under the direction of some employer in the com- 
munity. , 

Under this plan the principal duties of the school are cen- 
tered in a codrdinator rather than distributed among a group 
of instructors who are specialists in the various vocational 
fields. Through the provisions of the George-Deen Act, the 
salary of the coérdinator may by proper arrangement be paid 
in large part from state and federal funds. The needs of the 
small school are specifically recognized under this new law. 

The small high school cannot evade much longer its re- 
sponsibility for a broad program of vocational training. Edu- 
cation, carried on both in the school and in the community, has 
much to recommend it aside from the practical necessity of a 
plan of training to fit young people more definitely to take up 
some useful occupation. Reality is given to the school’s educa- 
tional program when the pupil has to try out his theory on the 
job. Such education is valuable also because it lengthens the 
period of schooling by approximately two years for the pupil 
who does not plan to go on to college; thus he is not thrown on 
the labor market while still an adolescent. 

The necessity for developing techniques that take into ac- 
count the particular needs of small schools applies not only in 
vocational training but also in the planning of the whole in- 
structional program. There is no reason why the small school 
should be handicapped by a form of class organization which 
limits a teacher to the instruction of a single class group dur- 
ing a given period. So long as this is done, the only way to 
make a greater number of subjects available is to employ more 
teachers. Increasing the number of teachers results, of course, 
in a smaller enrollment for each teacher and a higher per pupil 
cost; a situation which small schools are attempting to 
avoid. Finding themselves unable to completely solve this 
problem, they may seek to dispose of the matter by reducing 
the salaries of the teachers they employ. What is needed is a 
ratio of pupils per teacher that reasonably approximates the 
ratio maintained in city schools. If such a ratio is achieved, 
it -will be possible for small schools to pay respectable salaries. 
The ratio desired should be secured, however, not by reducing 
the number of subjects available, but by combining classes or 
by utilizing supervised correspondence study, either of which 
vrocedures is possible with subject matter that is largely indi- 
vidualized and self-administering. Under the plan of the com- 





42 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


bination of classes, two or more distinct class groups may be 
placed under one teacher during a given period; each group of 
pupils working on its own subject during the full period. The 
teacher may help the members of each group as individuals or 
may call them together into small groups for instruction and 
discussion. A large proportion of the children who enter our 
small high schools have gone to elementary schools in which 
there were two or more grades in a room. This has accus- 
tomed them to studying while others recite. Where the de- 
mand for a subject is very small, supervised correspondence 
study, alrcadv referred to as an aid in vocational education. 
may be used in making that subject available. Individualized 
self-administering materials also simplify the problem of pro- 
viding for individual differences within class groups. As soon 
as the practice of individualizing subject matter and then com- 
bining classes or utilizing supervised correspondence study be- 
comes common, it will be possible to solve the problem of pupil- 
teacher ratios without sacrificing pupil needs. 


In the third place, small high schools need to make their 
guidance programs really effective. As has already been 
pointed out, small schools have the advantage of a relatively 
small enrollment, made up of pupils with whom the teachers 
have been acquainted from the time these boys and girls en- 
tered the first grade, and yet teachers and administrators in 
many schools know less about their pupils than do members of 
the instructional personnel in city high schools of a thousand 
or more pupils. Teachers and administrators in small schools 
have not yet taken the trouble to systematize their program of 
fact collecting, fact recording, and fact interpreting. Of 
course, if the guidance function is to be complete in scope, the 
pupil must know of the opportunities that lie before him. The 
school must provide a way, also, by which the pupil may 
achieve his legitimate ambitions. If there is an adequate cur- 
riculum, together with a group of teachers who really com- 
prehend the essential nature of guidance and realize that teach- 
ing itself is guidance, the machinery for the whole program 
will be found to be simple and effective. 


Also, there should be set up a type of faculty organization 
and a supervisory program which will economically achieve 
growth in service for teachers under the conditions that pre- 
vail in a school. Here, too must be abandoned the attempt 
to obtain the goal by the imitation of city schools. Many super- 
intendents in small schools say that they have no time for su- 





1938] MAKING A Goop, SMALL HIGH SCHOOL BETTER 48 


pervision. Supervision that is really effective grows out of a 
personal working relationship between the supervisor and the 
teacher. A moment’s figuring will show that the principal in 
the large high school, who has sixty teachers to supervise and 
three hours to give to that part of his work, is able to devote 
on the average of only three minutes a day to each teacher. 
The superintendent, on the other hand, who has ten teachers 
in the high school and grades combined and one hour for su- 
pervision, has twice as much time for each teacheri Three 
hours represent rather a high estimate for the amount of time 
the administrator in the large school has for supervision, and 
one hour represents probably a correspondingly low estimate 
for the small school. The administrator of the smal! school, 
therefore, has a greater amount of time available for each 
teacher, to be used in bringing about her growth in service. 
Now, if this time is spent in using the group techniques which 
the administrator in the large school must of necessity employ, 
the small school administrator is handicapped. If, however, 
the individual approach is employed, growth in service is per- 


haps more readily achieved in the small school than in the large 
school. There is the opportunity in the small school, also, for 
the establishment of a highly effective democratic relationship. 
The superintendent and the teachers can plan together, and 
there is that frequent contact which prevents misunderstand- 
ings from arising. The administrator of the small high school 
need not, therefore, be handicapped in his supervisory pro- 


gram. 


I have not pretended to enumerate and discuss all the ad- 
vantages of the small high school, nor have I attempted to deal 
with all the tasks faced in the improvement of small high 
schools. The sum and substance of what I have said really 
amounts to this: We must not look to large secondary schools 
for the techniques by which our work may be done efficiently. 
Their problems, their opportunities, and certainly the admin- 
istrative and instructional procedures they use are and must 
be different from ours. We must set out as an intelligent, for- 
ward-looking group of men and women to solve our problems 
in the small secondary schools in our own way and in the light 
of our own needs. 





MAKING YOUR COMMENCEMENT PLANS 


LYLE W. ASHBY 


Assistant Director, Division of Publications, National Education Association 


For several years the National Education Association has 
been encouraging schools to develop a new type of commence- 
ment program. These so-called vitalized commencements are 
built around the idea that the program should grow out of the 
work of the school, should be given primarily by the students 
who are finishing their courses, and should give the citizens of 
the community an insight into the life and activities of the 
school. ' 

In recent years there has been a fundamental change in 
the nature of commencements, especially in the smaller secon- 
dary schools. The planning of a program no longer consists 
merely of a principal’s scratching his head and writing a letter 
to some speaker, asking him to present an address. In most 
schools, programs are planned far in advance of the end of the 
term of school and serve as a fitting climax to the activities for 
the year. 

There are many types of vitalized programs which have 
been found satisfactory. Schools from all parts of the country 
have reported that the vitalized or student participation pro- 
gram has served an important purpose in their schools by mak- 
ing the occasion more generally significant, not only for the 
graduates, but for the parents and the community in general. 
This type of program does not preclude the use of outside 
speakers or any of the other activities which may have become 
traditional within a school. 

Frequently it is feasible to develop a program which will 
utilize an outside speaker in conjunction with student partici- 
pation. For example, the 1937 program at the Cornwall, New 
York, High School was built around the idea of a community 
center. For this program an outside speaker with experience 
in the establishment of a community center in a nearby city 
was secured. His address was followed by a panel discussion 
by members of the class. 

There is perhaps no better way to indicate some of the 
kinds of commencement programs which have been developed 
in recent years than to summarize briefly the programs of a 
few schools which were presented in 1937. 

History of Education in Community—The graduating 
class of the Caledonia, Michigan, High School, gave dramatic 


44 





1938 | MAKING YOUR COMMENCEMENT PLANS 45 


sketches of historical significance in the development of edu- 
cation in Caledonia. The theme of the program was timely, 
since this class was the first one to graduate from the new 
building, which was completed in 1936. 


