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The Bulletin 


of the 


DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL 
PRINCIPALS 


National Education Association 








VOLUME 22 May, 1938 NUMBER 75 








ADAPTING THE CURRICULUM TO THE NEEDS 
AND INTERESTS OF ADOLESCENTS 


CHARLES W. KNUDSEN 
George Peabody College for Teachers 


There is probably no statement about the curriculum of the 
secondary school with which educators so generally agree as they 
do with the principle that the high-school curriculum should be 
adapted to the needs and interests of the adolescent. When one 
considers, however, the many different proposals that are put 
forward to meet these needs and interests, one must conclude 
that what has been accepted as evidence of agreement with a 
principle represents more nearly a lack of agreement about its 
meaning. This paper represents an attempt to clarify the mean- 
ing of the terms needs and interests in order to indicate more clearly 
the implications of the above principle for curriculum develop- 
ment. 

We shall consider the term need first. The first of its mean- 
ings to be pointed out is that which applies to the human being 
in its early infancy. The new-born infant has a need for food, 
a need for air, a need for exercise or movement, a need for relief 
of very definite physiological tensions connected with the acts 
of emptying the bladder or the colon. Such needs are physio- 
logical. They are quite impersonal as far as the infant is con- 
cerned, are not yet connected with the concept of selfhood, and 
of their existence the infant is not aware. These fundamental 
physiological needs along with a number of other fundamental 
needs persist throughout a long period of years, which constitute 
the life span of the individual. With the growth of the individual 
these fundamental needs are accompanied by a developing aware- 
ness that such needs exist and must in one way or another be 
satisfied if life is to continue. The manner in which these needs 
are conceived and, to a degree, the manner in which they are 
satisfied will depend upon the social environment in which the 
individual develops. Their satisfaction becomes a complex and 
interrelated affair of the individual and of the group in which he 























2 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


has membership. The need for food, for example, becomes re- 
lated to the matter of making a living, the need for air to the 
matter of ventilation and air conditioning, the need for sex to 
love and marriage and employment, the need for excerise to the 
provision of playgrounds and gymnasiums. In short, the funda- 
mental physiological needs of the individual become the founda- 
tions of many other needs. 

The manner in which these other needs are formed and the 
manner in which they are satisfied depend principally upon the 
influence of the group culture in which the individual happens to 
develop. They are socially conditioned needs that result in ten- 
sions within, the individual comparable to the tensions more easily 
recognized in the case of physiological needs. Such needs as 
those of knowing, of possessing, of being considered a personality 
in one’s own right, of dominating in certain situations and of fol- 
lowing in others, of association with others, or the need of achiev- 
ing are illustrations of needs that become conditioned in the pro- 
cess of interaction with environment which, of course, includes 
interaction with other human beings. The satisfaction of such 
needs as these (considered singly or more often considered as 
fused in varying combinations) comprises the main business of 
living. The manner in which such needs are satisfied is an im- 
portant concern of the society that supports the school. 

Just as soon as we introduce the idea that the group culture 
plays a part in the creation of the individual’s needs, we also 
introduce a complicating factor in a consideration of need as a 
possible guide in curriculum development. The individual is 
not an entirely free agent to do as his fancy dictates. The group 
of which he becomes a member through its individual members 
also evidences an interest in the manner in which its newest mem- 
ber develops. The members of the group recognize the type of 
need exhibited when the newest member says, “I need. . . .,” 
but they give voice to an added meaning of need when they c, 
“He needs. . .” The first type of need is often in conflict 
with the second type. Adaptation to the group culture means 
that these conflicts should frequently be adjusted in accord with 
a vested interest that the larger group has in its own welfare. 
These two aspects of the meaning of need inhere in the use of the 
expression needs of the adolescent. A synthesis of these two as- 
pects of the meaning of the term need is a positive essential to 
an understanding of the term in the principle referred to at the 
beginning of this discussion. 

The foregoing discussion implies that in adapting the cur- 
riculum to the needs of the adolescent two extreme attempts will 
be ruled out of consideration immediately; first, an attempt to 














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ADAPTING THE CURRICULUM 3 





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allow the individual pupil to develop a curriculum as he pleases, 
and, second, an attempt to prescribe a curriculum entirely on the 
basis of what teachers conceive to be the needs of the large social 
group in which the pupil is obtaining membership. Just when 
shall the needs of the pupil or the needs of the social group take 
precedence? Or shall either take precedence? We shall attempt 
to indicate that a consideration of needs is not an all-or-none 
consideration. 

In discussing the developing needs of the individual, it was 
pointed out that in the beginning the individual had no aware- 
ness of the kind of needs we were discussing. It was also pointed 
out that the individual became increasingly aware of their exist- 
ence and that they became conditioned by the influence of the 
group in which the individual was gaining membership. With 
respect to the phase of the group culture that exerts an influence 
through an organized agency such as the school, it was intimated 
that the group imposed certain restrictions by predicating the 
existence of certain needs of the society supporting the school. 
The predication of social needs in directing youth in a high-school 
curriculum is an inescapable responsibility. 

The repeated failure of the school to make a connection be- 
tween the kinds of needs that are predicated for society and the 
needs of which pupils are aware is no valid reason for accepting 
a belief that only those needs of which the pupils themselves are 
aware should furnish the basis for a curriculum. There are at 
least two considerations to indicate that the needs of which pupils 
are aware will not afford the whole of a suitable basis. First, 
as indicated above-in the case of infants, some needs have to be 
satisfied even though the individual is not aware that they exist 
or that they should be satisfied. Arriving at a state of aware- 
ness with respect to such needs is an evidence of growth. Second, 
some needs of which pupils are aware should not be satisfied be- 
cause the results are inimical to both the individual and the social 
group of which he is, or is becoming, a member. In other words, 
some of the needs of which pupils are aware are worthy of develop- 
ment, and others are not. 

It must be insisted, however, that refusal to base a curriculum 
entirely on needs of which the pupils are aware does not mean 
that teachers will refuse to relate as nearly as they can the needs 
of which pupils are aware to the needs which the teachers pre- 

“dicate for the society that supports the school, nor does it mean 
that teachers should refuse to examine critically the needs of 
society which they believe should be taken into account. Ref- 
erence to one of the fundamental needs of human beings in the 
present social scene will make this point clearer. The youth of 














[May, 


4 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 


a hundred years ago satisfied one of his fundamental human needs 
by early marriage. In the span of a hundred years the social 
scene has changed so drastically that at present marriage is gen- 
erally out of the question when the mating urge is greatest. 
Marriage entails responsibilities for making a living and for 
rearing offspring. Under present economic conditions, there is 
no possibility that any considerable number of youth from eighteen 
to twenty-one years of age can make a living for a family. Mar- 
riage must, therefore, be postponed. Normal, natural youth is 
required to make adjustments that youth of one hundred years 
ago was not required to make. In many cases the characters 
who are held up to youth as the shining examples that youth 
should follow were actively engaged in public and private affairs 
at ages that modern youth can spend only in school or in idleness. 
Is it any wonder that the largest group of our prison population 
consists of youth nineteen and twenty years old? Does this fact 
indicate the necessity for relating more nearly the curriculum of 
the secondary school to the fundamental needs of the youth the 
secondary school ought to serve? Must youth always listen to 
the claim of the school that the needs of a badly disjointed society 
should continue to occupy their attention when no attention is 
given to the fundamental needs of millions of youth who will 
to-morrow constitute the most active part of society? It must 
be evident that there is nothing the school can do to overcome 
immediately social conditions which prevent the employment of 
youth eighteen to twenty-one years of age. The school might 
do something, however, to help youth make more adequate ad- 
justments in the very real present. Certainly the school could 
help youth to understand some of the factors that brought about 
the unnatural and unnecessary situation they face. 

The synthesis of meanings that any group of teachers makes 
with respect to the term need will depend, first, upon their under- 
standing of the facts of normal biological and psychological devel- 
opment of human beings, and, second, upon an understanding 
of the social scene in which the high school operates. Any synthesis 
will be limited by a lack of knowledge and will be undergoing 
modification as the knowledge and understanding of the teacher 


group increase. Any group of teachers who honestly set them- 


selves the task of synthesizing their concept of need to include 
both the sensed needs of the individual and the needs of society 
will become convinced that a secondary-school curriculum that 
eliminates a large percentage of the boys and girls who undergo the 
experiences it provides is adapted neither to the needs of adole- 
scent youth nor to the needs of the society that supports the school. 





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1938] ADAPTING THE CURRICULUM 5 
Admission by teachers that they lack sufficient knowledge of 
either the subjective needs of adolescent or the needs of society 
to predicate with absolute accuracy all of those social needs which 
should be taken into consideration in arriving at a completely 
desirable synthesis of needs is but an evidence of wisdom, provided 
they set themselves the task of becoming better informed. An 
attempt at analysis of individual and social needs and an accom- 
panying synthesis of the findings in formulating a concept of needs 
to afford a basis of curriculum development is a first step in cur- 
riculum reorganization. This procedure should be followed by 
trial, during which the original synthesis will be undergoing con- 
stant revision, and during which every effort will be made to ap- 
praise critically the results of trial. Failure to attempt such a 
synthesis and subsequent failure to test one’s ideas in practice are 
besetting sins of the present corps of secondary-school teachers. 
Too many, recognizing the lack of finality in the proposal sub- 
mitted here, take an attitude that action in changing a high-school 
curriculum to meet the needs of the adolescent should await 
authoritative confirmation. This attitude is based on a belief in 
authoritarianism that has no place in the life of a democratic 
people. The sooner teachers rid themselves of this belief, the 
sooner will there be a better chance of adapting the high-school 
curriculum to the needs of the adolescent. Certain difficulties 
must be faced, to be sure. Thus, in many cases, teachers in 
service have ceased to study after leaving college or university; 
and, therefore, have based their programs of action on information 
that leaves out of consideration new studies dealing with adoles- 
cent needs and new studies dealing with the needs of our demo- 
cratic society. The difficulties teachers face in this connection 
can be overcome by a systematic study program. 

The active interests of high-school pupils are intimately rela- 
ted to their needs. One is interested in, or has an interest in, 
activities which satisfy needs of which one is aware. In more 
instances than teachers are willing to admit, the adolescent’s inter- 
est in satisfying a need serves both as one of the essential condi- 
tions for effective learning and as one of the trustworthy indica- 
tors of a desirable social need that should be satisfied. This state- 
ment is not a denial of an equally important consideration to 
the effect that adolescents frequently have acquired needs and, 
therefore, interests that conflict with the needs of the large society. 

-Our acquaintance with the varieties of environments from which 
pupils come and our understanding of the influence of environ- 
ment in creating and conditioning needs should make this state- 
ment easy enough to understand. We should understand also 
that the nature of the school environment which the teachers 











DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-S€HOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


have power to establish may become a powerful agency in creat- 
ing and influencing needs and interests. The secondary school 
very often, however, attempts to make a connection between the 
curriculum and desirable needs and interests, a connection which 
a large percentage of adolescents cannot sense, that teachers 
themselves are unable to sense. This criticism implies that the 
secondary school succeeds best with pupils whose homes afford 
the greatest advantages, and that it fails most miserably with 
pupils whose homes furnish the least advantages. Another way of 
saying the same thing is that the American secondary school fails 
to help those youngsters who are most in need of help. 

We next turn our attention to possible ways of remedying 
some of the ills that grow out of failure to make use of a principle 
to which we all swear allegiance. How can the curriculum be 
adapted more nearly to the needs and interests of adolescents, 
not only of the adolescents who come from homes that supply 
many of the environmental factors that lead to desirable devel- 
opment of their needs and interests but also of adolescents who 
come from less favored environments? How may this be done 
so as to create a more sympathetic understanding between the 
groups who come from a wide variety of home environments? 
The belief that the common school is completed with graduation 
from the eighth grade is in serious need of overhauling. Under 
present conditions and under conditions that are likely to prevail 
for years to come, democracy will be best served if our idea of the 
common school is extended so as to include educational provision 
for youth up to the time youth may enter the ranks of active 
workers. This age limit will vary with the locality in which given 
groups of youth reside, but the evidence points strongly to an 
upper age limit of at least twenty-one years in a large part of the 
United States. 

Those who teach in secondary schools continue to regard the 
selective function as the main function of the high school without 
noting that other important functions should be realized through 
this agency. The attention of secondary-school principals and 
teachers has been directed to a consideration of other equally 
important functions in a report made last year by the Committee 
on the Orientation of Secondary Education* of the Department of 
Secondary-School Principals. This valuable report should exer- 
cise an important influence in our efforts to provide a more ade- 
quate secondary-school program. Underlying the provision of 
greater opportunities to adolescents through an extended common 
school there must be a willingness to attribute to many necessary 


*Bulletin 64, Department of Secondary-School Principals, 5835 Kimbark Ave., Chi- 
cago. 





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1938] ADAPTING THE CURRICULUM 


occupations in which people engage a value and a dignity which 
at present do not attach to many of the occupations in which a 
large proportion of our people must engage. 

There must be provision for an opportunity for youth to ac- 
quire a disposition to use leisure time in ways that are conducive 
to healthful living and recreation, because a large percentage of 
our population will engage in productive work of a nature that 
calls for little more than a willingness to tend a machine for a small 
number of hours per day. This kind of employment affords no 
outlet for many of man’s hopes or aspirations. Its monotony is 
deadening to man’s spirit. Other outlets must be afforded for 
the satisfaction of needs that cannot possibly be satisfied through 
unchallenging toil. The problem of the use of leisure for socially 
constructive ends has barely been touched. The secondary school 
should afford guidance to youth that will enable him to make a 
satisfactory adjustment to a peculiar condition the machine age 
has brought about. 

When those who teach in our public high schools attempt to 
conceive of secondary education in terms of the needs and inter- 
ests of all adolescents, rather than in terms of a selected group of 
adolescents, they will be forced to conclude that the traditional 
subject-centered curriculum is ill adapted to a broadened con- 
ception of the democratic function of the secondary school. 
Other means must be proposed to meet the demands that accept- 
ance of a broadened democratic function imposes. Among the 
more promising means that have been tried on a rather wide scale 
is a curriculum that consists of the following three phases: 

1. Provision of a core curriculum for all pupils, with atten- 
tion to the major areas of life activities and to the con- 
tinuous development of the learner. 

. Provision for the development of desirable persistent 
interests. 

. Provision for acquiring the necessary tools of learning, 
need for which has been diseovered in a socially signifi- 
cant setting. 

In a later paper the writer hopes to present a more detailed 
description and an appraisal of this means of adapting the second- 
ary-school curriculum to the needs and interests of adolescents. 








DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-S€HOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


have power to establish may become a powerful agency in creat- 
ing and influencing needs and interests. The secondary school 
very often, however, attempts to make a connection between the 
curriculum and desirable needs and interests, a connection which 
a large percentage of adolescents cannot sense, that teachers 
themselves are unable to sense. This criticism implies that the 
secondary school succeeds best with pupils whose homes afford 
the greatest advantages, and that it fails most miserably with 
pupils whose homes furnish the least advantages. Another way of 
saying the same thing is that the American secondary school fails 
to help those youngsters who are most in need of help. 

We next turn our attention to possible ways of remedying 
some of the ills that grow out of failure to make use of a principle 
to which we all swear allegiance. How can the curriculum be 
adapted more nearly to the needs and interests of adolescents, 
not only of the adolescents who come from homes that supply 
many of the environmental factors that lead to desirable devel- 
opment of their needs and interests but also of adolescents who 
come from less favored environments? How may this be done 
so as to create a more sympathetic understanding between the 
groups who come from a wide variety of home environments? 
The belief that the common school is completed with graduation 
from the eighth grade is in serious need of overhauling. Under 
present conditions and under conditions that are likely to prevail 
for years to come, democracy will be best served if our idea of the 
common school is extended so as to include educational provision 
for youth up to the time youth may enter the ranks of active 
workers. This age limit will vary with the locality in which given 
groups of youth reside, but the evidence points strongly to an 
upper age limit of at least twenty-one years in a large part of the 
United States. 

Those who teach in secondary schools continue to regard the 
selective function as the main function of the high school without 
noting that other important functions should be realized through 
this agency. The attention of secondary-school principals and 
teachers has been directed to a consideration of other equally 
important functions in a report made last year by the Committee 
on the Orientation of Secondary Education* of the Department of 
Secondary-School Principals. This valuable report should exer- 
cise an important influence in our efforts to provide a more ade- 
quate secondary-school program. Underlying the provision of 
greater opportunities to adolescents through an extended common 
school there must be a willingness to attribute to many necessary 


*Bulletin 64, Department of Secondary-School Principals, 5835 Kimbark Ave., Chi- 
cago. 








1938] ADAPTING THE CURRICULUM 7 


occupations in which people engage a value and a dignity which 
at present do not attach to many of the occupations in which a 
large proportion of our people must engage. 

There must be provision for an opportunity for youth to ac- 
quire a disposition to use leisure time in ways that are conducive 
to healthful living and recreation, because a large percentage of 
our population will engage in productive work of a nature that 
calls for little more than a willingness to tend a machine for a small 
number of hours per day. This kind of employment affords no 
outlet for many of man’s hopes or aspirations. Its monotony is 
deadening to man’s spirit. Other outlets must be afforded for 
the satisfaction of needs that cannot possibly be satisfied through 
unchallenging toil. The problem of the use of leisure for socially 
constructive ends has barely been touched. The secondary school 
should afford guidance to youth that will enable him to make a 
satisfactory adjustment to a peculiar condition the machine age 
has brought about. 

When those who teach in our public high schools attempt to 
conceive of secondary education in terms of the needs and inter- 
ests of all adolescents, rather than in terms of a selected group of 
adolescents, they will be forced to conclude that the traditional 
subject-centered curriculum is ill adapted to a broadened con- 
ception of the democratic function of the secondary school. 
Other means must be proposed to meet the demands that accept- 
ance of a broadened democratic function imposes. Among the 
more promising means that have been tried on a rather wide scale 
is a curriculum that consists of the following three phases: 

1. Provision of a core curriculum for all pupils, with atten- 
tion to the major areas of life activities and to the con- 
tinuous development of the learner. 

. Provision for the development of desirable persistent 
interests. 

. Provision for acquiring the necessary tools of learning, 
need for which has been diseovered in a socially signifi- 
cant setting. 

In a later paper the writer hopes to present a more detailed 
description and an appraisal of this means of adapting the second- 
ary-school curriculum to the needs and interests of adolescents. 











ADJUSTING SECONDARY EDUCATION TO THE 
NEEDS OF RURAL YOUTH?! 


M. R. TRABUE, Dean 
School of Education, Pennsylvania State College 


It is evident that those who planned this program and chose 
the topic, ‘““Adjusting Secondary Education to the Needs of Rural 
Youth,” made two important assumptions: first, that secondary 
education ought to be adjusted to the needs of rural youth; and 
second, that the needs of rural youth are not entirely identical 
with the needs now being served most effectively by secondary 
schools. I shall accept these assumptions, without question, 
and proceed to state one or two of my own. 

I assume that the needs of rural youth grow out of their own 
conditions and characteristics as these are related to the demands 
of modern life. I assume also that the public secondary school 
is an important instrument of society, set up and maintained 
at public expense as a means of helping young people to under- 
stand themselves more fully and to prepare themselves more 
effectively for taking such places in modern life as each is by nature 
best qualified to take. 

If these assumptions are accepted, we may ask ourselves two 
important questions that bear directly upon the topic: (1) What 
are the implications of ‘“‘youth’’? (2) What are the implications of 
“rural’”’ residence? 

Let us consider first what it means to be young. Youth is 
apparently a period characterized by great energy and vitality, 
but in most cases this energy is not highly concentrated or well 
organized. Young people are, for example, rarely satisfied to 
sit by the fire and read or talk with the family. They usually 
want to be going somewhere. They are restless and must be 
active, even though their activity is not directed toward the accom- 
plishment of any particular purpose. The marvelous energy 
of youth must be recognized as potential power, however, waiting 
only for effective guidance and direction to become productive. 

Along with its great physical energy, youth usually seems 
to us adults to be possessed by a bewildering impulsiveness. 
Youth’s decisions and actions are not usually based upon careful 
reflection and judgment, but frequently upon momentary im- 
pulse and emotional tone. If a course of action appeals to a youth 
as interesting, clever, or right, he is not often inclined to pause 
for a full consideration of the consequences it might have upon 


1An address delivered before the meeting of the Department of Rural Education of 
the NEA, Atlantic City, March 1, 1938. 
8 








1938] ADJUSTING SECONDARY EDUCATION 9 


himself or upon others. Indecision and inactivity appear to the 
youth as undesirable traits to be avoided. 

Perhaps one of the reasons for youth’s impulsiveness is the 
multiplicity of relatively new interests, ideas, and emotional 
attitudes that flood in upon him at adolescence. Abilities which 
had previously seemed not very important appear suddenly to 
take on great significance to youth. Every unusual skill a youth 
observes in others is an immediate challenge to his own skill, 
and his life becomes a continuous series of efforts to equal the 
feats of others. As a result of these experiments, he takes 
pleasure and satisfaction in repeating those activities in which 
he does relatively well, and he is annoyed by and tends to dis- 
continue the activities in which he does poorly. 

Another reason youth seems to us to be so impulsive is that 
the young person is impressed by the fact that he has not yet had 
all the varied experiences that older persons have usually had. 
There are so many activities the youth has not yet experienced, 
and he is so anxious to be able to claim experience in every type 
of activity that he seems to rush headlong, first in one direction 
and then in another, without stopping to ask for information or 
to heed it if it is offered. 

Many a youth in high school still wonders whether the world 
may not, after all, be organized in a great conspiracy to deceive, 
entertain, or thwart him. It is very difficult to deceive young 
people regarding one’s real character, however, for they seem to 
be extremely sensitive to the personal attitudes and deep-set feel- 
ings of those around them. A parent or teacher may think he is 
cleverly concealing an unfriendly or unsympathetic attitude, but 
a youth will in most cases sense much more than the spoken word 
expresses. The youth is particularly sensitive to personal rela- 
tionships, injustices, and hypocrisy. 

Young people of high-school age are usually quite idealistic 
in their attitudes, but they are easily made cynical by evidences 
of sham and hypocrisy in those who teach them. While there is 
probably no other period in life during which it is easier to win 
a person to a life of self-sacrifice and helpful service to humanity, 
it is at the same time easier to drive him to a life of anti-social and 
selfish activities than at any other period. Sincerity, directness, 
and justice are almost certain to win the respect of a high-school 
youth, but the absence of these traits will make it practically im- 
possible for one to gain either his confidence or his respect. 

One characteristic of youth which must never be overlooked 
is intense desire for individual recognition. Public applause may 
temporarily embarrass a youth, especially if it comes unexpectedly, 
but? every? normal youth has a strong desire to be recognized 




















10 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


as an individual of real significance and worth. To be merely a 
member of a certain family, school, or team is not usually very 
satisfying, unless the group to which one belongs has been given 
some distinctive recognition. It appears, however, that this de- 
sire to be recognized as an individual of importance is not a char- 
acteristic of youth only. Evidences of this yearning for individual 
recognition appear early in childhood and persist throughout life, 
but the trait is so powerful and so important in dealing with young 
people that it should never be overlooked. 

Youth has many other important characteristics, but a 
sufficient number of them has been presented to indicate the gen- 
eral nature of youth as an educational problem. If youth implies 
all of these traits, then what does living in the country imply? 
How is rural youth different from urban youth? Does the country 
youth have less energy, or is his energy more effectively concen- 
trated upon the achievement of purposes than is the energy of 
the city youth? Only, I think, in the sense that the country is 
likely to provide more definite and earlier assignments of respon- 
sibility for work than is the city. Given the same freedom from 
work responsibilities, country youth would exhibit just as much 
excess energy and use it just as ineffectively as city youth. 

In a similar manner, I do not see that any trait in the list of 
characteristics mentioned above is much more applicable to youth 
in the city than to those in the country. A youth of high-school 
age, whether rural or urban, is impulsive, is somewhat bewildered 
by the great variety of new interests, emotions, and abilities that 
are crowding into his life, is anxious to enlarge his range of experi- 
ences, tends to look for personal implications in all that he ex- 
periences, is naturally idealistic, but is very sensitive to insincerity 
and easily becomes cynical, and is constantly anxious to be recog- 
nized as an individual of distinctive worth. The fundamental 
nature, desires, and impulses of urban and rural youth are the 
same, I believe, and we must search elsewhere if we are to discover 
significant differences in the educational needs of these two groups, 

Are there, then, any important differences in the basic prob- 
lems to be faced in life by urban and rural youth? Are the 
problems of physical health and safety likely to be different for 
the rural youth than for the city youth? If the rural youth would 
only stay on the farm and the urban youth in the city, there 
might be some slight differences in the education needed for main- 
taining health and safety in the two groups. They will not stay, 
however. The city people insist on going to the country for 
holidays and vacations, and the country folk insist on going to 
the city for various purposes. From a community health point 
of view, the city youth needs to understand how to preserve life 










1938 ] ADJUSTING SECONDARY EDUCATION 


and health in the country, and the rural youth needs to under- 
stand how to avoid accidents and disease in the city. 

So far as any differences do exist in the fundamental problems 
of family and emotional life, I believe the rural youth has some 
slight advantage over the urban youth. Because families live 
farther apart in the country, and because the members of a family 
are more dependent upon each other for codperation than upon 
tradespeople and special workers belonging to other families, it 
should be somewhat easier for the rural youth than for the city 
youth to recognize the importance of mutual tolerance and help- 
fulness in the family and to cultivate the other domestic virtues. 
The same line of argument would probably be valid for the prob- 
lems of social and political organization. Since economic condi- 
tions are simpler in the country, and fewer complicating factors 
exist to hide the real nature of social problems, rural youth should 
find it possible to see more clearly the elements in the situations 
that arise and to gain greater confidence in their own judgments 
regarding the issues of community organization and control. 

Does this slight advantage of rural over urban youth exist 
also when they face economic and vocational problems? I doubt 
it very much. While the same forces are affecting these problems 
in the city and in the country, changes in occupations are taking 
place in the city much more rapidly than in the country. The 
breaking down of productive processes into repetitive routines 
has gone much further in the mills and shops of the city, but a 
large part of the labor supply for these routine operations in city 
plants is being recruited from the country. The flow of young 
labor from the country to city is in normal times much greater 
than the flow from city to country, partly because of lower birth- 
rates in the city, partly because the whole country is tending to 
become urbanized, and partly for other reasons. We may dis- 
approve of this drift of youth from rural to urban areas, but it 
will undoubtedly continue. If our rural young people are to com- 
pete on equal terms with their city cousins, they must have avail- 
able in their rural schools just as adequate sources of information 
about their own qualifications, and about the requirements of 
both rural and urban occupations, as are available in the city 
schools. Adequate occupational diagnosis, information, and guid- 
ance is equally necessary in urban and rural secondary schools. 

If urban and rural young people do not differ greatly in their 

-native characteristics, nor in the basic problems of human ad- 
justment that they must expect to meet in life, from what sources 
do their differences in educational needs arise? Do rural pupils 
learn under different conditions or by different methods than city 
pupils? I have never found, any evidence that the geography or 




















12 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


residence has any effect whatever upon the conditions that affect 
learning, if ability and preparation are equalized. It is true that 
we have usually given rural children shorter school terms, less 
adequate libraries, laboratories, buildings, equipment, teachers, 
supervisors, and health facilities, but where these factors and the 
hereditary factors of native ability are equalized, the rural pupil 
learns and adapts himself to new conditions in exactly the same 
ways that are effective with the city pupil. 

If my study of the problem may be trusted, the chief differ- 
ences in the educational needs of rural and urban secondary-school 
pupils arise, not from differences in their native qualities and char- 
acteristics, not from differences in the basic problems of human 
adjustment that they must solve, and not from differences in their 
possible contributions and services to society, but from variations 
in the backgrounds of experience they have already acquired from 
school and from daily life. The needs of a typical rural pupil 
are different from the needs of a typical city pupil chiefly because 
both have not already learned the same things. The country 
pupil has learned some things from his daily life that the city 
child will probably have to learn at school, and the city child has 
learned from experiences some things that the country child may 
learn at school. Effective education in either case must begin with 
the pupil where he is and make progress in those directions that are 
appropriate for him. 

Objective measurements of achievement, ability, interest, 
personality, or vocational aptitudes would show far greater 
variations among the fourteen-year-old children in a rural high 
school, or in a city high school, than would be shown between the 
average child of that age in the rural school and the average child 
of that age in the city school. There can be no doubt that living 
in the country and going to country schools has produced some 
differences in experience and in knowledge between the typical 
rural child and his cousin who has lived in the city and attended 
city schools, but these differences between typical pupils in the 
two situations are much less important educationally than the 
larger differences that exist among the pupils who have been going 
to the same school together for years in either situation. The 
intelligent adjustment of secondary education to the school needs 
of typical rural youth would produce, I believe, almost identically 
the same institution that would be produced by adjusting second- 
ary education to the real needs of typical urban youth. Whether 
a school is in the city or in the country, it should begin with each 
pupil where he actually is, rather than at some point that repre- 
sents the average for his age, color, or community. 




























1938] ADJUSTING SECONDARY EDUCATION 13 


It is impossible to adjust secondary education effectively 
to the needs of any youth without determining first what those 
needs are. It seems foolish to me to assume that because a boy 
lives in the country he should be trained to be a farmer or that 
because a girl has been graduated from the elementary school she 
should begin to study algebra and French. Some of the boys who 
live in the country would probably be found to need instruction 
in agriculture if they were carefully studied, and it is even possible 
that some girls would be found by intelligent diagnoses to need 
algebra and French, but real needs must be determined rather than 
assumed. If there is any institution that should be expected to 
proceed upon the basis of definite knowledge and intelligence, it 
would seem to me to be the public high school. Whether the 
pupils come from the country or from the city does not give the 
institution a right to act blindly and to make unchecked assump- 
tions regarding the educational needs of their students. 

Adjusting secondary education to the needs of rural youth, 
from this point of view, cannot mean the mere substitution of 
some other uniform curriculum for the one that has been in opera- 
tion. Even the provision of a half-dozen alternative curricula 
for the old one would not be an intelligent adjustment. Intelli- 
gent adjustment, whether in rural or in city schools, must be based 
upon the carefully determined needs of the individuals to be 
educated. 

What we need first, if secondary education is to be adjusted 
to the needs of individual young persons, is a full recognition by 
everyone concerned that both the immediate and ultimate educa- 
tional needs of individuals differ somewhat, even though these 
young individuals may be in the same rural high school, in the 
same room, and in approximately the same year of life. We must 
have available in each high school a few thoroughly competent 
diagnosticians to determine the educational needs of each of the 
pupils, in order that the staff may be able to administer in each 
case the most appropriate treatment. 

In the typical rural secondary school to-day we usually find 
one teacher who is supposed to be a specialist in administering 
history, while another specializes in giving mathematics, another 
in English, and soon. The pupil entering this school finds a pre- 
scribed list of things to take, or he may perhaps be asked to choose 
one of three or four lists without being given adequate information 
about his own individual needs, or about the relations of these 
alternative lists to his own individual needs. As a matter of fact, 
these persons frequently show little interest in whether a given 
pupil needs help or not. One teacher is concerned about the facts 
of history, whether the pupil uses effective language in presenting 











14 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


these facts or not, and another is concerned with giving the facts 
and principles of chemistry, regardless of whether a particular 
pupil needs chemistry or cooking. If the needs of individual pupils 
were foremost in the minds of all members of the school staff and 
competent diagnosticians were constantly studying these needs, 
those who specialize in administering a certain type of educational 
treatment would be far more successful in their efforts and those 
who take the treatments would really benefit by them. If we 
honestly want secondary education to be adjusted to the needs 
of our rural youth, we will make adequate provisions for deter- 
mining what the needs of individual rural youth actually are. 

I recognize, as well as you do, that it would cost more to em- 
ploy a competent educational diagnostician than to employ an 
ordinary one. Much could be done along this line at relatively 
little expense by merely changing the emphasis in our schools 
from the subject-matter fields to pupil needs. If we will only 
consider the waste in effort, time, and money that now occurs 
because we try to teach pupils so many things they do not need 
and cannot learn, I am sure that the addition of at least one ex- 
pert diagnostician for every eight or ten classrooms would mean 
a great saving of money per unit of actual learning. Furthermore, 
I see no possible way to adjust secondary education to the real 


needs of rural youth, without first making definite provisions for 
determining what each pupil really needs. 





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ARE THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES 
HELPING THE YOUNG WOMAN TO FIND HER PLACE 
IN THE PRESENT SOCIAL ORDER? 


META GLASS, President 
Sweet Briar College, Virginia 


It is an exceedingly difficult task to tell whether schools are 
fitting persons for their roles in the present social order. In the 
first place, there is no agreement on what is intrinsic and what is 
accidental in society; nor on what the individual’s place is in 
society; nor on how much influence schools have in any final posi- 
tion an individual may take. If we consider young women, we 
must add to this a long standing belief, or supposition if you prefer 
to call it so, that women have a special place in society and we 
have a question so large and so vague that it is only possible to 
posit some characteristics for both society and women and tell 
in a tendential way whether schools are moving in that direction— 
a qualitative analysis of their work with only inaccurate quantita- 
tive indications. And yet the task seems worth trying in order 
that we may know what to emphasize, what to drop, a little 
better in what proportion to combine, and, above all, how to 
approach what we do that its validity may not be negated by 
poor achievement. 

What is a young woman’s place in present-day society? 
First, we recognize her as a thinking, feeling, acting individual, 
with the same need for clear, disciplined, effective thinking as 
men have. There are large areas in which men and women are 
alike, practically exactly alike, and this is an alikeness which I 
see more and more as I grow older. The areas in which they differ 
are narrow and sufficiently marked for us to be almost able to 
entrust to natural promptings their special cultivation. The 
same is true, of course, with regard to feeling. 

All this is entirely obvious and has always been true, but it 
is so fundamental and so easily forgotten in the concern with 
upper layers of the shifting, with the self-conscious magnifying of 
one’s own time, that it is wise to remind ourselves when we ap- 
proach to-day that in only a very limited sense is it not yesterday 
or to-morrow. 

But also she has, from many and complex causes, a special 
affiliation for human relations. Of course, she has the same 
fange of human relations that every one has, but she is apt to be 
discerning, sensitive to shades of significance, congenial to this 
field, rather than irked by it, and, in the same proportion espec- 


15 











16 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


ially useful to society in developing right relations in this area. 
She has the chance to be as unthinking, as emotionally undisci- 
plined, as spasmodic in action here as anywhere else in her life, 
and, to the degree that she so behaves, she is marring what might 
be a particular contribution to present-day society. 

We all recognize ours as a day marked by confusing relation- 
ships. What is the proper relationship of children to their parents, 
of grown sons and daughters to their older parents, of married 
couples to each other on a social and economic basis that is shift- 
ing visibly? What is the just and productive relationship be- 
tween householders and their servants, between them and trades- 
people, even between them and delivery boys? The proper rela- 
tionship has rarely been better described than by saying: ‘“The 
arch sin against my brother is to use him as a thing; for he is a 
person.”’ The application of that viewpoint, supplemented with 
as much understanding as possible of the complications and impli- 
cations of dealing with persons as independent personalities, is 
rich investment for society in a young woman’s education. 

I have started with her more intimate relationships, but 
human relations extend for her to-day into municipal, rural, 
state, and national spheres. Women do less with the conquest 
of nature and the securing of natural resources for human use. 
They do not mine coal or work steel nor build railways, tunnels, 
bridges, and houses, nor dam streams and purvey electricity. 
They work less with things than with people, and have more time as 
well as greater congeniality for the cultivation of human relations. 
This should be capitalized for society’s sake in municipal and 
public housekeeping, in the solution of social, educational, and 
political problems. 

Plainly society cannot entrust to women these highly im- 
portant tasks, which they might do particularly well, unless 
women are given all possible knowledge and understanding that 
would produce wisdom in doing the tasks. Human relationships 
do not exist in a vacuum; they arise in connection with our con- 
quest of nature, in all of the reaches of science and work, in the 
progress of civilization, in the discernment of the goal toward 
which it travels. The difficulty about solutions arising from 
women of problems of human relations up to now has largely been 
that, realizing this congeniality of approach, we have been con- 
tent to rely too far upon it, tried to use it as a sort of an uncanny 
sixth sense, and realized only low productive use of it. It takes 
broad education to ballast it, but so ballasted it is too valuable for 
society to forego. 