Two seniors—one dressed as a grandmother and the other, 
known as Mary—representing a member of the class of 1937 
on the night of graduation—provided the conversation which 
linked together the series of episodes. Three places in the 
auditorium were devoted to the presentation of the program. 
The stage served as the most common location in presenting 
the episodes. A raised platform in front and at one side of 
the stage held the grandmother and Mary throughout the pro- 
gram. Directly above this platform was fixed a screen, on 
which stereopticon pictures were projected. The episodes were 
as follows: The Caledonia School of 1864; The Kalamazoo 
Case; A Discussion of 1873; The Class of 1895; Some Former 
Classes ; Students in 1921; and The School of 1937. The con- 
cluding episode, The School of 1937, consisted of a moving 
spotlight, shifting from one group to another as students were 
discovered engaged in classroom activities—home economics, 
shop, commerce, geometry, chorus, chemistry, and animal hus- 
bandry. These offerings were made possible by the recent con- 
solidation of districts and the erection of a new building. 


Slides of School Building and Departments—The com- 
mencement program of the Olmsted Falls, Ohio, High School, 
was planned by the seniors with the aid of the faculty ad- 
viser. Pictures of the school building, the grounds, the buses, 
and the outstanding departments of the school were taken, de- 
veloped, and made into slides by a local photographer for a 
very small fee. Everyone in the class had some part in the pro- 
gram. As each slide was shown, it was explained by a class 
member. This was done behind scenes by means of an ampli- 
fying set. The following slides were shown: The Building; 
The Athletic Field; School Buses, High-School Faculty ; Senior 
Class; Commercial Department; Science Laboratory; Senior 
Play; Girls’ Athletics; Boys’ Athletics; and Industrial Arts. 
Following the showing of this picture, eight seniors with their 
teacher as chairman presented a panel discussion. This had 
been developed before to some extent in the social science class. 
The subject was Industrial Unions versus Craft Unions. 

Musical Program—America’s Musical Heritage was the 
title of the 1937 commencement program of the Muhlenberg 
Township High School, Laureldale, Pennsylvania. The epi- 














46 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


sodes were: Indian Music—this consisted of an old Indian 
legend which showed the importance of music to the Indian in 
worship and in social life; Pilgrim Music—this showed the re- 
ligious influence of the Pilgrim, Pilgrim music being the first 
music introduced in America by the white man; Negro Music— 
this represented a Southern plantation, showing the gay, light- 
heartedness of the social songs and dances of the Negro; and 
Finale—in this episode a typical student, in his endeavor to 
create a truly American song, questioned an old composer. 
After hearing the contributions of many nations, the student 
hit upon one great melody which unites all qualities into one 
great call to freedom. 


A Day at Jefferson Junior High School—With a desire to 
emphasize an important problem in the nation as well as their 
community, a forum taking up the subject, Safety on Streets 
and Highways, was planned and given by Murphy High 
School, Mobile, Alabama. The members of the panel were 
chosen by the popular vote of their classmates after having 
been recommended as candidates by their teachers. After their 
election, the ten members met many times with their sponsor 
to discuss the topic. Some of the questions asked by the leader 
of the discussion were: Are our streets and highways as safe 
as we should expect them to be? What are the major causes 
of accidents? Is weather a cause of accident? What are the 
results of the lack of safety? Some communities have tried 
education, some have used legislation ; which is the best method 
of controlling traffic deaths? What do you think our Alma 
Mater should do in connection with this major problem? At 
what age do you think a person should learn to drive? We 
educate the students in the school, but what is the responsi- 
bility of those citizens out of school? What is the relation of 
community practice to the teaching of safety in our school? 

The Division of Publications of the National Education 
Association issues each year a commencement packet, which is 
distributed at the cost price of fifty cents. The 1938 packet 
(now available, the National Education Association, 1201 
Sixteenth street, N. W., Washington, D. C.) contains sum- 
maries of a large number of programs from the 1937 gradu- 
ation season. Each year these packets suggest a theme of na- 
tional interest, around which schools may develop their pro- 
grams. Last year the Horace Mann Centennial was the theme 


suggested. 












i i i | | 6 | 6 


ba ce ed 


CHANGES IN THE HIGH-SCHOOL PROGRAM 


ALEXANDER J. STODDARD 


Superintendent of Schools, Denver, Colorado, and Chairman, Educational Policies 
Commission of the National Education Association 

Three very significant developments have taken place in 
the high schools of the United States within the last twenty 
years. First, the proportion of boys and girls of high-school 
age enrolled has increased from one in seven in 1910 until to- 
day approximately two out of every three are in school. This 
great upward movement in the average age at which children 
leave school has caused or been accompanied by two other very 
important changes in the high schools. Second, the number, 
type, and variety of courses of study have been expanded far 
beyond the college-preparatory work of the past; and, third, 
the high school is coming to be regarded as an institution de- 
signed to serve the educational needs of a period of life of all 
young people, rather than a cumulative step in the educational 
ladder for a selected few of this group. 

It is logical to assume that further discoveries in science 
will result increasingly in keener competition for labor, with 
the elimination of employment for those below the adult period 
of life. Advancing social attitudes against child labor will pro- 
duce legislation barring youth from gainful employment. As 
society becomes more and more complex and the duties of citi- 
zenship become more involved, the period of training of the 
individual must be lengthened. In fact, there is much evidence 
to warrant the growing belief on the part of many educators 
that the compulsory school age will soon be raised, possibly to 
twenty-one, in the next decade or two. Any tendency in this 
direction will necessitate a further expansion of the curriculum 
to meet a more definite extension of the range of individual 
ability. 

Greater adjustments to individual capacities for learning 
will be necessary, and the formality of the present program 
must be modified to meet individual needs. No one can predict 
accurately the extent or the direction of these curriculum ten- 
dencies. However, it is very probable that the courses will 
range in difficulty from the development of simple skills and 
fundamental attitudes that are concerned directly with the 
business of living to the academic college-preparatory work of 
the past. Careful research will be required to discover the 
variety of needs that these young people will have in the types 
of life they will represent. The problem of the mentally 


47 




















48 "DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


under-privileged must be met, and it is probable that the fill- 
ing of those needs will force more attention to another neg- 
lected portion of the school population, the mentally gifted. 

It is likely that the high school of the future will be more 
closely connected with the life of the community. Somehow, 
the young people under twenty-one years of age must be more 
definitely prepared for the duties of citizenship which they are 
to assume later. During their period of school training, ways 
must be found in which they can participate more definitely in 
the life of their community, both from a social and a civic 
standpoint. There is no legitimate reason for delaying all op- 
portunities for social and civic responsibilities until the age of 
twenty-one has been reached, and then expect the young man 
or young woman to suddenly assume those obligations and dis- 
charge them with credit. Many young persons of high-school 
age are just as capable of carrying on certain types of com- 
munity service as are adults. It is only common sense to fur- 
nish this training under the leadership of the schools rather 
than to leave it to chance, as is often the practice at present. 

The high school of the future will include a greater em- 
phasis on those phases of education that are directly related to 
the pursuit of happiness, such as art, music, dramatics, and 
the many other forms of.participation and appreciation that 
contribute to the abundant life. Specific vocational training 
may constitute an important part of the program for certain 
types of individuals, but it is very likely that occupational 
civics and vocational guidance, based upon a broad knowledge 
of industrial and professional activities, will constitute the 
program for the majority. 