There is another thing that we must remember about young 
‘women. They are purveyors of happiness or misery at high 





1938] ARE THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES HELPING? 17 


temperature, both dangerous explosives. As much as can be 
learned about the deep sources of happiness and its obverse, 
misery, belongs in a young woman’s education. Right human 
relations, of course, underlie it. This is true for herself and for 
the persons who know their dependence upon her. We are all 
familiar with the investigations that show crippled personnel 
adjustments in industry and business and consequent economic 
difficulties that strikingly accompany, if they are not solely pro- 
duced by, unhappy domestic relations. For the sake of other 
people, young women should be led to recognize how far their 
own emotional adjustments ramify, and early learn to go far be- 
yond personal happiness at a given moment as a sufficient guide 
to action. In proportion as their influence is great, so is their 
responsibility here, 

For her own sake as well as for that of others, a young woman 
should have an understanding not only of the sources of happiness 
in human relations, but other sources from which she may draw 
and to which she may direct others. Many of these we have 
noticeably neglected in the last generation and they need to be 
emphasized and developed. Joy in work well done is one of the 
most easily tapped sources of the raw material of happiness and 
it yields a quiet, steady supply. Whatever can be done in educa- 
tion to reveal this abundance to students is good education. 
There has been such eagerness to improve, speed up, depersonalize 
work that we have lost, along with much poor, back-breaking, 
dulling drudgery, the realization of intrinsic quality that can re- 
deem work. Much of our mechanical routine will yield little of 
it. There is less chance for genuine satisfaction in holding a shoe 
for a machine to clamp on its sole than in designing, cutting, 
moulding, fitting that same sole to the shoe by hand. This, of 
course, does not mean that we must cast aside shoe-making 
machinery and return to hand cobbling. It does mean that educa- 
tion must now consciously arouse in persons the value of quality, 
which the nature of the task used to arouse. 

Of a keener, more far-reaching kind is the happiness to be 
got from designing and making things of recognized beauty. A 
young woman should know the inherent satisfaction in seeing 
appreciatively tapestry, painting, sculpture; and the larger satis- 
faction of doing these things herself acceptably-to-excellently. 
In revolt against an era of bad taste and poor workmanship which at 

“its worst prompted young women to cover small jugs with put ty 
and bits of colored glass, we characteristically fled in the opposite 
direction and grew afraid of suggesting artistic expression to any 
but an already proved genius, and of her we grew suspicious. 
If artistic creation produces no more than an encounter with the 











18 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


permanent values of aesthetic principles and some appreciation 
of the problems to be met, it will still have made a person whose 
capacity for pleasure in looking upon good work is greater than 
it would have been without the trials. From a plane of general 
artistic appreciation and some competence rise the peaks of fine 
performance. What I have said of the plastic arts is true of 
music, whether we listen to it or perform it or compose it. And 
more than this, they with poetry and to a lesser degree the dance, 
have quality that made the ancients early recognize the bard as 
the seer. They have a directness to the core of reality and can 
from this deep source inform all living, which is the real function 
of art, and produce a rare kind of happiness even in the realm 
of tragedy. 

So far I have said nothing about making a living either by 
money wages or by wages in kind. To find her place in the pre- 
sent social order, a young woman has to realize that she must be 
able to do worth-while work in the world. Look for a moment, 
however, at the kind of young women we have been educating: 
one who has learned the necessity of thinking clearly and some- 
thing of how to do it, who recognizes the dynamo of emotions of 
which she is in charge, and something of how to control it, who 
knows the deep-lying importance of correct human relationships— 
yes, even to the casual delivery boy—and who understands the 
value of quality in work and the revivifying outlets in creative 
work. Then grant that she is a young woman and must expect to 
learn any particular job by bringing all these assets to play in 
dead earnest upon learning the needed technique in good old 
apprentice fashion without the apprentice abuses. Would you 
hesitate to employ such a young woman for any job open to the 
young? What young women need for special jobs in the present 
social order is the firm conviction that what the job demands they 
must get, and then keep it up to date. 

Now how can the school fit a person for her place? Primarily 
by guiding into knowledge of the physical world in which we live and 
of the organic nature of the society of man which should come 
from an acquaintance with his efforts and failures from the primi- 
tive times beloved of anthropology to the era of New Deals of 
one kind or another wherever governments have developed; by 
guiding into knowledge of our own nature, in its religious, aesthe- 
tic, reasoning, and physical reaches; and in this guiding be develop- 
ing an ability to think, to feel, to act harmoniously toward a 
goal. We would have the young woman recognize and accept her 
role of codperation in an organic and interdependent society— 
have a large share of the good old responsibility on which a satis- 
factory life is grounded. She must recognize always the need all 





1938 ] ARE THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES HELPING? 19 


her life long of continuing to learn, consciously seeking new en- 
lightenment and knowledge in the face of new problems, and old 
ones, too, for that matter. She must have resourcefulness in the 
face of change. And she must periodically, beginning in her 
school days but by no means ending there, find the meaningful- 
ness in her life that affords the conviction necessary for motive 
power. This means that she must have a tenable hypothesis of 
what life means and the relation of her life to other life, for with- 
out such a view it is too difficult for anyone to live vigorously and 
effectively. She should also realize that her hypothesis will, we 
trust, gradually change as life goes on in minor and major respects, 
and she should be ready to welcome such change. This calls for 
a nice balance between acting on conviction and letting conviction 
modify itself in the face of new facts, but then living is the main- 
tenance of a nice balance from the physical spheres right on to 
the highest spiritual reaches. A young woman should know this, 
and know it early. This guiding into knowledge in the schools 
can be promoted and hindered in countless ways. 

There are a few points on which I venture suggestions. For the 
young, and the younger the more necessarily, the guides must seem 
to know the way, to understand, to live by what they say is good. 
It is our burden and at the same time our chance for the most 
satisfaction that we shall ever get out of our work, that we are 
of great importance in the success of aschool. And yet, the teach- 
er is not all. Everyone of us can remember learning to our own 
satisfaction and profit things that have stayed with us through 
the years under a teacher who did so many things wrong that by 
rights we should have learned nothing. This is testimony to the 
compelling power of knowledge. Knowledge is something we 
minister to—we do not create it. I was late in feeling the appeal 
of poetry and getting an insight into its power. It all came alive 
to me in my first graduate study one summer under a man who 
read much of it aloud to us in a low, mumbling, unpleasant voice 
and who used an awkward gesture in place of any interpretation. 
Such conditions would not have achieved it for me when I was 
younger. As we grow older, it becomes easier to recognize a 
significant truth when uttered by a person who neither really 
values it nor practices it. This, however, is not a goal of good 
teaching. These things that the young woman must do we teach- 
ers must do, and constantly re-do in the fact of our own living to 

- be effective guides. 

The all-important cultivation of attitudes, the most per- 
manent part of an education, results from the nature of knowledge 
itself, the way it is presented, the values shown in it, and upon 
illustrative action. The school life is an unseamed part of all the 




















20 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


rest of life. It is in the things that one naturally does in school 
that the knowledge, attitudes, and ideals that emerge from teach- 
ing should be made to prevail. But there are many other educa- 
tive agencies than the schools, and I for one, am all in favor of 
leaving to them what they can do especially well and even helping 
them to do half-way jobs better, rather than in drawing under the 
aegis of the school every activity that is recognized as educative. 
The school becomes top-heavy. It takes over this and that be- 
cause it seems to be neglected or poorly done. There is a very 
good chance that when so much is taken over, it will likewise be 
poorly done in the school. It seems to me a sounder way to lead 
intelligent, thinking, disciplined young persons into activities 
organized or unorganized outside the school, to accustom them 
to taking part in the things that will go on for them after school 
years, with a sense of responsibility to make the outside and 
continuing agency do its work. Wherever an already organized 
agency, even if its conditions are not as ideal as we would have 
them, exists for activity illustrative of right living, I should en- 
courage students to make use of that agency, with discernment 
and courage to contribute to its efficiency rather than set up an- 
other in school. Throw students with quickened perceptions 
and awakened responsibility back upon their homes, the Church, 
civic life, the Girl Scouts, Home Demonstration, and other interest 
clubs with courage and a willingness to tackle a stiff problem, and 
society will be the gainer as well as the young person whose 
achievement here has for her a reality not so recognizable in a 
school promoted setup. 

The attitude of the school toward such agencies should, I 
believe, be one of thankfulness that these agencies exist to help 
cover a field too great for the school alone; a generous recognition 
of good work and special fitness at so many points and of stragetic 
position for continuation; a hearty codéperation by sending 
them young members informed, disciplined, and awakened by 
the school’s more concentrated training. This seems to me the 
most effective way of fitting young women, or young men 
either, for their place in the present social order. 

I have made no distinction between the secondary and college 
periods. Not many distinctions need to be made, I believe, in 
the general picture I have drawn. College training ought to go 
deeper and so, when the absolutely necessary, tools of further 
knowledge have been safeguarded in'the program of the secondary 
school, I think the secondary school can go over a wider area, - 
touch the many things all persons ought to be conscious of, open 
many doors at least a crack, and leave to the college upper stages 
of specific fields of knowledge, even the first glimpse of such fields 









1938] ARE THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES HELPING? 21 


as psychology and philosphy except as this knowledge informs 
other approaches. It must also look to the college for increasing 
the sense of the oneness of knowledge and facility in making corre- 
lations—and to the college and technical schools to furnish instruc- 
tion in specific skills, except here and there in a rudimentary form. 

If the college, or for that matter the school, is residential, 
there must be in the school more chance for illustrative activity, 
but, even here, to take part in an outside activity is better than 
to organize a parallel. When the school is in a city, like a public 
high school, the setup of illustrative activities in school can be 
cut to a minimum and the energy necessary for their conduct put 
upon sending promising members into outside organizations. 

Are the schools and colleges helping the young woman to 
find her place in the present social order? Some are and someare not. 
All, even the best, are only approaching what they could do. In 
so far as they are stressing the ephemeral and shifting, the imme- 
diate techniques, in so far as they are falling in with false and un- 
desirable emphases in our present-day society instead of showing 
how to right them—they are not helping to fit young persons for 
their places. In so far as they guide into knowledge, developing 


powers of thinking, understanding one’s self and the world, and 


into control of emotions with skill in human relations, a respect 
for an acquaintance with roads to happiness for self and others 
—in so far are they helping. Helping is a good word, because 
the school must ever remember how many other agencies can and 
do also help. 

We teachers need courage and insight gained through con- 
stant study and trial of the better way, and a conscious effort to 
make the values we proclaim prevail in our own lives. That is 
far enough to go. The student must see and know but, after all, 
she must be free to reject and find a better way; or reject and fail. 


That is her inalienable right. 














THE JUNIOR COLLEGE AND GENERAL EDUCATION 


JAMES M. WOOD 
President, Stephens College, Columbia, Missiouri 

When one speaks of the junior college, three different types 
of institutions suggest themselves. All are expressions of the 
junior-college idea, but they vary in their curriculum programs 
and in the purposes which they serve. 

The public junior college, which accommodates a large group 
of students who might otherwise be deprived of educational oppor- 
tunity beyond the limits of the local high school, must necessarily 
think in terms of courses which will round out the educational 
equipment of students in their preparation to face life as competent 
citizens, economically and socially. Only in so far as the public 
junior college is dominated by the university, which seeks to im- 
pose a curriculum comparable to its own academic and pre-pro- 
fessional curriculum of the freshman-sophomore years, does it 
need to consider itself the funnel through which potential bacca- 
laureate candidates are poured into the traditional scheme of 
liberal arts training or academic and pre-professional specializa- 
tion. For the public junior college, the so-called ‘terminal’ 
course assumes major importance if the college is to fulfill its 
obligation to that great group of students for which it is theoret- 
ically designed. Unfortunately, the “hands-off” policy has not 
been widely practised in defining the relationship between the 
public junior college and the universities and senior colleges which 
represent the advanced and specialized field of learning. There- 
fore, in many public junior colleges to-day the objective of general 
education, usually conceded to be the rightful sphere of junior- 
college effort, is only a thin mask for the traditional prerequisites 
set up by specialized and professional institutions. 

A second type of junior college is that in which the pre- 
professional aim is dominant. It is usually fostered by a univer- 
sity and is often an integral part of the university organization. 
It serves as a sifting device for professional schools of law, medi- 
cine, and engineering and for advanced specialized work in the 
traditional branches of scholarship. Both content and method 
are largely determined by the rigid requirements of university 
authorities, and scant attention is paid to those fields of lay inter- 
est which contribute to the competency of living, except as com- 
petency is interpreted in terms of economic independence or acade- 
mic distinction. Clearly, there is little place in such an institution 
for the terminal course, and whatever general education is accom- 


22 





~ CP Gee TH 45 FH mw 


1938] THE JUNIOR COLLEGE AND GENERAL EDUCATION 23 


plished through the rigidly prescribed curriculum is incidental 
rather than purposive. 

The third type of junior college is the type which accepts 
_ frankly the theory of general education as its basis of practice. 
It is found in greatest numbers among the private junior colleges, 
which are free, to a certain extent, from the system of subject- 
matter “articulation” which so strongly influences the programs 
of the other two types. This statement must not convey the 
implication that the private junior college does not also have its 
troubles in satisfying the more or less arbitrary “regulations” 
set up by senior colleges to which its students apply for admission. 
But, in the main, the private junior college has addressed itself 
earnestly to the problem of general education. It has not been 
afraid to define its purpose in terms of education for the layman 
or the consumer instead of education for the specialist or the 
producer. It has subjected the content and organization of the 
curriculum to critical examination and has challenged the right 
of certain subject-matter courses to a place in the program of 
general education without functional adaptation of content and 
method to conform to the broader aims of the institution. It is 
here that terminal courses find their most fertile field. It is 


here that really constructive work is being done in exploring the 
possibilities of a general education program which will make for 
effective and well-rounded living in those “functional” areas in 
which the interests and needs of their students lie. 


The only sound approach to the reorganization of curriculum 
content and administration in the junior college is an open-minded 


analysis of activities and needs. Stephens College, in attempting 
to arrive at functional organization, focused its attention, not upon 
the stabilized and departmentalized subject matter inherited from 
the liberal arts college of the nineteenth century, but upon the 
student for whom the educational agencies of the college exist. 
It explored the problems of adult women; it catalogued their 
acknowledged activities and their expressed needs, and formulated 
a seven-fold objective (the functional areas of the curriculum) 
toward which to direct an integrated program of instruction. 

This does not mean that high standards of achievement are 
not expected, but it is an achievement that lies beyond scholar- 
ship and finds its justification in purpose—in the relation which 
achievement bears to the total personality growth of the individual 
student on campus. General education, as it is conceived by the 
junior coilege, utilizes the products of scholarship and applies 
them, through intelligent mastery and understanding, to human 


needs. 











DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


“Studentship,” therefore, becomes more important than 
“scholarship” in its narrower meaning. And for that reason, 
at Stephens College the faculty endeavors to analyze the quality 
and achievement of successful students and to rate each student 
according to the degree in which these qualities are present. 
Education, then, becomes growth under guidance rather than 
routine, periodic testing. Competitive scholarship, as a kind of 
exhibitionism, is replaced by individual development in the direc- 
tion of acknowledged needs. In the student’s consciousness a 
“personality goal chart’”’ looms as clearly as the customary examin- 
tion mark. 

Assuming that a college staff feels free to explore the content 
and methods of general education, what basic information is 
necessary to satisfactory curriculum readjustment? First of all, 
it must define clearly those fields of activity in which it wishes 
its graduates to be proficient. It may select, for example, on 
the basis of its analysis of general need, such areas as communica- 
tion, aesthetic appreciation, the science of health, and social 
adjustment. Then, definitely resisting the temptations to make 
specialists of its students, it must approach these areas with the 
inquiry: “What knowledge, what abilities, what attitudes do 
students need in order to participate effectively in the life about 
them?” An examination of communicational need may reveal 
not only the usual activities of written and oral expression but 
also the assimilative skills of reading and listening. It may lead 
into the communicational aspects of radio and moving pictures, 
into analysis of propaganda, into speech diagnosis and improve- 
ment. But wherever it leads, the college must have the courage 
to follow with whatever ingenuity it may possess for devising 
courses of study and organizing functional content for instruction. 
To be sure, it may need to sacrifice some of the time hitherto 
accorded to the rhetorical disciplines of narration and description. 
If it cannot do this without wincing, it has not yet achieved its 
emancipation from the spell of subject matter for its own sake. 

In addition to the evaluation of content and the reorganiza- 
tion of subject matter within the various subject fields, it is neces- 
sary to modify the administration of the curriculum in such a 
way as to emphasize the inter-relationships within the total pro- 
gram of study. The time-honored departmental system is too 
often a “compartmental” system. If an inter-play of understand- 
ings is necessary to satisfactory progress in the social studies, 
then the so-called “departments” of history, of sociology, of econo- 
mics, must be under coérdination and unified direction; like- 
wise art, literature, and music must be administered through a unify- 
ing organization which will contribute to effective integration in 





1988] THE JUNIOR COLLEGE AND GENERAL EDUCATION 25 


the humanities. For, in spite of a host of warped meanings which 


soon attach themselves to a newly popularized term in education, 
the psychological importance of integration remains fundamental 
in the process of general training. 

The junior college, therefore, which proposes to do an effective 
job of general education must find some way to carry into practice 
the theory of the integration of learning. A number of colleges, 
including Stephens, are experimenting with the divisional, as 
opposed to the departmental, plan of organization. At Stephens 
the divisions are (1) the division of humanities, (2) the division 
of social studies, (3) the division of natural sciences, (4) the division 
of skills and techniques, and (5) the division of extra-class life. 
Whether or not the administrative divisions should be made to 
parallel exactly the seven functional areas which the college has 
selected for exploration is a problem which is now being considered. 
On the basis of our experience, we are convinced of the advantages 
of the division-type organization. 

We should not consider going back to the specialized depart- 
mental units. Our problem is to improve the organization and 
administration of the divisions to the limits of their logical and 
practical possibilities. 