This enlarged program of service will necessitate a more 
extensive use of the high-school plant and will probably lead to 
a lengthening of the high-school course. The present high- 
school period of three or four years is historic rather than logi- 
cal in origin. The high-schol student of the future will at- 
tend school long enough for him to receive the preparation 
needed in his individual case. Most of the students will prob- 
ably attend until twenty-one years of age. Such a period of 
training could be defended more easily than the arbitrary 
limit that prevails at the present time. In other words, the 
high school of the future will include that type and range of 
training necessary to prepare its students for adequate partici- 
pation in the duties of citizenship, and, at the same time, it will 
provide an enriched opportunity for living during those years 
immediately preceding adult life. 


























PROGRESS OF DISCUSSION GROUPS 


WALTER E. MYER 
Director National Discussion Group Project 


Progress is being made in practically every phase of the 
work of forming discussion groups among secondary-school 
administrators. State codrdinators have been appointed for 
forty-one states, and regional directors are organizing princi- 
pals in local areas of a size suitable for holding periodical 
meetings. In most states, this year, the Issues of Secondary 
Education and the Functions of Secondary Education are be- 
ing used as a basis for discussion. The outline, Problems of 
Secondary Education, serves as a guide for concrete discussion 
of these reports and is furnished groups without charge by the 
Discussion Group Project of the Department of Secondary- 
School Principals of the National Education Association 
through its Washington office. 


The form of organization varies in the different states. 
In several cases the local groups are giving consideration to 
problems of particular concern in those states. In Mississippi, 
for example, a state-wide study of the curriculum is in prog- 
ress. Groups of principals and teachers are meeting in each 
county. Those in charge of the program came to the conclu- 
sion that the outline, Problems of Secondary Education, cov- 
ered the problems dealt with in the curriculum program. In 
order, therefore, to facilitate the discussion of the curriculum, 
a copy of Problems of Secondary Education was placed in the 
hands of every high-school teacher and administrator in the 
state, and the topics outlined in it were used as a basis for con- 
crete discussion. A similar use of Problems of Secondary Edu- 
cation is being made in Georgia. Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, and 
Missouri are other states where the Discussion Group Project 
has met with marked success. 


In Pennsylvania, where discussion groups have been func- 
tioning for years, there is a strong state organization of sec- 
dary-school principals with a definite program. Each year, its 
executive committee outlines problems for the consideration 
of local groups. The Discussion Group Project is codperating 
with the Pennsylvania Association. The outline, Problems of 
Secondary Education, is being used extensively in Pennsyl- 
vania, but its chief use is in high-school faculties rather than 
in discussion groups composed of administrators. 


Several hundred high schools are using Problems of Sec- 
andary Education as a basis of professional discussion for 
members of the faculties. A typical experience is that of Red 
Cloud, Nebraska, from which comes the following report: “Our 
teachers were unanimous in desiring such discussion. We feel 
already, after two meetings, that the plan has contributed ma- 


49 












50 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


terially to a better understanding of each other and of each 
other’s departments. As one teacher expressed it, ‘We are 
prone to center our professional reading in our own special 
fields and lose sight of the general problems of secondary edu- 
cation. We have gained a broader outlook.’ 


“We meet once a month in a round-table discussion, taking 
one function as the topic for study at each meeting. The teach- 
ers, two at a time, lead in the discussion, but all enter heartily 
into it. Even though the time of meeting comes at five o’clock, 
after a heavy day’s teaching schedule, all our teachers say they 
enjoy the project. At each meeting, every teacher gives a brief 
report on what he has done in his own department in connec- 
tion with the discussion of the previous meeting. For example, 
at our second meeting, each teacher reported some definite 
thing he had done to help develop correct attitudes and ideals 
in his pupils. At our next meeting, each one will report how 
he is meeting one immediate need of his pupils that should 
carry over into a probable future need.” 


A Fort Worth, Texas, principal, having in mind both the 
discussion group activities of principals and the professional 
meetings in high-school faculties, based on Problems of Secon- 
dary Education, says, “I cannot remember any other move- 
ment that has so sanely sought to make available and actually 
to implement the result of the work of one of our Depart- 
ment’s committees. Toooften we have heard research reports 
and then buried them.” 


In Omaha, Nebraska, the discussion group idea has been 
carried to the students themselves, and with apparent success. 
A high-school principal of that city says: “For the past several 
years, I have interested myself very greatly in the problem of 
bringing about student discussions on the general theme of 
democracy. About three years ago, I began to set up discus- 
sion groups among students of the several high schools in this 
region. Of course, the larger number of the conferences have 
been held here in our own high school In addition to these, 
I have participated in other conferences, set up by principals or 
leaders in the University of Omaha. It is my own conception 
that we might yain the attention of the public much more 
readily if we would place our discussions on a_ broader 
basis. We should get a great many different groups to discuss 
such questions as: What do we mean by democracy? What 
are the goals, standards, ideals, and fundamental purposes of 
our democratic society? How are we going to conserve and 
build more adequately the great values in our present civiliza- 
tion? If we can get such questions discussed, we will soon un- 
derstand that our ideals can be realized only as we can build a 
more fundamental and definite educationa) background.” 





~~ AS rH ew 14 4 mee 


THE SCHOLARSHIP LOAN FUND 


At the annual meeting held at New Orleans in February, 
1937, the Executive Committee of the Department authorized 
the National Council of the National Honor Society to estab- 
lish the Revolving Scholarship Loan Fund. This fund pro- 
vides some forty scholarships of two hundred dollars each to 
aid worthy members of the Society during the scholastic year, 
1937-38. These loans are available to members in the upper 
three years of colleges and universities. Preference is given 
to juniors and seniors, although the awards are made cn the 
basis of the level of scholarship maintained and the financial 
assistance required. No loan of less than fifty dollars or more 
than two hundred dollars will be made in any one year. 


In order that there may be an equitable distribution of 
these forty scholarship loans, the United States has been di- 
vided into eight districts. Each of these has about two hun- 
dred and fifty chapters of the National Honor Society. Each 
district has a chairman who receives and passes upon the 
applications of candidates for loans. 


After the applications have been received by the District 
Chairman, they are sent to the National Committee of Three, 
who gives the papers an additional examination and makes the’ 
final choice of loanees. The National Committeemen are: E. R. 
Crow, Principal of High School, Columbia, South Carolina; 
E. C. Wixon, Principal of South High School, Cleveland, Ohio; 
and S. E. Nelson, Principal of Central High School, Chatta- 
nooga, Tennessee. 

It is suggested that each chapter scan its list of members 
who are now in institutions of higher learning. If any member, 
now a student in a higher institution, may desire the assist- 
ance provided by this loan fund, please advise him to commu- 
nicate with the Secretary of the National Honor Society, H. V. 
Church, 5835 Kimbark Avenue, Chicago. 

Behind the plan for the Revolving Scholarship Loan Fund 
is the hope that every chapter of the National Honor Society 
will each year assist at least one member to complete his first 
year at a college or university. It is the expectation of the 
National Council that as this fund grows, as more scholar- 
ship loans are made, and as more chapters establish financial 
aid for their members, high scholarship will be encouraged in 
the secondary schools of this country. 


51 











FEBRUARY (1938) CONVENTION 
DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 


February 26-March 2, 1938 
at 
Atlantic City, New Jersey 


Headquarters: HOTEL TRAYMORE 
Saturday, February 26, 6:00 P. M. 
DINNER 

In honor of Dr. Charles H. Judd 
(Send reservations and remittance—$2.00 a plate—to Prin. 
Henry P. Miller, High School, Atlantic City, New Jersey, or to 
H. V. Church, 5835 Kimbark Avenue, Chicago. Reservations 

sent or made after February 24 are $2.25 a plate.) 


FIRST GENERAL SESSION 


Presiding: M. F. McDaniel, President, National Council of the 
National Honor Society, Past President of the Depart- 
ment, and Principal of Oak Park and River Forest Town- 
ship High School, Oak Park, Illinois. 