Perhaps, the greatest hazard to the junior-college program 
is the natural tendency of teachers, who themselves have been 
trained as subject-matter specialists, to regard the traditional 
content of their own fields as sacred in its own right. This instinct 
of departmental “loyalty’’ hangs like a descending snare over the 
modern liberalizing movements in general education. Add to 
this fact the regulative influence, exerted either consciously or 
unconsciously, by senior colleges and universities in an effort to 
guarantee arbitrary “pre-requisites” for advanced training, and 
we have the two major problems which confront the administra- 
tion of the modern junior college and which imperil the fortunes 
of general education. 


See Announcement, page 37. 











THE PROVINCE OF HIGH-SCHOOL JOURNALISM 


KENNETH E. OLSON 
Director, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University 

I should like to talk to you, not as the director of the Medill 
School of journalism or even as a teacher of journalism, but as a 
newspaper man who left active newspaper work, after some twenty 
years of experience, just a few weeks ago and is now faced with 
this whole problem of education for journalism. I think I know 
something about your part in that problem for, as an advisor to 
the National Scholastic Press Association, I have had for many 
years a close contact with your work, and I think I have a sympa- 
thetic understanding of the job you are trying to do. 

But, as a practical newspaperman, I have to view this prob- 
lem from the standpoint of the needs of the press. There is no 
question but that our press to-day needs better-educated, better- 
trained newspapermen than it has ever needed before. These 
serious economic, political, and social problems which our news- 
papers to-day must attempt to interpret to their readers demand 
more than a mere knowledge of the techniques of the craft; they 
demand the very best all-around education that can be brought 
to the profession. 

In this democracy of ours no agency plays a more important 
part in determining what our people think and believe, in shaping 
social attitudes and raising social standards, than does the news- 
paper. The facts of daily life that regulate thought, business, 
ideals, and aspirations are current events and current opinion—and 
these are the commodities with which the newspaper deals. I 
have some serious doubts as to whether our editorial pages are 
any longer the molders of public opinion they once were, but that 
is not an unmixed evil. If our newspapers will but give their 
readers all the facts in their news columns, our readers will probably 
be capable of making up their own minds on public issues. They 
have done that in election after election. To-day, it is not so 
much the editorial page but rather the news that our papers 
carry in their news columns and the way in which that news is 
played which determines what our people think and believe. 

Sometimes I think that perhaps we newspapermen take our- 
selves too seriously, considering all the other media for public 
information existing to-day. Yet Gray and Munroe, in their 
recent study of the reading habits of American adults, found that 
54.6 per cent of all the time spent in reading by adults is devoted 
to the newspaper for most of their reading. 


26 





1938 ] THE PROVINCE OF HIGH-SCHOOL JOURNALISM 27 


Well, now, if it is true that newspapers play such an important 
role in our American life, is it not important that the men and 
women in whose hands the food of public opinion is to be entrusted 
be given the best possible professional training? 

If our press to-day is to do the kind of job it should do in 
interpreting the complex problems of the modern world, it must 
employ men and women who understand these problems. It can 
no longer be content with people who have inadequate educational 
backgrounds. I think that our professional schools of journalism 
will have to expand their programs to provide that kind of back- 
ground. I feel that our students should go out with not only a 
good background in English and literature but with a thorough 
grounding in American state and municipal government in order 
that they may deal intelligently with the news of government 
which they must handle every day. I think they should be thor- 
oughly familiar with European and American history, for they 
cannot deal intelligently with the stuff of which current history 
is made unless they understand the background out of which 
current history has grown and can see current events in the light 
of the lessons of the past. They should know not only economic 
theory but the practical applications of that theory to monetary 
problems, prices, tariffs, domestic and international trade, public 
finance, state and local taxation, public utilities, and labor prob- 
lems. They ought to have more than a speaking acquaintance 
with problems of social welfare, crime, poverty, poor relief, and 
the social pathology of our urban and rural communities. These 
economic, social, and political questions are front-page news in 
our papers to-day. How can our people do an intelligent job of 
reporting and interpreting this news without that kind of back- 
ground? 

Now we who are in education have a definite responsibility 
to the press—we in the universities and you in the high schools— 
and it seems to me that your responsibility in the high schools 
is to see that you do not professionalize your work to such an ex- 
tent that your students will be encouraged to seek entry into the 
newspaper profession immediately after high school. The news- 
paper business is overcrowded at the bottom with poorly paid 
people who have not the equipment and background to work up 
out of these ruts. Do not let your high-school students plunge 
directly into this field unless you want to condemn them to stay 
in these poorly paid ruts at the bottom. Our publishers are no 
different from any other employers. Many of them will hire 
cheap help if they can get it. They will take on a high-school 
boy who can live at home and is willing to work for ten or twelve 
dollars a week. But it is wrong for your students to take that 











28 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


kind of job—they are wronging themselves, and the man who hires 
them is wronging his profession, for he is beating down the salary 
level of the whole profession and is lowering the quality of our 
newspapers. If you have any students who really have the stuff 
to make the grade in newspaper work, urge them to go on to college 
or to a university to get the kind of education they will need if 
they want to get anywhere in this newspaper business. 

Now please do not think that in saying that I am making 
a bid for more students for our schools of journalism. We have 
too many applicants now, and our job in the next few years must 
be one of careful weeding and the selection of those whom we con- 
sider capable of profiting from professional training. 

Schools of journalism are the newest of our professional 
schools—a development of the last thirty years. Fora long time 
newspapermen thought that newspaper work could not be taught. 
A newspaperman was born, not made. He just appeared out of 
the woodwork somewhere, got an assignment, and from then on 
he was a newspaperman until he drank himself to death. Those 
views were shared quite generally by both the press and the gen- 
eral public. 

Now this may sound like heresy, coming from me, but I 
think there is a lot to that idea that newspapermen are born, not 
made. Certainly it is work that requires very special aptitudes. 
Too many of the young men and women from your high schools 
who come to our universities intent on journalism are, I am afraid, 
attracted by the romance and glory that is supposed to be attached 
to this newspaper business. They have seen newspaper movies, 
read books containing reminiscences of foreign correspondents, 
or have had a lot of fun working on their high-school publications. 
But the newspaper profession is a very exacting call. It is one 
to which many think they are called, but few are really chosen. 
And it seems to me that we in the schools of journalism and you 
in the high schools have a responsibility to the press in weeding 
out those who would be misfits in journalistic work and in encourag- 
ing only those who show special promise of success in this field 
to go into professional training. 

Now perhaps you are wondering why I am stressing the fact 
that high-school journalism should be kept to non-professional 
aspects. The chances are that most of you have no thought of 
offering professional training in your high-school journalism work. 
What I have said may not apply to you at all, and yet I was rather 
disturbed by the report that was brought to me early this week 
by one of our graduate students, who, to enable him to write hi 
doctor’s dissertation, is making a survey of high-school journalism 
in the United States. He reported that one out of every five 





19388 ] THE PROVINCE OF HIGH-SCHOOL JOURNALISM 29 


high-school teachers who have replied to his queries expressed the 
feeling that her objective was to qualify students to earn a living 
on newspapers after leaving high school. If that conception is 
anywhere nearly as prevalent as this study indicates, we have 
serious need of evaluating this high-school work in journalism and 
determining what its province should be. 

I think that journalism work in high schools has some very 
definite values. The publication of newspapers, yearbooks, and 
magazines has become one of the most important of our high- 
school extra-curriculum activities. And it is such a worth-while 
activity. As a means of vitalizing English instruction and of 
bringing to a point in practical application to everyday life the 
things learned in other courses, school publications are without 
equal. Writing news stories, feature stories, and editorials is so 
much more fun than merely writing abstract themes. Academic 
compositions are often purposeless, whereas journalistic writing 
provides a very definite“motivation for writing. And yet, while 
these students are having their fun, they are learning to think 
straight and to write clearly and interestingly. They are learning 
to gather, evaluate, and interpret significant information objec- 
tively. 

Educational thinkers, moreover, are emphasizing the fact 
that it is the business of the school to"provide pupils with actual 
life situations. Work on school publications offers such situations 
every day. 

I have always felt, furthermore, that no other work in school 
offers any greater possibilities for building character and good 
citizenship than does school publication work. No matter whether 
your students work on newspapers, yearbooks, or magazines, they 
are going to learn lessons in accuracy, punctuality, responsibility, 
perseverance, industry, honesty, and fair play. The putting out 
of any publication necessitates team play and codperation. It 
develops initiative and alertness. 

And the university educators have had ample evidence of 
the value of this training. It does not make any difference 
whether these high-school editors go into journalism, commerce, 
English, political science, history, chemistry, or any of the other 
departments of the university—they are so often the cream of 
the crop; somehow they have acquired greater mental alertness; 
they know what they are after; they have developed the qualities 
that make them better students. At Northwestern all new stu- 
dents have to take certain psychological tests, and the pre-journal- 
ism people, largely made up of former high-school editors, year 
after year have had higher scores than those of any other group in 
the university. 











DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


From the standpoint of the school and its faculty, student 
publications also have very definite values in unifying the school 
and fostering a healthy school spirit, in encouraging desirable 
school enterprises and activities, in influencing student opinion 
and providing a medium for the expression of that opinion, and 
in developing the interest of both students and their parents in 
the work of your school. Athletic teams, glee clubs, and dramatic 
clubs may represent your school in a more dramatic way, but 
your school publications probably develop better public relations 
between your school and its community than does any other 
activity. 

I think we should also recognize the value of a journalistic 
writing course in your curriculum as a means of creating greater 
interest in English composition and English literature courses. 
This might well be a “reward” course for those who have received 
approved records in other writing courses. It probably should 


not be offered in place of but in addition to the regular senior 
English courses for those students who have the capacity to profit 
from both. This course would take up the principal newspaper 
and magazine forms—the news story, the feature article, the 
editorial, and the critical article. But the emphasis, it seems 


to me, should be on writing; improving the student’s facility with 
language, improving his style, and encouraging his writing through 
the use of journalistic forms. Such a course should logically be 
tied up with work on student publications, and while you will 
have to teach them something about headline writing and make-up 
in order to help them get out their school newspapers, I do not 
think our high schools should go to the extent of offering formal 
courses under such professional titles as ““Reporting’’ and ‘‘Copy- 
reading.” Let us keep it a writing course, preferably in our Eng- 
lish departments. Let us not give these students an idea that they 
are getting professional training, or we shall be flooding the lower 
ranks of our profession with high-school boys and girls who have 
just enough of a smattering of technical knowledge to get jobs; and 
yet who are inadequately prepared for the serious demands of the 
newspaper profession. 

I think there is also a place for a newspaper-reading course 
designed to develop good habits in newspaper reading— the read- 
ing of the important and significant news—to the end that high- 
school students may be graduated with a more intelligent under- 
standing of the world about them. Such a course might also 
endeavor to develop in the minds of these young people an under- 
standing of the newspaper, its social functions, and the part that 
it plays in American and world affairs. 





1938 ] THE PROVINCE OF HIGH-SCHOOL JOURNALISM 31 


I well remember an incident in Milwaukee when I was work- 
ing on the Milwaukee Journal. The Men’s Club of one of our 
churches was holding a forum on newspapers. Our chief editorial 
writer was invited up to defend the press, and I went along with 
him to listen in. 

One after another, the members of the club got up and gave 
their criticisms of our papers. They said that our papers were 
filled with sensationalism; that they were feeding the public on 
salacious scandal—demoralizing character and depraving the 
mind. Important speeches on public affairs, they said, were cut 
down to a few meaningless paragraphs when they should have 
appeared in columns on the front page. The big spot of the attack 
centered around a certain sensational story that was just then 
running in the newspapers of the city—one of those triangle affairs, 
in which the life story of the “other woman” had been given a 
great deal of publicity. One of the members of the club main- 
tained that “‘the minutest details of the abominable allegation 
of human depravity had been pictured.” 

And then our editorial writer got to his feet. 

“How do you know it is printed in detail?” he inquired. 

“Why I’ve read it,’”’ said the club member. ‘“‘Haven’t we 


all read it?” 
“Exactly,” said our editorial writer, ‘“You’ve all read it, and 


what else have you read?” 

And the members of that group seemed to have a fairly ex- 
cellent knowledge of recent murders, divorces, scandals, and sports 
news. 
“And do you know,”’ continued our editorial writer, ‘that 
scattered all about these demoralizing columns, which really occupy 
only a small percentage of our space, are many other columns on 
taxation, city planning, forest conservation, unemployment insur- 
ance, business progress, human health, transportation problems, 
charitable efforts, and scientific achievements?” 

A blank look came over the faces of the members of the forum. 

“Do you read the speeches of informed men?” The message 
of the President of the United States had been printed in full a 


few nights before. 
Not a single man present had read more than the boxed 


summary, giving the high spots of that address. 
“Do you understand unemployment insurance, about which 
we’ve been printing a series of articles, running into many columns, 


for the past three weeks?” 
Some few thought they did. Two admitted glancing over 


one or two of the articles. 
Then our editorial writer lit into them. 

















32 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


“You complain of salacious scandal; yet that is the one thing 
you read in your papers. You ask for serious editorials; yet 
seldom look at them. But you read the comic strips through, from 
end to end. You expect civic consciousness on the part of the 
newspaper, and yet you shy away from reading a serious civic 
story as if you were afraid it might give you the smallpox. 

“No, the writers know better what you really want than you 
who moralize here do yourselves. But the newspaper writers 
know something else. They know how to teach you gradually 
to want what you now think you want. They know that by con- 
tinuing to feed those denied interests of yours with some scandal, 
some crime, and a lot of human-interest stories, comics, and fea- 
tures, you will read the newspapers they print and gradually, as 
you become better civilized, you will read less scandal and more 
constructive material. And they feed you sound, uplifting 
educational articles faster than you will take them.” 

Now, if such an indictment can be made of mature citizens, 
what shall we say of the students who usually start at the back 
end of the newspaper, read all the comic strips, and do the cross- 
word puzzles? If they are boys, they scan the sport page; if they 
are girls, they read ‘Advice to the Lovelorn” and a trashy serial 
story, and let the newspaper go at that. Weneed more intelligent 
citizens; men and women who will take an intelligent interest in the 
social, political,and economic news which our papers are trying 
to give them; who will take an interest in public affairs instead of 
leaving the management of them to the politicians. 

And such a reading course in our high schools—whether it be 
given in course number in English, history, or civics does not 
matter—might cultivate better newspaper-reading habits in our 
students and send them out as better citizens. Weekly discussions 
of important Washington news, foreign news, or state news can be 
developed on the basis of this kind of newspaper reading. Fre- 
quent news quizzes can be developed to check the student’s read- 
ing. By the end of the semester the student should be reading 
at least all the front-page news of political, social, and economic 
implication. He will then have the beginning of a desirable news- 
paper-reading habit. Such a course would require the prepara- 
tion of material with a mental resistance equal to that of a course 
in history—in fact, it will be history in the present tense. 

Such courses as these which I have outlined’are, it seems to 
me, within the province of high-school journalism. 























PROFESSIONAL DISCUSSION IN THE HIGH-SCHOOL 
FACULTY 


F. H. NORRIS 
Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Rich d, Virginia 

Frank and free discussion is not a panacea. There is 
nothing in this procedure which should lead us to think that we 
have found a solution to our problems. Some people seem to 
think that if you can get people to discuss problems and to air 
their views about certain questions, you will soon see a change 
within. A great deal will depend on the topics discussed, the 
clarity and power of the logic used, and a demonstrated appli- 
cation of the conclusions reached. 

Our high-school faculties are discussing in their meetings 
the Functions of Secondary Education. A planning committee 
has planned the work and assigned each function to a commit- 
tee for discussion and report. It is to be hoped that the dis- 
cussion phase will continue to loom larger than the mere re- 
porting of some one’s views. Each should be able to read for 
himself the report, but it is only through discussion that the 
heart of the report can be brought out. Care must be taken to 
keep these groups active and participating groups, not mere 
listeners. 

The most hopeful thing about these meetings is this: they 
are serving to put the improvement of instruction in the fore- 
ground and to keep the administrative phases secondary. To 
my mind the biggest obstacle in the way to improving secon- 
dary instruction is our own administrative machinery. No 
one can be blamed for that. We have all had a partinit. But 
a glaring weakness is evident when our own machinery of or- 
ganization prevents us from improving the instructional side. 
The spirit of instruction can be improved regardless of our 
organization, and teachers should be made to realize that. 
After all, the secondary school, like the elementary, should 
exist for the pupils. 

Our high-school faculties are fairly representative of what 
some call the vested interests of education. Specialization has 
gone far enough here to cause some to regard their field as the 
core around which all others should revolve. There is a great 
diversity in viewpoints as to the purpose of the high school. 
There is still a tendency to regard the high school as a series 
of departments rather than as a place to offer a pupil a well- 
rounded program. 

It is to be hoped that these discussions will center teach- 
ers’ attentions on the most important thing in education— 


33 


























34 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


namely, a true teacher-learner relationship. If the teacher has 
the right attitude toward the learner, subject matter will also 
take its proper place. I am not sure these discussion groups 
will achieve that. Too many times we assume that we meet the 
needs of pupils by adding new courses, and overlook the 
teacher-learner relationship entirely. The most varied and 
richest curriculum that we might devise would have a low rat- 
ing of efficiency if attitudes, methods, and personalities were 
left out. 

The study of these problems should make us more tolerant 
of and interested in the views and problems of our fellow work- 
ers. That high-school faculty which is characterized by de- 
partmental jealousies and rivalries, which puts the academic 
on the throne and the practical outside, or vice versa, which 
places all blame for lack of progress on the learner, which con- 
siders college demands as their chief criterion, which places 
all blame for pupils’ deficiencies on previous teaching, is hope- 
lessly out of step with the demands being made on the modern 
school. 

After a year’s study of these problems, I do not see how 
any teacher can help feeling a greater awareness of these sec- 
ondary demands. I think sometimes we are inclined to “shed” 
these questions on to some one else. If our present classes do 
not suit, why does not the principal form new ones, or why does 
the school board not hire a person to do this work or get the 
needed equipment? 

Secondary teachers, as a rule, are anxious to improve their 
work, to make it vital and useful. They have become rather 
cynical or distrustful of recent innovations, however, because 
the theory is so far removed from their practice. Any educa- 
tional improvement must start with the teachers’ present situ- 
ation. These group discussions should help teachers take stock 
of their present practices, their immediate problems, and their 
pressing needs. Then in the light of the best thinking of the 
day as to the desirable changes necessary, to help plan pro- 
grams which will enable their respective schools to meet these 
demands. 

The thing most needed in secondary education is the uni- 
versal view that the high school must serve its community in 
every way possible; that it is no longer a selective agency work- 
ing for colleges; that it must meet the needs of the boy who 
would and should be a carpenter, as well as the future profes- 
sional man; that our organization, methods, and subject mat- 
ter are means to an end, not the end. 























DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF OUR SCHOOL 
PROGRAM! 
ARTHUR WOODCOCK 
Torrance High School, Torrance, California 
Student-Adjustment Program 

The most valuable service rendered the students of Torrance 
High School is the remarkably sympathetic and comprehensive 
student-adjustment program. The group in charge of this pro- 
gram is the Student Board of Control, composed of six students 
with the vice-principal as adviser. The Faculty Adjustment 
Committee, composed of ten faculty members, takes care of the 
more serious cases that are passed on to it by the Student Board 
of Control. 

Instead of sending a small percentage of incorrigible boys 
or girls regarded as potential criminals to disciplinary institutions 
as quickly as possible—and as quickly forgetting them—our 
wide-awake, progressive principal, Mr. Thomas H. Elson, who 
has done much research in corrective citizenship, has set up a 
new system. 

The background of every recalcitrant boy or girl is thoroughly 
investigated, whether the offense be minor or major. This inves- 
tigation covers his physical condition and record, the economic 
conditions of his home, his family relationships, his temperament, 
his personal interests and characteristics, and his attitude toward 
his home, his teachers, and his studies. The results of the investi- 
gation are studied, and every effort is made to eliminate bad influ- 
ences and forces that have led him into wrong pursuits. 

However, before anything at all is done, the student is given 
every opportunity to speak in his own behalf. Oftentimes the boy 
or girl in question is aware of the factors that have put him or her 
on the wrong track and is glad of an opportunity to divulge them. 


Recreational Program 

High-school students are quick to take advantage of any 
opportunity to secure a few moments of escape from their regular 
work during school hours. In keeping with this desire a one- 
hour recreational period is being offered every other Friday. 
During this period over twenty different activities are offered. 
Included in the list are: athletics, hobbies, stamp collecting, 
journalism, mechanics of various sorts, aviation, languages, radio, 
badminton, writing for the annual, and many others. The main 


1The writer of this article is an honor student and prominent leader of several activi- 
ties at the Torrance, California, High School. His journalism teacher, Miss Ethel Burn- 
ham, asked him to write a description of the distinctive features of the school which are 
carried out with the complete codperation of the student body. 


35 














36 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


‘object of these periods is to furnish an opportunity for the students 
to develop beneficial leisure-time activities. It is hoped that the 
choice of an activity will be made with the future in mind. 


Vocational Agriculture 

Almost every student who enrolls in this course makes agri- 
culture, in one of its many phases, his life’s occupation. At school 
a farm-sized project is kept continually progressive and productive. 
The difficulties encountered in working the farm project serve 
as problems for the students to solve, giving them practical ex- 
perience at the same time. The official government Farm Bul- 
letins and a few farm magazines are used in addition to textbooks. 

At home each student has his own individual project. For 
example, as a freshman he may have a small flock of baby chicks; 
the next year he might acquire a larger flock, with a few good 
layers; the following year perhaps a modern chicken house is added. 
Thus a small, independent industry is built up. By the time a 
student is ready to graduate he has a job_waiting for him, with 
himself as his boss. 

Although they all study together and learn the same things, 
there are two divisions of students; namely, the regular vocational 
agriculture students and the Future Farmers of America. The 
F.F.A., like any other club, has its own social functions—banquets, 
parties, trips, etc. Also, it sends special teams to Pomona every 
year to the California State Fair. A well-filled trophy case testi- 
fies to its achievements. 


Vocational-Guidance Conference 

The Vocational-Guidance Conferences are primarily for the 
purpose of permitting the student to come into direct contact 
with experienced, successful business men whose views and opin- 
ions are of value. Upon consenting to speak, the conference 
leaders are presented with an outline form of the points which they 
should cover in their addresses. (They may use it or not as they 
choose.) A few of these points are: education necessary, health 
and physical requirements, opportunity for promotion, hours, 
wages, and benefits derived. After the address the students are 
allowed, often urged, to ask questions about any points they wish 
made clearer. The committee in charge of the conference is 
composed of three students and an advisory board of seven teach- 
ers. The chairman of the committee keeps in contact with a mem- 
ber of the local Rotary Club who is appointed to work with the 
committee and to secure the speakers desired. 

















37 





DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF OUR SCHOOL PROGRAM 





1988] 


Another function that the committee carries out, in line with 
this type of education, is the maintenance of, and addition to, a 
shelf of vocational-guidance books. These books are up-to-date, 
practical aids to those interested. The chief professions and 
industries are analyzed in a simple, easily understandable manner. 


Safety Commission 


Our Safety Commission is a major unit in the government 
of the school. The chairman is a member of the Student Council. 
Members are selected by promotion, making it a continuing body. 
Replacements are proposed by members of the Commission and 
approved by the principal. Among the most important functions 
are periodic checkups on condition, location, and deficiencies 
of first-aid cabinets and supplies, fire hoses and alarm boxes, 
and reporting of any fire hazards. Traffic direction in the halls is 
carried out by a committee under the direct command of a member 
of the Commission. Quiet but efficient authority is exerted to 
regulate speed, relieve congestion, and lessen noise. Many high 
schools have systems of school government similar to that of 
Torrance High School. However, we feel that many of our 
features are sufficiently outstanding and worth-while that other 
schools might learn something of value to add to their programs. 





ANNOUNCEMENT 


The 1939 winter meeting (Feb- 
ruary, 1939) will be held in 
Cleveland, Ohio. 


Hotel Cleveland will be the 
headquarters of the Depart- 
ment of Secondary-School Prin- 
cipals. 














GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR DEVELOPMENT OF 
IMPROVED METHODS OF ACCREDITATION 


Note: In the text of the address by Walter C. Eells, entitled ‘“‘Bases For 
a New Method of Accrediting Secondary Schools,” which was published in 
the March, 1938, number of THE BULLETIN, there were certain unfortunate 
errors and omissions in the published form of the eighteen fundamental a 
ciples upon which the ‘‘Codperative Study of Secondary-School Standards” 
based. As these principles are so basic to a proper understanding of the 
‘“‘Coéperative Study,” correct statements of each of the eighteen wee cir fol- 
lowed by brief explanatory paragraphs, are presented below.—H. V. CHURCH. 


1. American secondary schools, much as they may differ 
in details, are essentially alike in their underlying purposes and 


organization. | 
The common purpose of all secondary schools is the transmission of 
racial culture and the development of the pupil, individually and as 
a member of society. They are alike in making use of individual 
teachers, in functioning in a school plant, in possessing a curriculum, 
in employing instructional methods, in presupposing a background of 
knowledge and skill secured in elementary school, in meeting several 
days a week for a major portion of a calendar year, and in many other 
respects. If such broad similarities as these did not exist, any com- 
mon method of evaluation and accreditation would scarcely be feasible. 


2. In a democracy the fundamental doctrine of individual 


ae 


differences is as valid for schools as for individuals. Schools, 
even good schools, differ from each other as markedly as do 


the children they are endeavoring to educate. 
This means that there should be no flexible insistence upon uniformity 
and rigidity of organization, method, and standards for all secondary 
schools in all parts of the country through any artificially imposed 
accreditation procedures. 

3. A school cannot be studied satisfactorily nor judged 
fairly except in terms of its own philosophy of education, its 
individually expressed purposes and objectives, the nature of 
the pupils with which it has to deal, and the needs of the com- 
munity which it serves. Each school is free to determine its 
own educational destiny if not inconsistent with the democracy 
in which it functions. 

This means that the public school and the private school, the Catholic 
school and the Protestant school, the urban school and the rural school, 


the large school and the small school must be judged by comprehensive, 
flexible standards rather than by narrow, uniform, and rigid ones. 


4. Methods of evaluation and accreditation should recog- 
nize the differences in background, development, and existing 
conditions in different states and regions. No attempt now, if 
ever, should be encouraged to make them uniform for the nation 


or to have them administered from a single national office. 

This means that the same norms cannot fairly be used for judging 
the plant, the curriculum, the library, and other features in Maine and 
Montana, in California and Connecticut, in Vermont and Virginia, in 
New York and New Mexico. It is desired that studies be made and 
procedures summarized on a nation-wide basis, but that application 
of them be made on a regional, or state, or even local basis, with due 
regard to variations in local conditions and educational, economic, 
and social background. 


38 











1938] GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR ACCREDITATION 39 








5. It is more significant to measure what the school does 
than what it is or what it has. The educational process and 
product are more important to evaluate than the machinery 


and equipment. 
This means that all phases of the school—plant, staff, program—are 
to be evaluated chiefly as functioning units, not primarily as static 
ones; that the program, the methods of administering it, and its 
results are the chief matters to be considered. 


6. A school must be judged as a whole, not merely as the 


unrelated sum of its separate parts. 
This means that accreditation will not necessarily be refused because 
a school is weak in one feature or fails to meet a particular standard. 
Possible deficiency in one field may be excusable or even desirable, 
or may be more then compensated for by superiority in another field 
or fields. The general ievel of the school’s work and the interrelation- 
ships of the different phases of it will need to be considered. 


7. Methods of accreditation, as far as possible, should be 
based upon scientific studies and objective evidence rather than 


upon untested assumptions and unsupported opinions. 
This means that the results of research studies and other recent 
scientific investigations of secondary education should be given full 
consideration in the development of better methods. Standard tests, 
approved measuring instruments, valid scales, and similar devices 
should be used—but they should be used intelligently, not blindly. 


8. The considered judgment of competent educators is an 
essential factor in the evaluation of the quality and character 


of the work of a school. 
This principle is not in conflict with the preceding one, but is supple- 
mentary to it. It means that while statistical data are necessary, 
they are not sufficient. There should be a judicious mixture of the 
subjective and of the objective. Statistical method cannot replace ex- 
pert judgment, but it can form a much better basis for the legitimate 
and helpful exercise of such judgment. Judgment should be based upon 
all the scientific evidence and other objective data available, not on 
guesswork or hunches. Evaluation should be based upon a careful 
study by a committee of competent educators who will spend suffi- 
cient time in the school to familiarize themselves with all important 
phases of the work. 


9. A valid method of accreditation and evaluation, based 
tentatively upon existing research studies and expert judgment, 
should be fully tested and carefully evaluated by extensive experi- 
mental tryout in a large group of typical, representative secondary 


schools throughout the country. 
This is simply a recognition of the common scientific procedure that 
theory should be tested by experiment, and isan application of it in 
the educational field. In the case of the Coédperative Study, two 
hundred carefully selected schools have been used as the basis for the 
validation of the materials and procedures which it expects to rec- 
ommend. 

10. While it is desirable in many respects that absolute 
standards or levels of achievement should be developed, it is 
recognized that in most of the important aspects of a school’s 
work the best basis for the development of useful standards will 


probably be the practices in other comparable schools. 
While we may know the definite character and amount of apparatus 
necessary for an experiment in physics or chemistry for a class of a 























(May, 


40 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 


given size, we do not know the optimum number of books for a 
library, the most desirable outcomes in the teaching of English, 
or the best methods of supervision. In such cases, after as valid 
measurements or evaluations as possible have been made, the atouneey 
of the school in these fields must be judged, in part, by comparison wit 
other schools measured by the same methods. 


11. A school should be judged in terms of the extent to 
which it meets satisfactorily the needs of all pupils who come 
to it, not alone of those who continue their formal education in 


institutions of higher learning. 

Standards have been dominated in many cases, if not completely 
determined, by college admission criteria. This principle means that 
it is not sufficient to evaluate the school merely in terms of the success 
of its graduates in the college and university, important as this may 
be as one element; it must be evaluated also in terms of its success 
in giving an education for successful living—economic, social, and 
personal—to the young people who do not go on to college. 


12. A good school is a growing school. It should be judged 
by its progress between two different dates as well as by its status 


at a single date. 
This means, as Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed, that “it is not 


nearly so important where we stand as the direction in which we are 
going.” A poor school which is steadily improving may be more 
worthy of accreditation than a much better school which is steadily 


deteriorating. 
13. Any useful, stimulating, and valid method of accredita- 


tion must be flexible with the passage of time; that is, it must 
be capable of reasonable modification, from year to year, as new 
bases of evaluation and different levels of achievements are sug- 


gested or developed from the use of existing ones. 
Change is a universal law. Methods of accreditation, like schools 
themselves, must be constantly changing if they are to keep up to date. 
Methods which are flexible in their application to a particular school, 
which recognize valid differences between schools and between their 
purposes and their pupils, will be such as to be easily modified also with 
the passage of time and the benefit of experience. 


14. The number of factors evaluated in the modern second- 
ary school must be sufficiently large and varied to give valid 


evidence of worth in each of the main areas of the school’s work. 
This means that the accreditation of a school on the basis of a small 
number of rigid measures is insufficient to give a valid measure of all 
essential aspects of the educational program. 


15. Accrediting procedures and materials must be brief 
enough in extent and convenient enough in form to be practicable 


for use in all secondary schools. 
This principle must be considered in connection with the frecet oceing 
one, and a proper balance struck between the two. 
must be brief enough to be usable but long enough to be valid. — 
sive sampling is required rather than complete measurement. The 
samples, however, must be significant mats © that really characterize 
the school and have been proved to possess real discriminative value. 
Criteria should take as a model not the photographer, who with his 
lens takes in everything in sight, but the artist, who skillfully selects 


the significant elements in the landscape and uses them to suggest 
details, all of which do not appear explicitly on the canvas. 














—— Se oe 








1988] GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR ACCREDITATION 41 





16. If criteria for evaluation are sufficiently flexible, exten- 
sive, and thorough, it is not essential that they be applied an- 


nually. 
This means that complete evaluation of a school may need to be made 
only at regular or irregular intervals of several years. Changes of 
administration or other unusual conditions may justify reconsidera- 
tion of accreditation at special times. Partial evaluations may be 
made at intervening periods. Continuous self-evaluation is important. 


17. The basis and methods of accreditation should be such 
as to require interest and participation in the process on the 
part of the entire; professional and non-professional staffs of 


the school. 

This means that the basis of accreditation cannot be limited to statis- 
tical blanks filled out by clerical assistants or even to information 
furnished by the principal alone. It should be a codperative process, 
involving mutual criticism and suggestion by the entire staff. Criteria 
should be such as to stimulate frequent if not continuous consideration 
and discussion by the school staff, regardless of whether or not a visit 
by a committee of competent educators is anticipated. 


18. The primary function of accreditation by the state or 
regional association should be stimulation toward continuous 
growth and improvement, not merely inspection and admis- 


sion to membership. 
This means that the conception of the state or regional organization 
as an inspectorial or police agency gives way to one of mutual friend- 
liness, helpfulness, and stimulation to constant improvement of all 
schools, good or poor. While accreditation for college admission 
may be based on relatively few factors, stimulation of a school to 
become a better school makes a much more extensive body of criteria 
both desirable and necessary. Such stimulation requires attention 
not only to such factors as may discriminate between the good school 
and the poor school but constant attention to all factors or elements 
common to all t of schools, now and in the future. Nothing is 
more common than essentials. Not all essentials discriminate, but 
they must not be neglected; rather they, too, must be improved. 
Mere accreditation is not sufficient. It is simply the first step in a 
continuous process. In a democracy a school should not be satisfied 
with being good; it should strive constantly to become better. 
































REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON PUPIL ACTIVITIES 


The following report is presented in the columns of THE BULLETIN in 
order that the membership as a whole may have an opportunity to express an 
opinion on the policies proposed by the committee. 

_ _ Appointed in the summer of 1937, the Committee on Pupil Activities car- 
ried on a discussion of the report through correspondence and in two extended 
committtee meetings at the time of the Atlantic City meeting. It interpreted 
its function to be that of proposing basic principles and policies which should 
guide the National Department in its relation to organizations sponsoring 
activities, and which might be of service to individual principals confronted 
with problems in this field. 

If the report is to be of maximum service to the Department, it should 
receive thorough discussion and criticism by the membership. To this end, 
individual principals and regional discussion groups are urged to submit their 
reactions to the policies proposed. Coédperation of professors of secondary 
education is invited by providing for discussion of the report in summer-school 
classes dealing with extra-curriculum activities—Edgar G. Johnston, Chair- 
man, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 


TO THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, DEPARTMENT OF SECOND- 

ARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS OF THE NATIONAL’ EDUCATION 

ASSOCIATION, THE COMMITTEE ON PUPIL ACTIVITIES SUB- 

MITS THE FOLLOWING REPORT 
I. The Department's Interest in the Extra-Curriculum Program. 

From its inception, the National Association of Secondary-School 
Principals demonstrated a recognition of values to be secured through 
the extra-curriculum program and of the necessity for their intelligent 
direction. At the first annual meeting in Kansas City in February, 
1917, one of the chief addresses was that on “‘Supervised Student 
Activities in the School Program,’’ by the late Edward Rynearson 
of Pittsburgh. A continued interest in the various phases of this 
program may be discerned in the addresses and discussions at the 
succeeding annual conferences as well as in the committee reports of 
the Department. ‘Organization of the Social Life of the High 
School,” ‘Student Participation in School Organization and Govern- 
ment,” “‘Training for Democracy,” ‘Social Problems in the High 
School,” “‘The Growth of Character Through Participation in Extra- 
curriulum Activities,” ‘‘Sane and Systematic Direction of Extra- 
curriculum Activities,” are among some of the topics appearing in 
Proceedings of the Association at its earlier meetings. A committee 
to consider the formation of an honor society was appointed at the 
Chicago meeting in 1919, and the proposed constitution was adopted 
and the society formed under the sheltering wing of the National 
Department the following year. 
A discussion of interscholastic athletics at the meeting of 1924 resulted 
in the appointment of a committee which reported at Cincinnati the 
following year, endorsing the National Association of State High- 
School Athletic Associations as the proper agency to express the inter- 
est of the Department in the athletic field. The committee went on 
record as opposed to participation of girls in interscholastic athletics 
and urging the restriction of intersectional and post-season athletic 
games. The Department was instrumental in the organization of the 
Committee on Research in Secondary Education, which came into 
being at the Cincinnati meeting in 1925. Various phases of the extra- 
curriculum program have been investigated in conjunction with the 
activities of this committee and have been published in THE BULLE- 
TIN of the Department. 