ADDRESS, What Secondary Education Should Not Be. 
President Robert Maynard Hutchins, University of Chi- 

cago. 

ADDRESS, Specialization, the Bane of Secondary Education. 
Consultant of Department, Charles Hubbard Judd, Chair- 

man of Department of Education, University of Chi- 
cago. 


SECOND GENERAL SESSION 


Monday, February 28, 2:00 P. M. 
Hotel Traymore, Submarine Grill 
High-School Program 
Presiding: Paul E. Elicker, Principal, Newton High School, 
Newtonville, Massachusetts, Chairman, Atlantic Zone Vis- 
iting Committee, and First Vice President, Department of 
Secondary-School Principals. 
THEME—The Influence on Secondary Schools of the Codper- 
ative Study of Secondary-School Standards. 
As a School Visiting Committeeman Sees It 
Frank C. Jenkins, Chairman, Visiting Committee, and 
Coérdinator, Southern Association Secondary-School 
Study, Nashville, Tennessee. 
As a School Principal Sees It 
Byron J. Rivett, Principal, Northwestern High School, 
Detroit, Michigan. 















1938) FEBRUARY (1938) CONVENTION 








As the Coérdinator of the Study Sees It 
Walter C. Eells, Coérdinator, Codperative Study of Sec- 
ondary-School Standards, Washington, D. C. 


Monday, February 28, 2:00 P. M. 
Hotel Traymore, Mandarin Room 
Junior-College Program 
Presiding: John E. Wellwood, Principal, Central High School, 
Flint, Michigan, and member of Executive Committee of 
the Department of Secondary-School Principals. 
Innovations in the Secondary Curriculum, with Implica- 
tions for Junior College 
Dr. Kenneth L. Heaton, Director, Coéperative Bureau 
of Educational Research, Lansing, Michigan. 
A Panel Discussoin based upon Dr. Heaton’s Address 
William S. Shattuck, Chairman, and Dean of the Junior 
College, Flint, Michigan. 
W. H. Conley, Dean of Wright Junior College, Chicago, 
Illinois. 
Mark Ellingson, President of Mechanics Institute, 
Rochester, New York. 
Alvin C. Eurich, Professor of Education, Northwestern 
University, Evanston, Illinois. 
W. W. Kemmerer, University of Houston, Houston, 
Texas. 
George H. Meridith, Deputy Superintendent of Schools, 
Pasadena, California. 


THIRD GENERAL SESSION 
Tuesday, March 1, 2:00 P. M. 
Hotel Traymore, Submarine Grill 
Senior High School 
Presiding: M. G. Jones, Principal, Huntington Beach Union 
High School, Huntington Beach, California, and Presi- 
dent, Department of Secondary-School Principals. 
THEME—The Discussion Group Project of the Department of 
Secondary-School Principals. 
The Discussion Group Project in Action 
Walter E. Myer, Director, Discussion Group Project, 
Washington, D. C. 
Reports from State Coérdinators: 
John C. Huden, Vermont. 
Ernest B. Comstock, Texas. 
Oscar Granger, Pennsylvania. 
Elmer H. Garinger, North Carolina. 
- M.L. Knapp, Indiana. 
A Community Discussion Project 
Lloyd M. Morrissett, Yonkers, New York. 
Professional Discussion in the High-School Faculty 
F. H. Norris, Richmond, Virginia. 
The Place of the College in the Discussion-Group Program. 
George Baxter Smith, University of Buffalo, New York. 




















DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 












Tuesday, March 1, 2:00 P. M. 
Hotel Traymore, Mandarin Room 
Junior High School 
Presiding: Virgil M. Hardin, Principal, Pipkin and Reed Jun- 
ior High School, Springfield, Missouri, and member of 
Executive Committee of the Department of Secondary- 
School Principals. 
Curriculum Innovations on the Junior High-School Level 
Harold B. Brooks, Principal, Washington Junior High 
School, Long Beach, California. 
L. E. Vredevoogd, Principal, Tappan Junior High 
School, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 
R. D. Lindquist, Principal, University High School, 
Columbus, Ohio. 
Charles F. Allen, Supervisor of Secondary Education, 
Little Rock, Arkansas. 
























FOURTH GENERAL SESSION 
Wednesday, March 2, 12:00 Noon 
Hotel Traymore, Rose Room 
LUNCHEON: Rose Room 
Presiding: Willard N. Van Slyck, Principal, High School, To- 
peka, Kansas, and member of Executive Committee of the 
Department of Secondary-School Principals. 
Brief Report dealing with the National Association of 
Student Officers . 
Dr. Willis A. Sutton, Superintendent of Public Schools, 
Atlanta, Georgia.. 
Brief reports by Committee Chairmen 
Business Session 
Report of Nominating Committee 
Election of Officers 





















FIFTH GENERAL SESSION 
Wednesday, March 2, 2:30 P. M. 


Presiding: K. J. Clark, Principal, Murphy High School, Mo- 
bile, Alabama, and member of Executive Committee of the 
Department of Secondary-School Principals. 

THEME—Tendencies in Secondary Education. 

Reports on significant findings to date in state and na- 
tional studies: 
School and College Relations in Pennsylvania 
T. Bayard Beatty, Principal, Radnor High School, 
Wayne, Pennsylvania, and President of Pennsylvania 
High-School Principals Association. 
Improvement of Instruction Program in Kansas 
Miss Dale Zeller, Curriculum Director, State Depart- 
ment of Education, Topeka, Kansas. 


















1938] FEBRUARY (19388) CONVENTION 


Codperating Schools in State of California 
Dr. F. C. Wooton, Department of Education, Claremont 
Colleges, Claremont, California. 
Secondary-School Curriculum Study in Michigan 
Robert Koopman, Coérdinator of Curriculum and In- 
struction, State Department of Public Instruction, 
Lansing, Michigan. 
Evaluation in the Eight-Year Study of the Progressive 
Education Association 
Dr. R. W. Tyler, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. 


SPECIAL GROUP MEETINGS 

Saturday, February 26, 9:30 A. M., Hotel Traymore—Execu- 
tive Committee; Fountain Room, Balcony, Brighton Side. 

Saturday, February 26, 12:00 Noon, Hotel Traymore—Na- 
tional Council of the National Honor Society; President, 
M. R. McDaniel. 

Saturday, February 26, 2:30 P. M., Hotel Traymore—Joint 
Meeting of Executive Committee and Planning Commit- 
tee; Fountain Room, Balcony, Brighton Side. 

Sunday, February 27, 10:00 A. M., Hotel Traymore—Execu- 
tive Committee; Radio Room. 

Sunday, February 27, 10:00 A. M., Hotel Traymore—Commit- 
tee on Student Activities; Chairman, Edgar G. Johnston; 
Fountain Room, Balcony, Brighton Side. 

Sunday, February 27, 12:00 Noon, Hotel Traymore—Commit- 
tee on New York City Convention; Chairman, Joseph Roe- 
mer; Club Room. 

Sunday, February 27, 2:30 P. M., Hotel Traymore—Commit- 
tee on Planning; Chairman, F. L. Bacon; Fountain Room, 
Balcony, Brighton Side. 

Sunday, February 27, 7:15 P. M., Hotel Traymore—Joint Meet- 
ing of Executive Committee and Planning Committee; 
Fountain Room, Balcony, Brighton Side. 

Monday, February 28, 12:00 Noon, Hotel Traymore—Commit- 
tee on Publications; Chairman, W. C. Reavis; Fountain 
Room, Balcony, Brighton Side. 

Monday, February 28, 5:00 P. M., Hotel Traymore—Nominat- 
ing Committee; Fountain Room, Balcony, Brighton Side. 

Monday, February 28, 5:00 P. M., Hotel Traymore—Execu- 
tive Committee; Fountain Room, Balcony, Illinois Avenue 
Side. 