Clear as are the evidences of the interest of the National Department 
in the constructive development of the extra-curriculum program and 
valuable as its contributions have been, it must be recognized that 
its approach to problems in this field has been fragmentary and 
sporadic. Through the reports of the Committee on Orientation 
and the work of the Planning Committee the Department is in posi- 


42 





II. 


COMMITTEE REPORT ON PuPIL ACTIVITIES 43 


tion to influence significantly the development of secondary educa- 
tion. A more systematic study of the extra-curriculum program 
is timely. As the organization representative of those chiefly respon- 
sible for the determination of policies in the secondary schools of 
the United States, it is appropriate for the Department to give serious 
attention to the general principles which should guide the develop- 
ment of the extra-curriculum program and the relationship of the 


. Department to individual schools and to regional groups. Current 


discussions of curriculum development emphasize the concept 
of the curriculum as “All the experiences children have under the 
guidance of teachers.” Obviously under such a definition of curi- 
culum, extra-curriculum activities as a separate and distinct phase 
of school organization tend to disappear and are absorbed into the 
curriculum. Probably in most schools, however, the reorientation 
of teaching staff and method which will make this possible will not 
have been attained for some time to come. We may look to see a 
transitional stage of development in which extra-curriculum activities 
as a somewhat separate part of the school program continue to supple- 
ment a meager curriculum and to mitigate the shortcomings of tradi- 
tional teaching. 


Basic Principles Which Should Underlie Department Policy. 

1. The so-called extra-curriculum activities provide a rich resource 

for desirable learning. Schools should be encourgaed to organize 

their programs in such a way that extra-curriculum activities may 
make a maximum contribution to the total school offering. 

(a) Accepted statements of the responsibility of the secondary school 

give an important place to the development of desirable attitudes. 
Properly organized activities have a special contribution to make 
in this field. Fretwell’s thesis: ‘‘It is the business of the school 
to organize the whole situation so that there is a favorable oppor- 
tunity for everyone, teachers as well as pupils, to practice the 
qualities of the good citizen here and now with results satisfying 
to the one doing the practicing’’; is familiar to everyone. The 
contribution of such activities as the student council, the assem- 
bly, and the home room in attaining this objective should be 
capitalized. 
Current thought in the field of psychology emphasizes the sig- 
nificance of learning through active participation and the impor- 
tance of considering various phases of the child’s experience in 
relationship to each other, not in isolation. A modern educa- 
tional program cannot be based on passive lesson-hearing, nor 
can the responsibility of the school be limited to what takes place 
in the classroom only. 


. Influences of the home and the community environment modify 
significantly the outcomes of the school’s program. In some instances 
outside agencies supplement helpfully the learning situation of the 
school; in other cases they represent a serious obstacle to the attain- 
ment of the school’s objectives, especially in the matter of developing 
desirable attitudes. It seems evident that these outside environ- 
mental influences deserve much more attention than they have re- 
ceived in the past on the part of individual teachers and adminis- 
trators and by organized professional groups, both to capitalize con- 
structive contributions to the total educational program and to mini- 
mize or eliminate undesirable influences. 


3. Many problems of the school community are vital citizenship 
problems to pupils. An increasing number of schools is utilizing these 
problems in training pupils to codperate effectively in an attack upon 
matters of group concern. Such training may well serve pupils for 
later membership in service groups or in women’s clubs. As citizenship 
training, however, this alone is not sufficiently broad and inclusive. 
Problems of a political or economic nature appear too infrequently 
in the school community to provide training in these important areas 
of citizenship. The attention of the Department may well be directed 
toward discovering and encouraging those practices which bridge the 
gap between school and out-of-school citizenship. The recent volume 

















DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


“Youth Serves the Community” by Paul Hanna presents a number 
of illustrations of actual participation by pupils in community better- 
ment. 

4. Whether extra-curriculum activities be thought of as a distinct 
division of the school program or as a phase of the curriculum broadly 
conceived, the responsibility rests on the school for their adequate 
supervision. Supervision should be advisory and encouraging rather 
than restrictive. It certainly cannot be overlooked. Parents will 
rightly look to the staff and the administration of a school for soundly 
considered educational activities leading toward desirable outcomes. 


5. The school program should be so organized as to permit a maxi- 
mum degree of pupil leadership in planning and carrying out activities 
and evaluating outcomes. This is increasingly recognized as desirable 
in the activities of the classroom. It is indispensable to a successful 
program of extra-curriculum activities. Much of the vitality of the 
extra-curriculum program has inhered in the degree to which activities 
have given play to student initiative and responsibility. 

6. Care must be observed to avoid crystallization of the activity 
pregram into set procedures or forms of organization. The program 
should be flexible and easily adaptable to local conditions and the needs 
of individual pupils. In the case of organizations formed to encour- 
age a particular activity care must be taken not to lose sight of the 
aims common to the entire program. There is danger of. developing 
vested interests which resist change and hinder progress. 


7. In developing the various phases of the extra-curriculum program 
the competitive urge should not be over-emphasized. This applies 
both to the traditional athletic contests and to interscholastic com- 
petitions developed in other fields. There is danger that the competi- 
tive urge may be allowed to overshadow more important outcomes 
of the activity and to limit the extent of participation. Futhermore, 
definitely antisocial attitudes may be developed where personal vain- 
glory or group selfishness becomes a dominant motive and friendly 
rivalry gives way to the desire to win at any cost. 


8. Encouragement should be given to codperative effort in the solu- 
tion of problems within the school and between schools. The develop- 
ment of the spirit of friendliness and growth in the spirit of service 
arise from codéperative enterprises which call for self-sacrifice and which 
are seen as causes worthy of individual and group services. The activi- 
ties of the student council and vital assembly programs are illustra- 
tive of such enterprises within the schools. Conferences of student 
leaders in a number of counties, regions, and in some states are indi- 
cative of inter-school relationships which exalt cojperation above com- 
petition. Such constructive ventures as play days involving pupils 
from all the high schools in a city, community, or regional music festi- 
vals where no awards are given, and eo assembly programs 
among schools illustrate the possibilities of developing friendliness and 
minimizing the competitive motive. A school which has a bitter rival 
in interscholastic contests might well consider playing host to the stu- 
dent leaders of the recognized organizations of its traditional rival. 
The development of larger loyalties depends upon the growth of such 
coéperative undertakings among the schools. 


9. The relationship of the National Department to individual schools 
and to regional organizations should be one of encouragement and 
advice. It should suggest promising lines of development and pro- 
vide assistance in solution of problems but should not hamper the free- 
dom of the individual unit to develop a program suitable to its needs. 


Recommended Policies. 


1. Relation To National Organizations Sponsoring Activities. 
A considerable number of national organizations has grown up 
organized to promote fuller recognition and development of 
specific types of activity. Examples are to be found in the 
National Scholastic Press Association, the National Association 
of Student Officers, The National Honor Society, and various 
groups representing forensics, dramatics, and athletics. The 
function of the Department in relation to these organizations 





COMMITTEE REPORT ON PuPIL ACTIVITIES 45 


would seem to be through publicity and in other ways to assist 
them in making the particular activity more effective in achieving 
the desirable ends sought and to codrdinate the interests of the 
various groups which have to do with secondary-school pupils. 
It may at times be necessary to restrain the enthusiasm of a 
group promoting a special activity to the disadvantage of the total 
school program. Now that the Chinese walls which have separ- 
ated the subjects of the traditional curriculum are breaking down, 
it would be unfortunate if a new compartmentalization should 
pe set up within the relatively new territory of the extra-curri- 
culum. 
One question which should receive the thoughtful consideration 
of the Department is that of national conventions of secondary- 
school organizations. There are undoubted advantages to 
gained in enlarged horizons and in stimulus to more effective 
activity through meetings of student leaders. These advantages 
may be realized through the organization of community, regional, 
and state associations. It is felt that national organizations 
may serve best by aiding such area groups in the definition of 
desirable objectives, by making suggestions regarding policies, 
projects, and programs and by functioning as a clearinghouse 
for information. 
National conventions attended by a limited number of represent- 
atives from each of the various states or groups of states may 
serve well the needs for greater vision, solidarity, and mutual 
understanding. The limitation of attendance would greatly re- 
duce the problems of finance and promotion and also the responsi- 
bility for pupil housing, supervision, entertainment, and pro- 
tection. Attendance at national conventions should not over- 
shadow other and more significant means of promoting the func- 
tions of the organization. 

. Relation to General Character-Building Organizations Sponsored 
by Non-School Agencies. 
Most communities are fortunate in having a number of non- 
school agencies interested in promoting the welfare of boys and 
girls of high-school age. Examples are to be found in the Boy 
Scouts of America, The Hi-Y, Camp Fire Girls, Girls Scouts, etc. 
The relation of the school to these organizations should be one 
of mutual assistance. Close codperation of school authorities 
with local representatives of all organizations contributing to the 
welfare of young people is to be encouraged. A constructive pro- 
gram for helpful relationship with reference to one such organiza- 
tion has been suggested by Wyland.* The plan has been followed 
in some communities of organizing a ‘‘Codrdinating Council,” 
composed of representatives of all agencies interested in the wel- 
fare of youth, including schools, churches, probation officers, 
and ‘‘character-building” organizations. This plan has been 
developed with marked success in California. 
A caution seems important with respect to the relationship of 
the school and other agencies interested in ‘‘character building.” 
The school is the one agency outside the home with responsibility 
to society for all youth. Support of the programs of other agen- 
cies should not be allowed to interfere with the provision of equal 
opportunity for all in the school program. Certainly the obli- 
gation to codperate with other character-building agencies should 
not divert attention of school people from their own measure of 
responsibility for the optimum development of all youths commit- 
ted to their charge. Jt would seem desirable that there be school 
control of any unit of an outside organization which carries the 
school name. 

. Relation to Other Non-School Agencies Serving Youth. 
Closely related to the type of agency discussed under number 
two, but in a somewhat different classification is a group of 
organizations representing a particular section of the communit 
or formed to promote a special point of view on an issue on whic 


= Ter 2. lO 


*Ray O. Wyland, “Scouting in the Schools of New York,” Teachers College, Colum- 
bia University, 1934, Pp. 150-153, 








DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


community opinion is divided. In this classification would fall 
such organizations as religious groups, junior chambers of com- 
merce, Junior Kiwanians, Young Peoples’ Socialistic League, 
Young Pioneers, and similar organizations representative of 
one segment of community opinion. An amazing number of 
organizations designed to enlist and influence youth**has sprung 
into existence. The competition for school attention by such 
organized groups may tend to disintegrate the curriculum. There 
is also the danger that organizations with idealistic aim, wae 
defined, may become tools of reactionary or radical interests wit 
axes to grind. 
It would seem desirable for school buildings and facilities to be 
available on equal terms for meetings of such groups where this 
can be done without interference with school activities or cur- 
tailment of the school program. This would be consistent with 
the generally accepted policy of most boards of education making 
school meeting places available to any legally constituted groups 
in a community and, in particular, of maintaining the school as 
_ a community center. 
Sponsorship by individual schools or by the Department of organi- 
zations in this category would seem unwise. It is not the intention 
of the committee to indicate that the school should avoid discus- 
sion of important controversies. Its aim should be to encourage 
pupils to consider critical issues, to assist them to secure as com- 
plete and accurate data as possible, and to allow them to reach 
their own conclusions. For the school to identify itself with 
one section of public opinion through endorsement of an ex-parte 
organization would be open to legitimate objection by those 
holding different views. 
Relation to Community Agencies and Activities. 
An encouraging tendency in recent years has been the effort of 
schools to provide first-hand contact with community agencies 
and activities through carefully planned field trips. This is 
decidedly advantageous. A much more vital understanding of 
community problems is possible where pupils know something 
of the Soderennd of these problems at first hand. The Depart- 
ment may render a service through study of legal difficulties and 
other obstacles to adequate use of this source of enrichment. 
Still more encouraging is the participation of pupils in an organ- 
ized way in assisting in the solution of communit problems and 
in improvement of the community. Professor Hanna’s recent 
volume, Youth Serves the Community, recounts a large number of 
instances in which young people have made practical and signi- 
ficant contributions to community welfare. Certain limitations 
and safeguards obviously suggest themselves. Fields of inquiry 
and activity should be appropriate to the maturity of the pupils. 
Projects should be such as to render real assistance to the com- 
munity—not mere “‘busy work.’’ The trend as a whole is one 
which the Department should encourage. 


. Altitude on Contests. 

The competitive phase of extra-curriculum activities has been 
emphasized in the public mind and has frequently been encour- 
aged by school authorities. This has been especially true of 
athletics but has also found a place in the promotion of debating, 
music, dramatics, and “academic contests.”” The place of 
competition in the school program is a moot question. Advan- 
tages are found in the stimulus to improved performance, the 
development of teamwork, interschool relationships, and broad- 
ened experience through trips to other communities. On the 
negative side are placed the over-emphasis on winning, the con- 
centration on training a small number of competitors, semi-pro- 
fessionalization, the strain of extended competition, unwhole- 
some emphasis on publicity and personal glory, and, on occasion, 
exploitation of pupils to enhance the reputation of a sponsor or a 
community. 


**M. M. Chambers, “Youth Serving Organizations, A Preliminary Report of the 
American Youth Commission.” The American Council on Education, 1937. 














COMMITTEE REPORT ON PUPIL ACTIVITIES 47 


The attitude of the Department should discourage the abuses 
prevalent in secondary-school competition. Restriction of ath- 
letic competition has n urged by the National Federation of 
State High-School Athletic Associations and by a committee of 
the North Central Association.*** : 
The National Department of Secondary-School Principals as 
early as 1924 appointed a committee to investigate inter-scholas- 
tie athletics. State associations of high-school principals in 
several states have gone on record for restriction or elimination 
of contests in other fields. The topic of Interscholastic Contests 
is so broad that the Committee recommends a comprehensive study 
of contests by a committee for report at the 1939 meeting. 
. Methods of Financing Extra-Curriculum Activities. 
Methods of financing extra-curriculum activities should be 
scrutinized from the standpoint of educational outcomes as well 
as business efficiency and sound accounting practice. In some 
communities, methods of obtaining revenue for activities are 
thinly disguised begging; in other cases the poorer pupils are 
deprived of participation because of the methods used. The 
question of ‘‘pay assemblies” should be carefully examined. A 
study of the whole question of sources of income, methods of 
distribution, and accounting procedures for extra-curriculum 
activities among the schools of the Department should prove 
valuable. It is recommended that a committee be appointed to 
make such a study. 
. Relation to State Departments or Associations of High-School 
Principals. 
In the regulation and guidance of extra-curriculum activities, as 
in other phases of secondary-school administration, the function 
of the National Department should be formulation and recommen- 
dation of policies of general application and stimulus and support 
to state groups in developing desirable programs of activities in 
their own areas. State groups should be encouraged to sponsor 
investigations in the extra-curriculum field and to make recom- 
mendations to the National Department on the basis of their 
experience. 
The forthcoming report of the Committee on Needed Research 
in Secondary Education should suggest important lines of in- 
vestigation both for state groups and for the National Department. 
Graduate students in higher institutions of learning could be 
interested in pursuing investigations of some of the problems 
which are considered most pressing. 
Use of Department Publications. 
The Committee on Publications is to be commended for its 
recent report and for the new policies on Department publica- 
tions put into effect this year. It is recommended that the month- 
ly BULLETIN of the Department be utilized as a major avenue 
of communication to the membership of recommended policies 
in regard to activities and of discussion of issues involved. Arti- 
cles describing successful programs in individual schools, reports 
of research investigations, and discussions of newer tendencies 
in line with recent curriculum trends should all find a place in 
THE BULLETIN. 
In line with the emphasis on student initiative and participation, 
the sponsorship by the Department of the publication STUDENT 
LIFE is tp be commended. Through it high-school pupils should 
have an important place in the evolution of the activity program. 
That portion of the report of the Publications Committee which 
deals with STUDENT LIFE presents an admirable statement of 
purposes and desired outcomes for such a publication. To date the 
magazine would not appear to have realized the standard set by the 
Committee. A more vigorous editorial policy and more adequate 
coverage of high-school news are to be desired. The Activities 
Committee recommends that all high schools represented in the 
’ Department be requested to place the central office on the mailing 
***Morley, E. E., Chairman, “The Report of the Committee on Athletics in Secondary 
 corgg North Central Association Quarterly, 6:21-30, June, 1931. 7-287-290, Decem- 
er, 3 

















48 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


list and that high-school publications be used as sources for news 

items of outstanding accomplishment or innovating practices 

and for examples of creative expression by high-school students. 

The Committee views with some concern the offer by STUDENT 

LIFE of monetary rewards as motivation for student contri- 

butions. This practice is in conflict with principles outlined 

elsewhere in this report as applicable to student contests in extra- 
curriculum activities. 

It is to be hoped that sufficient financial support and editorial 

assistance may be provided to make the publication outstanding 

in its oon to high-school pupils and as a picture of life in the 
high schools of America. 

COMMITTEE ON PUPIL ACTIVITIES 
Edgar G. Johnston, Chairman 
Bertie Backus 
Aubrey A. Douglass 

Atlantic City Galen Jones. 

February 28, 1938 Owen A. Emmons 


BOOK NOTES 


The Effect of Population Changes on American Education. Educational 
Policies Commission. National Education Association of the United 
States and the American Association of School Administrators, 1938. 
Pp. 58. $.50. 

The bulletin points out that the census of 1930, for the first time in 
American history, showed fewer children under five years of age than 
from five to nine years old. The study interprets this and other popula- 
tion trends in terms of occupational shifts, internal movements of popu- 
lation, sex ratios, marital conditions, social and economic conditions, and 
health conditions, as well as trends in elementary, secondary, and higher 
education. Pictorial interpretations of statistics lend interest to the 
study and dramatize the findings contained therein. 

The Sixth Yearbook of School Law. Edited by M. M. Chambers. Wash- 
ington, D. C.: American Council on Education, 1988. Pp. viii+150. 
$1.00. (Paper.) 