Tuesday, March 1, 8:00 A. M., Hotel Traymore—Presidents 
and Secretaries of State Associations of High-School Prin- 
cipals; Belvedere Room. 

Tuesday, March 1, 12:00 Noon, Hotel Traymore—National 
Council of the National Honor Society; President, M. R. 
McDaniel; Mandarin Room. 

Wednesday, March 2, 8:00 A. M., Hotel Traymore—Chairmen 
of the National Honor Society Revolving Scholarship Loan 
Fund; Mandarin Room. 

















NEWS ITEMS 


THE THINKING OF ADMINISTRATORS on problems of secondary educa- 
tion can be detected from the nature of topics discussed at conventions 
during the current school year. The writer has collected and examined 
the most recent programs of state associations of secondary-school 
principals and also sectional meetings of secondary principals held in 
connection with state education associations. These programs show a 
decided emphasis on certain topics. Much discussion has centered around 
the idea of needed changes in the programs of secondary schools to adapt 
them better to the needs of modern youth. The various phases of social 
studies and guidance have received much consideration. Another promi- 
nent topic has dealt with innovations with which high cshools have ex- 

rimented. Most of these innovations seem to be concerned with prob- 
ems in the teaching of practical citizenship—how to stimulate the cre- 
ative impulses of students, and how to give students more opportunity for 
self-expression. The teaching of courses on social living, consumer edu- 
cation, conservation, and safety; methods of improving the junior high- 
school library; visual education; and the extension of vocational educa- 
tion, especially in agriculture and home economics, are other topics 


which stand out. 

THE SPRINGFIELD (MissourI) Public Schools, under the leadership 
of Superintendent H. P. Study, have chosen as their central problem for 
the year, What can the schools do to make democracy work better? The 


superintendent has held a series of meetings with the principals and su- 
pervisors for the purpose of enine their thinking and deciding upon 
some of the basic issues involved. One member of the administrative 
staff will hold conferences in the various secondary and elementary 


schools with the teachers of the several buildings for the purpose of 
working out ways and means of improving contributions to democracy. 
The annual report will be devoted entirely to revealing just what schools 
are actually doing in meeting this responsibility. 

TO PROVIDE MORE FUNCTIONAL and purposeful learning experiences 
in the secondary school, two developments have been initiated in the 
schools of Bedford, Pennsylvania, this year. Seventh-grade groups on 
the junior high-school level are being retained in their home rooms for 
a half of each day where integrated learning units are in progress. This 
work includes subjects formerly listed as English, world history, geog- 
raphy, science, spelling, and art. The other half of the day is spent in 
special departments of the school which are also contributing to the pro- 
gram in operation in each home room. In higher grade levels of the 
secondary schools, faculty committees have been organized under the 
leadership of a chairman of their own choice to integrate better the work 
of four divisions under the titles of language, science, social studies, and 
the arts—fine, industrial, and vocational. The chairmen of these com- 
mittees are to form a steering committee and a clearinghouse for the in- 
tegration of experiences and materials among and between the four di- 
visions. 

HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENTS throughout the country are invited to express 
their views about school problems and activities in a new monthly 
magazine, Student Life, sponsored by the Department of Secondary- 
School Principals of the National Education Association. Student Life 
is a new venture. It incorporates the publication formerly titled Student 
Leader—which had to do chiefly with student government organizations 
as outlets for leadership—and opens its pages to all phases of student 
life. Of all high-school students it asks: “What of your school? What 
activities have proved successful? How have you worked out problems?” 
Through the pooling of such information and personal views it is be- 
lieved students may contribute to school improvement and to the enrich- 
ment of student life. A year’s subscription to Student Life will be given 


56 






























1938] NEws ITEMS 57 







for each article published, written by a student of a secondary school. 

Address Student Life, Department of Secendary-School Principals of 

os National Education Association, 5835 Kimbark Avenue, Chicago, 
inois. 

ABOUT SEVENTY-FIVE colleges and universities are using Problems of 
Secondary Education, the discussion based upon Functions and Issues, as 
material for their classes in secondary education. About six thousand 
of the outlines are being used in this way by college classes. 

THE PRINCIPALS OF LOUISIANA formed the State Principals Association 
during the meeting of the State Teachers Association in Shreveport, No- 


vember 19. 

THE TEXAS PRINCIPALS ASSOCIATION, at a recent meeting, voted 
unanimously to affiliate with the Department of Secondary-School Prin- 
cipals of the National Education Association. The principals of Texas 
are among the most active in the nation in promoting the Discussion 
Group Project which the Department sponsors. 

A COMMITTEE ON ENGLISH in small high schools has been appointed 
by the National Council of Teachers of English to discover outstanding 
work that is being done in the field. The chairman of the committee is 
Miss Helen Hartley, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N. Y. She desires 
to hear from teachers who will tell of their work and will send samples 
of their projects. The committee expects to publish a handbook of con- 
crete subjects and procedures in that field. 

THE GUIDANCE COMMITTEE of the Kentucky Association of Colleges 
and Secondary Schools is undertaking to interest high schools and col- 
leges in increasing their guidance facilities. A plan has been set up 
whereby teachers may obtain a certificate with a major in counseling 
after a year’s graduate study at the state university. The chairman of 
the committee is J. B. Miner, Professor of Psychology and Director of the 
Personnel Bureau, University of Kentucky, Lexington. 

THE OHIO HIGH-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS ASSOCIATION has been divided 
into fourteen sections to consider problems of current importance. The 
members of each section are meeting periodically during the year and are 
working on a specific problem. A committee representing the association 
listed five problems, and each sectional group adopted the one which it 
thought to be of the greatest significance. The problems are: (1) The 
formulation of the unique purposes of specific schools, together with an 
indication of the educational program necessary for its accomplishment. 
(2) The evaluation of the educational program offered in the various 
types of high schools. (3) Guidance. (4) The improvement of instruc- 
tion and the continuous study of educational problems. (5) Provisions 
for individual differences in pupils. 

A PROGRAM OF SECONDARY EDUCATION, divided into six practical de- 
partments, was recently proposed by Goodwin Watson, Professor of Edu- 
cation, Columbia University. These would be as follows: Health, which 

‘would include the study of such matters as physical and mental health, 
with all the personal and social implications of these—body building, the 
inferiority feeling, insanity, and the death rate; Leisure, which would in- 
clude such matters as reading, music, languages, equipment for travel, 
hobbies, and the lighter arts; Vocations, which would study aptitudes, 
abilities, inclinations, and which would also include vocational guidance 
in connection with job finding; Home Participation, which would cover 
such matters as home management, courtship, marriage and sex rela- 
tions, budgeting, and savings; Citizenship, which would include, both by 
study and practical visitations, the management of communities, states, 
and the international scene; and finally, a department of Life, dealing 
with ethics, philosophy, and religion; offering the widest range of study 
to those capable of following the line of the good life. 

THE FIRST PUBLICATION issued in connection with the Michigan study 
of the Secondary-School Curriculum is an overview of modifications of 
secondary education under way in the United States. Thirteen definitely 
organized, comprehensive, and extensive efforts to study and improve 
secondary education are mentioned in the bulletin. The following con- 
cluding summary of these was given: “It seems evident that the needs 














58 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


of our youth, the character of the pupil population, and the nature of our 
social order are challenging the secondary school of to-day to enlarge 
its conception of its functions and to improve its instructional program. 
At every hand one finds evidence of the awareness and acceptance of the 
challenge on the part of individuals, schools, organizations, and states. 
All admit the necessity of change in’ secondary education. But change 
is not necessarily progress. If change in secondary education is to result 
in real progress, there must be accorded comprehensive and fundamental 
attention to all of its phases and problems by those engaged in educatiok’ 
with the assistance of every available resource. All changes must be 
basically sound in terms of greater and more effective services to the 
youth and to the community.” Another interesting feature of the bulle- 
tin is that forty-two widely-distributed secondary schools are exploring 
certain variations in their programs. A few examples of these are 
given below: 

THE HIGH SCHOOLS OF OAKLAND, California, are developing for the 
eleventh and twelfth grades a course of study dealing with contempo- 
rary problems of American life to replace the courses in American his- 
tory, civics, sociology, and economics. The courses are built around the 
idea of Problems and Values of To-day. Such units as, Appraising 
Their Sources of Information, Exploring Values in American. Life, and 
Adjusting Personality to Reality are being included. 


In BULLOCH COUNTY, GEORGIA, a study of conditions was made by 
representative teachers and principals under the direction of a supervisor 
from one of the teachers colleges. The study was made in order to ana- 
lyze the progress that had been made in fitting the curriculum to the 
needs of the people. As the teachers studied social problems of Bulloch 
County, the children did likewise. 

THE NORRIS SCHOOL IN Norris, Tennessee, operated by the Tennessee 
Valley Authority, is developing a curriculum centered in helping pupils 
contribute more toward the improvement of the community. A group of 
biology students attacked the problems of flies and mosquitoes in the 
community. They studied and put into effect methods of control. The 
pupils and teachers of the school operate the Norris School Codperative. 
They own five acres of land on which they grow many products. 


THE CANTON, MississipP1, H1GH ScHOOL has been exploring possi- 
bilities of integration by codrdinating the work in English, social studies, 
and mathematics by use of organizing centers such as Water Trauspor- 
tation and How It H1s and Does Affect Us. 

THE CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL OF KENDAL GREEN, MASSACHUSETTS, offered 
a course called Human Relations to eleventh and twelfth grade students. 
The course met three one-hour periods a week. The pupils discussed 
possible areas for study and indicated their preferences. They spent 
more than half their time in this course on individual and different proj- 
ects. A wide range of topics and problems was considered. 


THE SHAKER HEIGHTS, OH1I0, High School is exploring the possi- 
bilities of relating mathematics to other broad fields with emphasis upon 
methods of thinking. In the study of geometry such topics as Codper- 
ative Technique for Solving Social Problems, The Need for Independent 
Thought, Just What Is Thought or Reasoning, and Observation and Its 
Relation to Straight Thinking are included. This school is exploring 
also the possibilities of the integration of social studies, science, English, 
and art. Much attention has been devoted to the study of individual 
pupils and to records and reports. A committee of teachers, pupils, and 
citizens is studying pupil needs, the function of the school, and the na- 
ture of the program of the school. 

IN HoLtTon, KANSAS, English composition has been developed in 
certain grades upon the basis of a study of the homes of the pupils and 
the community. A two-hour period for five days a week has been set 
aside for a community-centered program in social studies, English, and 
art in the seventh and eighth grades. 








> 1 OR ae ee ee 


Arte veonnman er 


amRmn2 oe 


ze 


























NEws ITEMS 59 






1938 | 


THE BALDWIN SCHOOL OF BRYN MAwR, PENNSYLVANIA, is exploring 
the possibilities of providing from three to five hours each week for each 
pupil to work on a problem or topic of his own choice with the guidance 
of a faculty adviser. The projects chosen may deal with academic work 
or other areas. There is an intensive effort to reconsider objectives in 
terms of pupil character, behavior, and growth in power. 

THE HIGH SCHOOL OF ALTOONA, PENNSYLVANIA, is trying out inter- 
class discussion groups in the twelfth year. Important current and 
group problems are considered. 

CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL IN TULSA, OKLAHOMA, is offering an inte- 
grated course in social studies and English in the sophomore year. The 
course is taught by an English and social-studies teacher, working to- 
gether for two consecutive seventy-minute periods, four days a week. A 
specialist in speech meets the students during one of the seventy-minute 
periods each week. 

EDUCATORS THROUGHOUT THE SOUTH are convinced that schools should 
give more attention to an understanding of biracial problems. Recom- 
mendations to that effect have appeared in curriculum bulletins, teachers’ 
guides, and courses of study issued recently. Thus Georgia’s new Pro- 
gram for the Improvement of Instruction lists as an important challenge 
to the schools, the obligation “to develop (among white children) an 
honest and fair-minded attitude toward the other large racial group.” 
A similar official study recently made in Louisiana urges the schools of 
both races to work toward “a better understanding among all racial 
groups and an attitude of mutual helpfulness and appreciation.” Teach- 
ers’ manuals recently issued in Florida, Virginia, and other states recom- 
mend the introduction of units of study on this subject. 

THE STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION of Alabama has inaugurated 
a long-range public-school curriculum development program, outlined in 
a department bulletin as follows: “In order to make any significant im- 
provement in teaching, it is imperative that teachers shall learn: (1) to 
see the school in its relation to society, (2) to understand the nature 
of the learning program, as well as the nature and needs of children, (3) 
to be conversant with the social conditions and needs of the community 
and state, (4) to be able to guide children in democratic methods of deal- 
ing with problems, and (5) to use guidance techniques which will lead 
to genuine learning situations for children.” 

THE FOLLOWING SEVEN PROBLEMS of living form the basis of the 
new Georgia curriculum: maintaining physical, mental, and emotional 
health; receiving and transmitting ideas, and transporting persons and 
commodities; earning a living; performing the responsibilities of citizen- 
ship; utilizing and controlling the natural environment for individual and 
social needs; expressing aesthetic and spiritual impulses; and, utilizing 
education as an agency for the transmission of the social heritage and as 
a means of social betterment. 

CANADIAN SECONDARY-SCHOOL METHODS were studied at Ontario, 
Canada, recently by a delegation of three teachers and four students of 
John Marshall High School, Rochester, N. Y., who visited Northern Vo- 
cational School and exchanged ideas on schools in the United States and 
Canada. With educators in both countries of the opinion that secondary- 
school pupils are not as well versed as they might be in current events 
and the formation of the social order, it is hoped to establish study 
groups from each of these two schools which will visit the two cities once 
a year to discuss several topics of mutual interest. The plan is to select 
three topics of current interest which affect the United States and 
Canada in a way peculiar to each of the two countries. 

_ ~, A RESOLUTION URGING that “positive steps be taken to educate youth 

in the biological aspects of married life’ was adopted by the New Jersey 

Older Boys at a state conference held recently. The same resolution 

stipulated that friendship should be made the basis of association with 

girls. The conference also went on record as recommending that “no 
boys be barred from membership in any older boys’ club because of race, 
creed, or social background” and that “steps be taken to acquaint youth 
with a definite understanding of its responsibilities to the home.” 




















DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


DURING THE PAST YEAR the Codperative Study of Secondary-School 
Standards has visited and _ studied intensively two hundred schools 
throughout the United States. Extensive data have been accumulated 
concerning many aspects of their work and these are being summarized 
and analyzed in the research office at Washington. Before the year is 
over these two hundred schools will all be carefully classified on a wide 
variety of significant measures and used as a basis for the revision of 
criteria and for the evaluation of secondary schools in general. 


AT THE PIERCE JOINT UNION HIGH SCHOOL, Arbuckle, California, a 
course in leadership was organized and taught last year by Principal R. 
S. Tallmon. Most seniors and all student officers attended. Attention 
was directed toward student problems and wider problems of social par- 
ticipation. Individual and group study, with the Secunaian method, were 
the techniques chiefly used. Every student served as a discussion leader 
until he gained at least passable technique. Another new venture grew 
out of a group formed from the elementary and the high-school students 
for the purpose of. acquainting school patrons with the work of the school. 
High-school pupils told of their guidance program; elementary-school 
pupils described to community groups their work in the social studies. 