A comprehensive digest of decisions of the higher courts in all states 
involving school law during 1937, the volume features detailed reviews of 
the various phases of school law written by specialists in each field. Fol- 
lowing are the subjects covered in the current volume: Rights of Pupils 
and Parents; The Teacher’s Contract, and Certification, Appointment and 
Dismissal of Teachers; Teachers’ Tenure; Teachers: Retirement, Pen- 
sions, and Workmen’s Compensation; Local School Officers; Local School 
Corporations; County School Administration; Management and Control of 
School Property; Federal Aid for Educational Projects; School Contracts 
Other than for Teaching; Tort Liability of School Districts and School 
Personnel; School District Indebtedness; Taxation for Public Education; 
Creation and Alteration of School Districts; State School Administra- 
tion; State and Municipal Institutions of Higher Education; Private 
Schools and Colleges, Educational Trusts, and Taxation. 

Ford, Frederick Arthur, The Instructional Program. New York: Pren- 
tice-Hall, Inc., 1938. Pp. xvi+458. $2.75. 

In this book the author has reviewed the principles of learning and 
what he considers the more acceptable educationa! goals. He believes 
that the state should have a more definite program of education, with 
these goals as a foundation, and that educators have given too much em- 
phasis to the mastery of tool subjects and too little to developing the abil- 
ity in students to utilize the tool subjects in living happily and profitably 
with the group. 

Sanford, Chester M. Developing Teacher Personality That Wins. New 
York: Row, Peterson and Co. 1938. Pp. 160. $1.60. 











he POLS PLE 





1938] Book NOTES 49 


In recent years, Mr. Sanford has devoted his entire time to educa- 
tional and vocational guidance and to lecturing before professional gath- 
erings. The contents of this book are the result of direct experience. The 
aim is to point the way through specific suggestions to the development of 
the kind of personality that makes for a successful teaching career. 
Bennett, Margaret E. and Hand, Harold C. Designs for Personality. 

New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1988. Pp. xiii+-222. $1.36. 
Bennett, Margaret E. and Hand, Harold C. Beyond High School. New 

York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1988. Pp. xv-+227. 

Designs for Personality is the second in the series which Bennett and 
Hand have prepared for the use of high-school counselors and admin- 
istrators in group guidance. School and Life, the first of this series, 
which was mentioned in the February number of THE BULLETIN, pre- 
sented the typical problems students encounter in first-year high school. 
Designs for Personality aims to present material which will be helpful in 
guiding the pupil toward wholesome, objective self-appraisal by thought- 
ful observation of the people about him in his daily life, and by tolerant 
evaluation of the effectiveness of their varied types of behavior and life 
adjustment. In the third volume, Beyond High School, the student is in- 
vited to face and to study realistically the major perplexities which will 
be encountered when high-school days are over. Such problems as edu- 
cation after high school, vocations, leisure time, practical citizenship, and 
philosophy of life are discussed. 

Dearborn, Walter F. and Rothney, John W. M. Scholastic, Economic, 
and Social Backgrounds of Unemployed Youth. Harvard Bulletins 
in Education, No. 20. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938. 
Pp. xi+172. $1.50. 

This volume contains an analysis of the backgrounds of fourteen 
hundred young persons of Massachusetts. The study was made possible 
by grants from the N.Y.A. and F.E.R.A. The mental and physical de- 
velopment of the young people studied had been recorded for twelve years 
by the staff of the Harvard Growth Study. The purpose of the study was 
to find answers to such questions as the following: What are the charac- 
teristics, sociological, psychological, anthropological, educational, and 
economic of the unemployed youth? Are the brightest, most ambitious, 
and best educated, the best achievers, the best attending, and the least 
tardy at school the persons who are most likely to be selected by em- 
ployers? Do youths want to work? How do they go about getting jobs, 
and which methods are most successful? 

Carlson, Dick. Personal Development Manual. New York: Harper & 
Brothers, 1937. Pp. xii+69. 

Clemo, Margaret E.; Everett, Laura B.; and Everett, Elizabeth A. The 
Arch | Experience. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1936. Pp. xi+ 
408. $1.36. 

Education Against Propaganda. Edited by Elmer Ellis. Seventh Year- 
one of the National Council for Social Studies, 1937. Pp. v+182. 

2.00. 

Fitzgerald, James A.; Hoffman, Carl A.; and Bayston, John R. Drive 
and Live. Richmond, Virginia: Johnson Publishing Co., 1937. Pp. 
xiv+288. $1.28. ($.96 wholesale.) 

Floherty, John J. Youth at the Wheel. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott 
Co., 1937. Pp. 168. 

Gabler, Earl R.; and Frederick, Robert W. Methods of Teaching in Jun- 
ior and Senior High Schools. A guide book. New York: Inor Pub- 
lishing Co., 1937. Pp. xvii+211. $1.55. (Workbook, revised edition.) 

Langfitt, R. E.; Cyr, F. W.; and Newsom, N. W. The Small High School 
at Work. New York: American Book Company, 1936. Pp. xi+660. 

Lay, W. A. Experimental Pedagogy. Translated by Adolf Weil and 
Emanuel K. Schwartz, with an introduction by Paul R. Radosavlje- 
vich. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1986. Pp. x+3871. $2.25. 

McHale, Kathryn, and Valiant, Frances. Newer Aspects of Collegiate 
Education. Washington: American Association of University 
Women, 1936. Pp. 67. $.50. (Paper.) 




















50 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


Mulgrave, Dorothy I. Speech for the Classroom Teachers. New York: 
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 19386. Pp. xxiv+398. $1.60. 

Skinner, Charles E., editor. Educational Psychology. New York: Pren- 
tice-Hall, Inc., 1986. Pp. xxvi+754. $3.00. 

Smith, Reed. Learning to Write. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1937. 
Pp. xvi+544. $1.68. 

Studies in Group Behavior. Edited by Grace L. Coyle. New York: Har- 
per & Brothers, 1937. Pp. x+258. $2.75. 

Thomas, Russell. Plays and the Theatre. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 
1937. Pp. viii+729. $1.68. 

Wheat, Harry G. The Psychology and Teaching of Arithmetic. Boston: 
D. C. Heath and Co., 1937. Pp. x+591. $2.80. 

Whitney, Frederick L. The Elements of Research. New York: Prentice- 
Hall, Inc., 1937. Pp. xvii+616. $3.50. 

Wood, Clement. Carelessness: Public Enemy No. 1. New York: Hill- 
man-Curl Co., Inc., 1987. Pp. 93. $1.00. 








CALENDAR OF PROFESSIONAL MEETINGS 


Ninth Annual School Administrators Conference, George Peabody College 
for Teachers, Nashville, Tennessee, June 9-11. 
American Library Association, Kansas City, Missouri, June 13-18., 
Conference on Reading Problems for Administrators, Supervisors, and Teachers, 
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, June 23-25. 
Department of Secondary-School Principals, New York, New York, June 26-30. 
National Education Association—New York, June 26-30, 1938. 
Adult Education, New York, New York, June 27-29. 
Art Education, New York, New York, June 27-28. 
Deans of Women, New York, New York, June 27-29. 
Educational Research, New York, New York, June 29. 
Rural Education, New York, New York, June 27-29. 
School Health and Physical Education, New York, New York, June 27-29. 
National Education of Teachers of Mathematics—New York, June 27-29, 1938, 
Science Instruction, New York, New York, June 27-30. 
Social Studies, New York, New York, June 27-29. 
Special Education, New York, New York, June 27-28. 
Supervisors and Directors of Instruction, New York, New York, June 28-29. 
Supervisors ane Teachers of Home Economics, New York, New York, June 
27, 28, 29. 
Visual Instruction, New York, New York, June 27-29. 
Vocational Education, New York, New York, June 27-29. 
American Classical League, New York, New York, June 27-29. 
Conference on Industrial Arts, New York, New York, June 28-29. 
National Association of Journalism Directors of Secondary Schools, New York, 
New York, June 29-30. 
National Association of School Secretaries, New York, New York, June 28-30. 
Fifth Annual Conference on Business Education, The School of Business, 
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, June 30-July 1. 
Seventeenth Annual Printing Conference, Washington,, D. C., July 1-3. 
Conference on Social Education, Stanford University, California, July 6-10. 
Conference of Administrative Officers of Public and Private Schools, Univer- 
sity of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, July 18-22. 
Second World Youth Congress, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, 
August 17-25. 
The fourth annual summer conference of the Associated Academic Principals 
of New York State will be held at Colgate University, Hamilton, on August 
21, 22, 23. 
Council of School] Superintendents—Saranac Inn, September 26-27,1938. 
New York State Association of District Superintendents—Schenectady, 


September 27, 28, 29, 1938. 
Associated Academic Principals, Syracuse, December 27, 28, 29, 1938. 


TOR Raga: 











NEWS ITEMS 


AS THIS IS THE FINAL NUMBER of THE BULLETIN for 1937-38, per- 
haps it will not be amiss to list some high points in the work of the 
Department of Secondary-School Principals during the year. Among the 
outstanding achievements are the following: (1) THE BULLETIN has 
been issued eight times during the year instead of five as formerly, and 
its contents and format have been greatly improved. (2) A publication 
entitled STUDENT LIFE has been developed to encourage better prac- 
tice in student activities in secondary schools. (3) An organization has 
been built up for carrying on the nationwide program of discussion 
groups which are functioning as a project of the Department’s Committee 
on Planning. (4) Material on the problems and current movements in 
secondary education has been published for use of leaders and groups 
which are at work in the field. (5) A number of Department Com- 
mittees have been active during the year in working on various phases 
of secondary education. (6) The Program presented at Atlantic City on 
the problems and tendencies in secondary schools was one of the largest 
and most successful gatherings in the history of the Department. (7) 
Growth in the membership in the Department has been consistent with 
the extension of services. 

A NEW PROPOSAL for solving the youth problems of to-day has been 
made by John W. Studebaker, United States Commissioner of Educa- 
tion. In an address at the Atlantic City meeting of school administrators, 
Dr. Studebaker said: “One way to solve the vexing youth problem of to- 
day might be to put it up to the young ple themselves as a subject 
of high-school study. Let the young ple in the course gather all the 
documents being issued on the so-called Youth problem with all of its 
ramifications, and study and discuss this literature. Then let them reach 
decisions on what can be done to change and vitalize the school curric- 
ulum to which they have been subjected. Let them appraise the facilities 
of the community for youth in recreational, vocational, and other fields. 
At the close of the course they might get out a report with recommenda- 
tions. It would be the social, economic, and political approach to their 
own problems: unemployment, social security, and many others. There 
are plenty of courses on Socrates and Napoleon for youth; why not a 
course on youth for youth?” 

THE DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS, in attempting to work out an inte- 
grated secondary curriculum, have agreed upon three types of courses: 
(1) Core course, (2) Special Interest course, and (3) Fields courses. 
The core course constitutes that part of the total school curriculum in 
which an endeavor is made to assist all pupils in meeting those needs 
that are most common to them and to society without regard to any 
subject matter classification. Special interest courses include those 
courses which are frankly intended to meet the special needs, interests, 














and abilities of particular pupils. In some schools it may seem desirable 
to include an intermediate classification of fields courses that are more 


generalized in nature than special interest courses. Such courses are 
often referred to as survey courses. They may serve as a means of 
transition from the core course to special interest courses, although that 
would not always be necessary. 

CONSUMER MATHEMATICS, a new subject open to all pupils, was 
started this semester at the Reading, Pennsylvania, High School. This 
course is planned for one year’s work, but one semester, either first or 
second, may be taken separately during tenth, eleventh, or twelfth grade. 
Many students feel that there is too great a gap between the conventional 
courses in algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and actual life. Therefore, 
for the pupils whose schedules demand mathematics, this subject will be 
presented. It includes, in addition to the fundamentals of mathematics, 
the concepts, principles of percentage, home owning, intelligent buying, 
installment buying, taxes, insurance, saving programs, banking, invest- 


51 

















52 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


ment, social security, travel, transportation, communication, graph in- 
terpretation, practical mensuration, and the use of formulas. 

IN THE GROUP GUIDANCE PROGRAM of the Seattle, Washington, junior 
and senior high schools, the following list of subjects have been used: 
courtesy; honesty and fair play; citizenship—care of property; vocational 
choice; school attendance—regularity and punctuality; sportsmanship; 
study habits; health; personality traits—character; educational guid- 
ance; recognition of propaganda; recreational interests—leisure; and 
traffic and safety. Following is a list of agencies and means which are 
employed: home rooms, roll rooms, and advisory groups; classes, as- 
semblies, regular group organizations, forums; school papers, bulletins; 
movies; vocational conferences; and dramatization. 

OFFICIAL COURSES OF STUDY for teaching safety in high schools have 
been prepared in eighteen states and the District of Columbia, according 
to the National Conservation Bureau. The following are the eighteen 
states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Indiana, Michigan, Minne- 
sota, Colorado, Nebraska, California, Iowa, Texas, and Virginia. The 
following. states have similar courses now in paqneniee: Missouri, 
New York, Rhode Island, Kansas, IIlinois, Utah, Louisiana, and 
Oklahoma. 

THE MYSTERY OF STUDY-HALL MANAGEMENT will be solved by a forth- 
coming book to be published by Macmillan. It starts with the premise that 
the study hall is a programming device, then indicates the various forms 
of organization ani control and gives effective ways of administration. 
There are chapters on the kinds of study supervision possible in the 
situation, and the pupil behavior patterns likely to be found. With the 
exception of very short references to the study hall in books on second- 
ary-school administration, and experiential articles in educational period- 
icals, there is no material on the study hall. The great majority of 
secondary schools have some form of large grou dy facilities, and 
therefore, The Study Hall by Hannah Logasa, should fill a long felt need. 

SCHOOLS OF BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS, a few years ago, started 
courses in school banking which have served as a model for developing 
similar courses in many institutions. The course is reported to be 
effective in teaching each pupil to use money intelligently, and to get 
him into the habit of saving. The general aims of the course are: (1) 
Systematic habit formation; (2) e control of money uses through 
budgeting; (3) The control of money reserves through safe investing; 
(4) The cultivation of a proper sense of values; (5) The creation of 
interest in making the most of what one has rather than in the ill- 
satisfying pastime of keeping up with others; and (6) A growing un- 
derstanding of how money should not be an end in itself, but when wisely 
used, is a means toward realizing and enjoying the highest and finest 
things in life. 

THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF BUSINESS EDUCATION is planning a com- 
prehensive national study of business education in secondary schools to 
be undertaken over a period of several years. A similar study at the 
collegiate level will probably be undertaken by the American Association 
of Collegiate Schools of Business in codperation with the American 
Council on Education. In the field of secondary-school education, almost 
twenty years have gone by since an authoritative national group of 
business educators have assembled a large body of representative data 
about the numerous phases of business education in various types of 
schools. During these twenty years business education has increasingly 
become one of the major divisions of secondary schools, and is con- 
sequently faced with tremendous adjustments brought about by funda- 
mental changes and requirements in the vast and complex secondary- 
school system of this country. 

A SECONDARY-CURRICULUM WORKSHOP is being planned for six weeks 
during the summer of 1938 by the committee in charge of the Michigan 
Study of Secondary-School Curriculum. The plan is for the colleges and 
universities of the state and the state department to codperate in providing 
a staff to work with approximately one hundred and twenty-five teachers 
and administrators of Michigan secondary schools upon the actual prob- 





Otten RO 


| ool 





1938] News ITEMS 53 


lems of instruction. It is intended that the participants spend their full 
time for six weeks intensively studying instructional problems of their 
choice. 

UNION HIGH SCHOOL, CHOWCHILLA, CALIFORNIA, has a Pioneering 
Outing Club which has taken three camping trips of from three to five 
days each to Yosemite National Park. Gold dredgers have been visited. 
Deep-sea fishing excursions have been made to Monterey Bay. The 
crowning achievement of this unusual organization has been the four 
weeks spent at summer camp during summer vacation. Dues to the 
outing club, twenty-five cents a semester, are handled by the club treas- 
urer, a student. The transportation costs are kept as low as possible 
since school busses and faculty cars are used. ' 

A REPORT CALLING FOR BETTER LIGHTING OF CLASSROOMS was issued 
recently by the American Standards Association. This report, American 
Recommended Practice of School Lighting, was based on a study sponsored 
by the Illuminating Engineering Society and American Institute of Archi- 
tects. It declared many school-children had so little light for their work 
that they suffered from eyestrain, irritability, and headaches. Even on 
a bright day children in the darkest part of a classroom may get only 
five foot-candles, one-twentieth as much light as those near the windows; 
and on a dark day illumination of the desks may drop as low as one 
foot-candle. The investigators claimed tests showed children did twenty- 
eight per cent better in reading when they had a minimum of twenty 
foot-candles. The report recommended a minimum of fifteen foot-candles 
for classrooms and offices, and a photoelectric control to turn on lights 
when illumination falls below the minimum. Because glare is as harm- 
ful as dimness, it also advised that glossy finish on furniture and glass 
tops on tables be eliminated, that pictures be varnished instead of glassed, 
that desks be shaded from the sun, that indirect lighting be used. 

AN EXPERIMENTAL Course, “Field Mathematics,” was started last 
year at the Cleveland Heights, Ohio, High School. E. E. Morley, prin- 
cipal of the school, gives the following description of the course: “We 
place in this experimental section all pupils coming in from the junior 
high school who were especially weak in their ninth-grade mathematics. 
The instructor has accumulated a rather imposing array of mathematical 
equipment including a sextant, a surveyor’s transit, surveyor’s chains, 
and other instruments. Once or twice a week this group goes onto 
the high-school campus with their instructor and surveys portions of the 
grounds. With the data obtained in this manner, they spent their other 
periods inside working out practical problems. I should say that there 
has been enormous interest in this course. Quite a number of the weaker 
pupils have developed into stalwart students of mathematics and will 
transfer into the regular academic mathematics.” 

NINTH GRADE ENGLISH CLASSES at San Benito County High School, 
Hollister, California, have been organized around a reading center. 
Behind this new organization is the belief that reading, writing, and 
speaking are allied arts. The year’s work is a series of basic reading 
projects, each of which gives rise to an activity project calling for wide 
reading, writing, and. speaking. The usual mechanical skills (spelling, 
punctuation, paragraph organization, sentence structure, business letters, 
and the like) are taught as they are needed in conjunction with these 
reading activity projects. Classrooms have been converted into “studio- 
laboratories” equipped either with tables and chairs or with movable 
armchairs. Both subjective teacher evaluation and standardized reading 
and language usage tests indicate that the studio-laboratory method, 
using reading as a center, has produced improved pupil performance in 
all the language arts. Interested teachers and administrators may pro- 
cure a description of a typical project by sending their request, along 
with a stamped, self-addressed envelope, to Miss Carol Hovious, San 
Benito County High School, Hollister, California. 