THE MICHIGAN EDUCATION ASSOCIATION published in 1936 nine arti- 
cles dealing with the Nine Goals of Education in Michigan. These 
are now available in pamphlets at three cents each for single copies, 
two cents each when ten or more copies are purchased, and $1.50 per 
hundred in large quantities. Study and discussion groups, and classes in 
education, could utilize this booklet. The nine goals adopted by the 
Michigan Planning Board are: (1) To cultivate a deep regard for de- 
mocracy and an intelligent appreciation of democratic institutions, (2) To 
develop those qualities of character which are of special significance in 
a democracy, (3) To develop the willingness and the ability to codperate 
effectively in a democratic society, (4) To develop the ability to use the 
most effective and reliable methods in searching for truth as a basis 
for the discovery and solution of problems, (5) To develop the effective 
use of the fundamental knowledge and skills required by all, (6) To in- 
sure an abundant social and individual life in accordance with each indi- 
vidual’s capacity and ambition, (7) To provide training in the special- 
ized and professional services which are requisite for society, (8) To pro- 
vide for the enrichment of adult life, and (9) To plan for the continuous 
oe and readjustment of the educational program to fit changing 
conditions. 


THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY is sponsoring 
The Western Education Forum, a series of programs dealing with cur- 
riculum development. The broadcasts are made available by the Na- 
tional Broadcasting Company over the Blue Network in ten western 
states, and are scheduled from 4:00 to 4:30 P. M., Pacific Time, on the 
first and third Tuesdays'of each month. The suggestions and criticisms 
of more than a hundred leading university and public-school men of the 
western states have been used in arranging these programs. Seven top- 
ics will be presented during the next few months: February 1—Mental 
and physical health, February 15—Learning to read in every class, 
March 1—Art and Music Enrich Instruction, March 15—Students Serve 
School and Community, April 5—Creative Education, April 19—Guidance 
of Youth, and May 3—Parents and Students Help Teachers Plan the 
Curriculum. 


THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION COMMITTEE on the Horace 
Mann Centennial, which was celebrated in the schools during 1936-37, 
recommended that high schools start clubs for young persons interested 
in teaching as a career. The purpose of these groups, to be called The 
Future Teachers of America, is not to increase the number who enter the 
teaching profession, but to give guidance to those who excel in the quali- 
ties which are essential in order to be a dynamic and successful teacher. 
The idea is not to build up a large national federation of clubs but to 
encourage in each section the organization of groups which would ex- 
change ideas and work toward common goals. Up to the present time, 
a small number of Future Teacher clubs have been started. Further in- 















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1938: NEws ITEMS 61 





formation may be secured by writing to the National Education Associ- 
ation, 1201 Sixteenth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C. 


A NEW PUBLICATION which will be of aid in curriculum construction 
in secondary schools may be secured free of charge from the secretary 
of the National Council of Geography Teachers, Dr. Floyd F. Cunning- 
ham, State Teachers College, Florence, Alabama. 


AT SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA, High School, Principal W. E. Elmer 
believes that the following have yielded highly successful returns: (a) a 
one-semester course in foods for junior boys, (b) introduction of more 
modern literature into the English courses, (c) increase in instrumental 
and vocal music, (d) vocational trades and industrial arts courses, (e) 
consumer education, and (f) a course in art appreciation and applied 
design. The following changes and modifications are planned for the 
near future: (a) unit on home and family, (b) class in contemporary 
thought for juniors and seniors, (c) course in practical science for juniors 
and seniors, and (d) extension of the course in safety education. 


A COMMITTEE UNDER the supervision of R. J. Mullins, Director of 
Secondary Education in New Mexico, is making a codperative study of 
secondary schools of the state. The object of the study is to adjust the 
programs of secondary schools to the special needs of youth. Sixty su- 
perintendents and principals met recently and formulated plans for the 
study. There was general agreement among the members of this group 
that the present traditional program of secondary schools is not meeting 
the needs of the majority of youth who do not attend college, and that 
there is a necessity for adjustment of the program in order to give more 
training in the fields of vocational and practical citizenship. 


TWO GRANTS totaling $350,000 have recently been made to the Ameri- 
can Council on Education by the General Education Board. A grant of 
$135,000 goes to the support of the Committee on Motion Pictures in 
Education. The second grant, totaling $200,000, is to be used for a five- 
year study of the problems of teacher training. 


AN INTERESTING ATTACK is being made in Bellows Falls, Vermont, 
High School upon the problem of low-reading quotients among high- 
school students. The correlation between reading deficiencies and subject 
failures has convinced authorities that an attempt should be made to im- 
prove the situation. In September the seventh grade was given the Otis 
Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Test and the Iowa Silent Reading Exami- 
nation to determine mental ages and reading ages. Those pupils whose 
reading ages were found to be more than two-tenths years below their 
mental ages were assigned to a remedial reading class. This class meets 
one forty-five minute period per week in addition to its regular English 
work. Two good texts were selected from the small group of books re- 
cently published for this very purpose, and enough copies were bought 
to provide one for each pupil. Two paper-covered workbooks were pur- 
chased to further the diagnostic work started by the Iowa test. Single 
copies of other books were secured to provide a variety. Each student 
is directed into the type of exercise which he needs in order to level 
up the depressions in his profile of the various reading skills. 


A NEWSPAPER UNIT FOR SCHOOLS, written by B. J. R. Stalper, has 
been published by the Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Colum- 
big University. This pamphlet is based on the idea that intelligent un- 
derstanding of the press is best taught through a study of newspapers 
and not through textbooks. The writer believes that all secondary-school 
students should be given training in how to read a newspaper with in- 
telligent appreciation. This training would include something of the 
mechanical phases of its production, how news is gathered and written, 
and some experience by boys and girls in publishing their own paper 
within their school world. 


















CALENDAR OF PROFESSIONAL MEETINGS 


International Council for the Exceptional Children, Buffalo, New York, 
February 17-19. 

Progressive Educaticn Association, Hotel Pennsylvania, New York, Feb- 
ruary 23-27. 

American Council on Guidance and Personnel Associations, Atlantic City, 
New Jersey, February 23-26. 

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Atlantic Ctiy, New Jersey, 
February 25-26. 

American Association of School Administrators, Atlantic City, New Jer- 
sey, February 26-March 3. 
Department of Secondary-School Principals of the National Education 
Association, Atlantic City, New Jersey, February 26-March 2. 
Committee on Planning of the Department of Secondary-School Princi- 
pals, Hotel Traymore, Atlantic City, New Jersey, February 26-27. 

National Society for the Study of Education, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 
February 26.' 

Society for Curriculum Study, Atlantic City, New Jersey, February 26-28. 

Department for Vocational Education, Atlantic City, New Jersey, Feb- 
ruary 26-March 3. 

National Association for Research in Science Teaching, Atlantic City, 
New Jersey, February 27-March 1. 

National Federation of State High-School Athletic Associations, Atlantic 
City, New Jersey, February 28. 

Department of Rural] Education, Atlantic City, New Jersey, February 28- 
March 2. 

National Association of High-School Supervisors and Directors, Atlantic 
City, New Jersey, March 1. 

American Camping Association, Inc., Hotel Pennsylvania, New York, 
New York, March 3-5. 

American Association of Junior Colleges, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 
March 4-5. 

Columbia Scholastic Press Association, New York City, New York, March 

Junior High-School Conference of the Middle Atlantic and Northeastern 
States, School of Education, New York University, New York, New 
York, March 11-12. 

Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, Adolphus Hotel, 
Dallas, Texas, March 31-April 1. 

Association for Childhood Education, Netherland-Plaza Hotel, Cincinnati, 
Ohio, April, 1938. 

—-~ Occupational Conference, New York City, New York, April, 
1938. 


Northwest Association of Secondary and High Schools, Spokane, Wash- 
ington, April 4-6. 

North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, Stevens 
Hotel, Chicago, Illinois, April 6-9. 

Kentucky Association of Secondary-School Principals, Louisville, Ken- 
tucky, April 13-15. 

American Association for Health and Physical Education, Atlanta, 
Georgia, April 20-23. } , 

Ohio High-School Principals’ Association, Columbus, Ohio, April 22-23. 

American Council on Education, Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D. C., 

‘ May 6-7. 

National Congress of Parents and Teachers, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 
15-20. 

American Association for Adult Education, Berkeley Cateret, Asbury 
Park, N. J., May 16-18. 

American Library Association, Kansas City, Missouri, June 13-18. 


62 


















‘S@ 














BOOK NOTES 


Bennett, Margaret E. and Hand, Harold C. School and Life. New York: 

McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1937. Pp. ix+185. $1.25. 

The authors of School and Life have attempted to present sugges- 
tions and ideas for helping students to become oriented in new school situ- 
ations as they progress from one level to another. A wide variety of 
group and individual activities are outlined. The problems typically en- 
countered by students in their first year of high school have been in- 
cluded. This is the first of a series of three volumes on orientation. The 
pe Design for Personality, and Beyond High School, are being pre- 
pared. 


George, William R. The Adult Minor. New York: D. Appleton-Century 

Company, 1937. Pp. xxv+192. $2.00. 

William R. George, known as the founder of the George Junior Re- 
public, died last year. This book was his last work. It presents a plea 
and a program for the training of young people in political, economic, 
and social responsibility during the adolescent years. The author argues 
that young people should begin to participate in civic affairs long before 
they reach the voting age. 





Implications of Social-Economic Goals for Education. A report of the 
Committee on Social-Economic Goals of America, Washington, D. C.: 
National Education Association, 1937. Pp. 126. $.25. 

In 1932 the National Education Association appointed John Dewey, 
Willard E. Givens, Fred J. Kelly, Leon C. Marshall, Robert C. Moore, 
and Edward A. Ross to propose a statement of the desirable social- 
economic goals of America. In 1933, after considerable revision and dis- 
cussion, the Association approved the following ten goals: Hereditary 
strength; physical security; participation in an evolving culture (1. skills, 
technics, and knowledg’s, and 2. values, standards, and outlooks); an 
active, flexible personality; suitable occupation; economic security; mental 
security; equality of opportunity, freedom, and fair play. This volume is 
an ee to indicate how the schools might more effectively attain these 
goals. 


Mann, Horace. Go Forth and Teach. Washington, D. C.: National Edu- 
cation Association, 1937. Pp. xiii+148. $.50. 

During 1937 the United States conducted a celebration of the pioneer 
work of Horace Mann under the direction of the National Education As- 
sociation. Go Forth and Teach is an oration which Mann delivered before 
the authorities of Boston, July 4, 1842, together with other materials re- 
lating to his life. In the preface it is suggested that all high-school stu- 
dents, especially those planning to enter the teaching profession, should 
read this oration. 


Rainey, Homer P. How Fare American Youth? New York: D. Apple- 
ton-Century, 1937. Pp. xi+179. $1.50. 

The American Youth Commission of the American Council on Edu- 
cation has been engaged in a study of the current problems in the care 
and education of our thirty million young persons between the ages of 
twelve and twenty-four. In anticipation of the voluminous detailed re- 
ports of these studies, the Director of the Commission and his staff have 
prepared this statement of the current problems of American youth, 
showing where our young people stand in relation to jobs and job-finding, 
schooling and other education, leisure-time pursuits, health, the family, 
the church, and all the elements that make for character and citizenship. 


Slavson, S. R. Creative Group Education. New York: Association 
Press, 1937. Pp. xii+247. $2.50. 


63 











DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [February, 


Creative Group Education is an effort to deal in a practical way with 
the concrete problems which confront the group leader and the teacher 
in the performance of their daily work. The book is based on the idea that 
sound educational practices must be based upon the fundamental nature 
of the student—his interests, needs, and problems. Creative group 
education is discussed from the point of view of extra-curriculum activi- 
ties, classes, community centers, and camps. 


Strang, Ruth. Behavior and Background of Students in College and Sec- 
ondary School. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1937. Pp. xix+ 
515. $5.00. 

This book analyzes the behavior of students in class and in extra-cur- 
riculum activities from various points of view and shows how social and 
economic backgrounds influence campus behavior. The major effort is to 
show the bearing of facts regarding school and home life upon a sound 
~ “ee of the individual student’s potentialities by the faculty coun- 
selor. : 


CURRENT PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED 
Professional 

Angell, James Rowland. American Education—Addresses and Articles. 
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937. Pp. 282. $3.00. 

A Bibliography on Education in the Depression. Educational Policies 
Commission of the National Education Association. Washington: 
The Association, 1937. Pp. 118. $.50. (Paper) 

Burt, Cyril. The Backward Child. New York: D. Appleton-Century 
Company, 1937. Pp. xx+694. $5.00. 

Coyle, Grace L. Editor. Studies in Group Behavior. New York: Harper 
& Brothers, 1937. Pp. x+258. $2.75. 

Cuff, Noel B. Child Psychology. Louisville, Kentucky: Standard Print- 
ing Company, 1937. Pp. 299. $2.50. 

Enlow, Elmer R. Statistics in Education and Psychology. New York: 
Prentice-Hall, Incorporated, 1937. Pp. ix+180. $2.75. 

Gillson, Margery Stewart. Developing a High-School Chemistry Course 
Adapted to the Differentiated Needs of Boys and Girls. New York: 
Teachers College, Columbia University, 1937. Pp. viii+95. 

Hewitt, Dorothy and Kirtley, F. Mather. Adult Education. A Dynamic 
for Democracy. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1937. 
Pp. vii+193. $1.75. 

Hoban, Charles F., Hoban, Charles F., Jr., and Zisman, Samuel B. Visu- 
alizing the Curriculum. New York: The Cordon Company, 1937. 


Pp. 300. 

Holley, Charles Elmer. High-School Teachers’ Methods. Illinois: The 
Garrard Press, 1937. Pp. 514. 

Horace Mann Centennial (1837-1937). Boston, Massachusetts: State 
Department of Education, 1937. Pp. 202. (Paper) 

Kirkendall, Lester A. Factors Related to the Changes in School Adjust- 
ment of High-School Pupils. New York: Teachers College, Colum- 
bia University, 1937. Pp. viii+90. 

Mueller, A. D. Principles and Methods in Adult Education. New York: 
Prentice-Hall, Incorporated, 1937. Pp. xx+ 428. 

Newsom, N. William a Long, Forrest E. Problems of the Teacher in 
the New Secondary School. New York: Inor Publishing Company, 
1937. (Revised.) Pp. vi+202. $1.55. (Paper Workbook) 

Palmer, Rachel Lynn, and Alpher, Isidore M. 40,000,000 Guinea Pig 
Children. New York: The Vanguard Press, 1937. Pp. 249. $2.00. 

Public Works Administration Aids to Education. Washington: Govern- 
ment Printing Office, 1987. Pp. x+43. Gratis. (Paper) 

Rinsland, Henry D. Constructing Tests and Grading in Elementary and 
High-School Subjects. New York: Prentice-Hall, Incorporated, 
1937. Pp. xvi+323. $2.85. 

Sargent, Porter. Private Schools. Massachusetts: Porter Sargent, 1937. 
Pp. 1182. 

Seyfert, Warren C. School Size and School Efficiency. Cambridge: 
Harvard University Press, 1937. Harvard Bulletins in Education, 


No. 19. Pp. xiv+316. $1.50. (Paper)