A COURSE ENTITLED “FAMILY ARTS” is offered as a 9A elective at the 
McKinley Juniqr High School of Los Angeles. In the senior high school 
such courses, based on study of children in a nursery-school environ- 
ment, have been developed with success. The course is conducted as a 
regular class for study and discussion, but at frequent intervals, the 














54 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


class is taken to a nearby nursery school to observe. Early in the 
semester each girl selects a nursery-school child for individual case study. 
Each girl is also scheduled for two half-days at the nursery school, dur- 
ing which time she receives individual instruction and guidance by the 
class. Recently Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt talked to the class and 
complimented the practical work which the class is doing. 

MISSISSIPPI, AMONG THE THIRTY-FOUR STATES HAVING PUBLIC JUNIOR 
COLLEGES, claims credit for: (1) Starting its program on an objective 
basis with a definite criterion for location, organization, etc., and (2) 
Locating the institutions accessible to the boys and girls of the rural 
territory rather than in the larger urban districts. The value of the 
state’s junior college setup is emphasized in a recent survey of the 
system. The report, after summarizing the state system, makes this 
comment: “Possibly the federal government could make no better invest- 
ment for the future security of the nation than to grant subsidies to 
assure every young man and young woman opportunity to spend two 
years beyond the high-school level in an institution of the junior college 
type with a‘curriculum not copied from the university but adjusted to 
their own individual abilities and needs, a curriculum designed primarily 
to train them for social citizenship in American civilization.” 

IN ORDER TO ADVERTISE THE PINE PULP AND PAPER POSSIBILITIES of 
Treutlin County, Georgia, paper made from pine trees in that county is 
being used in the weekly publication of the Soperton High School. Trees 
for the production of the pulp and paper were cut during the summer 
by students of the school. A local trucking company hauled them to 
Savannah without charge. There, Dr. Charles H. Herty, famous scientist, 
converted them into paper in a special “run” through the Savannah 
Pine Pulp and Paper Laboratory. The school paper, appropriately 
enough is named the Slash Pine Blaze. Treutlin County takes pride 
in the fact that it has planted more slash pine trees than any area of 
similar size in the world. 

THE DEAN OF GIRLS IN HIGH SCHOOL is the title of a pamphlet just 
published by the research committee of the National Association of Deans 
of Women. The publication explains the function of guidance by the 
dean as (1) the “study of individuals,” (2) “to mobilize resources in 
the school, home, and community” so students can utilize them, and (3) 
“to assist individual students.” Specific duties of the dean are enumer- 
ated and explained. The eight duties included are: (1) Academic or 
educational guidance, (2) Social guidance, (3) Spiritual and esthetic 
guidance, (4) Vocational guidance, (5) Personal guidance, (6) Curric- 
ulum guidance, (7) In service training of teachers, and (8) Codrdination. 

TENTATIVE PLANS FOR A PART-TIME VOCATIONAL PROGRAM in the high 
school of Madison, South Dakota, for next year have been approved by 
the board of education. The plan makes it possible for the students to 
spend half time in school and half time in actually learning a trade. The 
work is planned by the high-school coérdinator and the employer. The 
students receive no pay for this type of work, but are given special train- 
ing and supervision by both the coérdinator and employer. The possible 
trades and industries in which such a program can be carried on in 
Madison will be surveyed during the second semester. The employers 
will then be contacted, and a call issued for students who are interested 
in this type of education. This is an effort to provide more practical 
training in the high school, and to give those students who are inter- 
ested to learn a trade while they are obtaining their high-school edu- 
cation. It is also introduced as an added incentive to get those who have 
dropped out of school to return and complete their high-school course. 

REVOLUTIONARY CHANGES IN EDUCATIONAL BU!LDINGS are pointed 
to by Public Works Administration experts, who have scanned plans for 
nearly 5,000 schools built with PWA assistance in four years. Indirect 
lighting and air-conditioned heating systems have been widely installed. 
Insulated roofs and walls are used increasingly and sound-proofing is 
installed where finances permit, especially in cafeterias. The old type 
school bell is being supplanted by electric hall gongs, sirens, and class- 
room buzzers. Radio and motion picture apparatus are part of the 
equipment cf the newer schools. Schoolroom windows turn inside out. 





De oe 








1938} News ITEMS 55 


Desk tops adjust upward like artists’ easels to prevent eyestrain and im- 
prove posture. School seats are adjustable or form-fitting. Some schools 
are equipped to give all students shower baths twice weekly by use of 
horseshoe-shaped spray rooms through which pupils pass in rapid suc- 
cession. There are more swimming pools with water chemically and 
light treated. Gymnasiums are combined with auditoriums. 

“THERE ARE TWO BIG THINGS that educators have to chew on during 
the next twenty years,” according to Harl R. Douglass, new head of the 
department of education at the University of North Carolina, “The first 
of these big things is trying to adapt the high school, and to a certain 
extent the college, to the individuals enrolled in these institutions. Only 
a small percentage of the students now in high schools can expect to find 
places in the white-collar jobs. Therefore, we are going to have to de- 
velop a new curriculum; it isn’t going to be entirely vocational because 
to-day industry is so organized that one has to learn on the job.” In 
regard to the second, that of teaching practical citizenship, Dr. Douglass 
says: “We have lost sight of the fact that we educate youngsters for 
the benefit of society as well as for the benefit of persons being edu- 
cated. Our program must be directed more and more toward practical 
citizenship. Unless that is the purpose of public education, you can’t 
justify taxing the wealthy and the childless for public education.” 

NEW BUILDINGS CALL FOR NEW CURRICULA, Providence’s, Rhode Is- 
land, school educators believe—so they are now carefully planning new 
courses to be instituted when classes move to the city’s two new high 
schools. “The new high-school buildings are the answer to the people of 
Providence to conditions that have been particularly disastrous to boys 
and girls. The new high schools must do more than train a comparatively 
few boys and girls for college. They must train all young people of 
high-school age so that they may be loyal to their families, codperative 
in habits and well-informed in economic, political, and other problems; 
capable of maintaining happy and effective homes for their children; 
capable of carrying on their vocational activities; able to spend their 
leisure time profitably; sound in body and mind and interested in and 
capable of continuing to study all aspects of life and nature,” says J. 
L. Hanley, superintendent of schools. 

IN THE HOPE OF TEACHING AMERICANS TO SPEND MORE INTELLI- 
GENTLY, a national center for research and education in consumers’ prob- 
lems is being established at Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri, through 
the codperation of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Inc. A year in 
preparation, the project, which is expected to use the income from 
$1,000,000 annually, is thought to be the first systematic and adequately 
financed attempt to gather and interpret to the public all the available 
facts on all phases of consumer questions. Intended eventually to en- 
lighten the average person—housewife, school child, or man in the street 
—in his everyday struggles with budgeting, installment buying, or sav- 
ings, the new Institute for Consumer Education plans also to emphasize 
the “long-neglected consumer viewpoint” in our general economic think- 
ing. In so doing it is hoped “to bring a correctional influence on some 
of the maladjustments of our present economic order.” To these ends 
it will work out school and college courses, pamphlets, and textbooks 
and ultimately conduct various services for adults, from a consumer’s 
clinic to special radio programs, motion pictures, and magazine articles. 
The first active teaching experiment will begin next September at 
Stephens College with the formal opening of the institute under the di- 
rection of Dr. John M. Cassels, now professor in the Graduate School 
of Public Administration at Harvard University. Stephens, accredited 
as a junior college for women, was selected for the experiment because 
it is centrally located and because women do most of the purchasing for 
the average family. 

A LARGE PROPORTION OF PUPILS leave high school and drift blindly 
without jobs or interests, the Regent’s study of education in New York 
has disclosed. The inquiry, according to Dr. Francis T. Spaulding of 
Harvard University, is expected to result in a program “of definitely 
planned assistance and guidance to boys and girls between the time 
they leave school and the time they get an independent foothold in the 

















56 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


adult community.” Another need, Dr. Spaulding said, is for a system- 
atic effort to develop “social conscience” among young people. “Voca- 
tional maladjustment is complicated by the fact that many pupils just 
out of high school have no one in whom they have confidence to turn to 
for advice or assistance. They do not go back to the school; some of 
them believe that school people do not know enough to help them, others 
have gained the impression that the school is no longer concerned with 
them. Their parents have in many cases neither information nor wisdom 
enough to help them, and they know almost no adults outside of school 
except their parents. In matters of recreation they are left to their 
own devices; there is little or no opportunity for them to continue the 
athletics or dramatics or hobbies in which the school may have tried to 
interest them. Unsocial if not antisocial behavior crops up among un- 
employed and part-time employed boys and girls in particular. No 
change in times is likely to solve this problem through making work 
opportunities easier to obtain. There seems no way to solve the problem 
except through clear-sighted recognition that the problem exists, that it 
is as serious as any educational question now confronting American 
communities, and that it can be dealt with effectively only through a 
program of definitely planned assistance and guidance to boys and girls 
between the time they leave school and the time they get an independent 
foot-hold in the adult community. Such assistance is not impossible; 
it is already being given by certain schools, guidance centers, ard private 
organizations here and there in the State.” 

ALMOST ALL HIGH-SCHOOL PUPILS HAVE ONE OR MORE HOBBIES, but the 
home rather than the school exerts the greatest influence in their develop- 
ment, according to the study made by G. E. Davis of the University of 
Iowa. He sought to find the general status of hobby interests and their re- 
lation to the school program. So he studied questionnaire responses of 
2,106 hobbyists of high-school age. Dr. Davis reported that smarter pupils 
tend to have a greater number of hobby interest than those of less intel- 
ligence. The duration of hobby interests, however, is about the same, 
regardless of intelligence. “Curriculum activities in the schools, es- 
pecially physical education, English, history, and literature, serve as 
a definite stimulus to hobby interests. However, extra-curriculum 
activities are less significant in contributing to such interests than is 
usually thought to be true.” It is the pupil’s father and mother who 
exert the greatest influence in the encouragement of hobbies. Close to 
this is the influence of associates of the same age. 

THE SCHOOL BOARD OF ATLANTA, GEORGIA, is considering numerous 
requests that all high schools in the city be made co-educational. At 
present only a few units are open to both boys and girls. D. F. McClatchey, 
Jr., chairman of a special committee on co-education, has urged that 
present co-educational units be retained, that any future units be made 
co-educational, and that the buildings and grounds committee consider 
the cost of converting the present segregated schools into co-educational 
units. “If education be defined as the adjustment of the individual to 
himself, to other people, and to social institutions, segregated schools do 
not afford to pupils, while they are still in their most impressionable 
years, a true environment for the operation of the educational process,” 
Mr. McClatchey pointed out. 




















THE SUMMER CONVENTION 
THE NEW YORK PROGRAM 





General Theme: The Responsibility of Education in Promoting 
World Citizenship. 
HEADQUARTERS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY- 
SCHOOL PRINCIPALS: HOTEL NEW YORKER 
Sunday, June 26, 4:30 P.M. —Vesper Service 


Address—Joseph R. Sizoo, Minister of the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas, 
New York City. 


Monday, June 27, 9:00 A.M.—FIRST GENERAL MORNING SESSION 
Addresses of Welcome— 
The Hon. Herbert Lehman, Governor of New York. 
The Hon. Fiorello H. LaGuardia, Mayor of New York City. 
The Hon. Frank P. Graves, State Commissioner of Education. 
The Hon. Grover A. Whalen, Director of New York World’s Fair 1939, Inc. 
‘The New York World’s Fair.” 
The Hon. Harold Campbell, Superintendent of Schools, New York City. 
“America’s Largest City School System.” 
Response—Emily A. Tarbell, President, ee of Classroom Teachers. 
Greetings— 
From England—J. Sunter, London, National Union of Teachers of England. 
From Canada—E. A. Hardy, Ontario, Treasurer, World Federation of 
Education Associations. 
Address—Caroline S. Woodruff, President of the NEA. 
Monday, June 27, 12:00 Noon—STATE MEETINGS 
Delegates will meet in hotel headquarters to elect one member to the fol- 
lowing committees: Credentials, Resolutions, Necrology. Seventeen states 
will nominate one person for membership on the Board of Directors. 


FIRST SESSION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SECOND- 
ARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 
JUNIOR HIGH-SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS 


MONDAY Panel Discussion: “An Effective Guid- 
June 27 ance Program for the Junior High- 
2:00 P. M. School Boy and Girl.” 
North Ballroom Chairman: Mr. Hugh S. Smith, Principal 
Hotel New Yorker of Jefferson Junior High School, 


Washington, D. C., Director of 
N.E.A. for District of Columbia. 


Discussion Leader: Mr. L. Larvie, Direc- 
tor of Educational Research, Me- 
chanics Institute, New York. 

Members of the Panel: 

Mrs. Hazel Fachet, Guidance Coun- 
selor, Alexander Junior High 


School, Elizabeth, New Jersey. 
Miss Mary O’Connor, New Haven, 


Connecticut. 
Miss Gertrude Roberts, President of 
Classroom Teachers’ Association 
for State of West Virginia. 


57 














[May, 


DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 


Mr. V. M. Hardin, Principal of Pip- 
kin and Reed Junior High Schools, 
Springfield, Missouri. 

Mr. Robert Clark, Assistant Super- 
visor of Schools, Marion County, 
West Virginia. 

Evaluator: Miss Bertie Backus, Principal 
of Alice Deal Junior High School, 
Washington, D. C. 


MONDAY JUNIOR COLLEGE ADMINISTRATORS 
June 27 Presiding: Dr. Joseph Roemer, Dean of 
2:00 P. M. Junior College, George Peabody Col- 
Panel Room lege for Teachers, Nashville, Tennessee. 


Hotel New Yorker Wat EDUCATES STUDENTS IN 
LATE ADOLESCENCE 
President Constance Warren of Sarah 
Lawrence College, Bronxville, New 
Yok. 


HOW ONE JUNIOR COLLEGE 
SERVES ITS COMMUNITY 


President Byron S. Hollinshead of Scran- 
ton-Keystone Junior College, LaPlume, 
Pennsylvania. 

Evaluator: Dr. Robert J. Trevorrow, 
Centenary Junior College, Hacketts- 
town, New Jersey. 


Monday, June 27, 5:30 P. MiA~TENTH LIFE MEMBERSHIP DINNER 
Greetings—Caroline S. Woodruff, President of the NEA. 
The Beginning—J. W. Crabtree, Secretary Emeritus, NEA. 
The Classroom Teacher—Daisy Lord, Past-President, Department of 
Classroom Teachers of the National Education Association. 
The Viewpoint of a School Teacher from Capitol Hill—Hon. Noah Mason, 
Member of Congress from Illinois. 
The Life and Work of Mrs. Mary C. C. Bradford—Jesse H. Newlon, Past- 
President of the National Education Association. 


Monday, June 27, 8:00 P. M.—FIRST GENERAL EVENING SESSION 
Labor and Industry—Leo Wolman, Research Staff ‘of the National Bureau of 
Economic Research, New York City. 


TUESDAY BREAKFAST CONFERENCE 
June 28 Sponsors of Chapters of the 
8:15 A. M. NATIONAL HONOR SOCIETY 


Led by H. V. Church, Secretary 


East Room 
of National Honor Society 


Fourth Floor 
Hotel New Yorker 




























NEW YORK CITY CONVENTION PROGRAM 59 








1938 ] 


Tuesday, June 28, 9:00 A. M—SECOND GENERAL MORNING SESSION 
Section A—Our Children 
Intelligence—George Stoddard, Director, Child Welfare Research 


Station, University of Iowa. 
Individual guidance—Edwin A. Lee, Director, National Occupational 


Conference. 
Attitudes—Daniel Prescott, Rutgers University. 
Section B—The Part Played by Recreation and Education in World Citi- 
zenship. 
Recreation—George Hjelte, Superintendent of Playground and Rec- 
reation, Los Angeles. 
Education—Goodwin Watson, Columbia University. 
Section C—The Latest Developments in Radio. 
Presented by the National Broadcasting Company. 














SECOND SESSION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SECOND- 
ARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 


JOINT MEETING WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF CLASS- 
ROOM TEACHERS 


























TUESDAY General Theme: Why Supervision? 
June 28 Presiding: Mary D. Barnes, Eastern 
2:00 P. M. Regional Director. 
Panel: Dr. Henry E. Hein, Principal 
Grand Ballroom of James Monroe High School, New 
Hotel New Yorker York City. 





Mr. William Hamm, Supervisor of 
High Schools, New York City. 

Mr. Frederick P. Graham, Assistant 
Superintendent, New York City 
(for Districts 45 and 46). 

Miss Lorene Barnes, Birmingham, 
Alabama. 

Mr. Ray Easley, Denver, Colorado. 

Dr. Alonzo Myers, New York Univer- 
sity, New York City. 

Evaiuator: Howard D. White, Assist- 
ant Commissioner of Education, 
New Jersey. 

3:00 P. M. 

Discussion of the topic will be contin- 

ued in group meetings. 



























3:00 P. M. College Group: 
North Ballroom Leaders: 
Hotel New Yorker Dr. H. L. Sprague, Montclair 
Teachers College, Montclair, New 
Jersey. 





Professor Roma Gans, Teachers 
College, Columbia University. 
Secretary: 
Miss Dona Boyle, Highland Park, 
Michigan. 

























3:00 P. M. 
Panel Room 


3:00 P, M. 
Parlor A 
Hotel New Yorker 


3:00 P. M. 
Grand Ballroom 
Hotel New Yorker 





3:00 P. M. 

(Room to be 

announced) 
Hotel New Yorker 





Hotel New Yorker 


60 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


High-School Group: 

Leaders: 

Dr. Samuel Patterson, Head of De- 
partment of Education, Hunter 
College, New York City. 

Miss Oma Claire Lafferty, Central 
High School, Charlotte, North 
Carolina. 

Secretary: 

Mrs. Eleanor Rowlett, Richmond, 
Virginia. 
Elementary-School Group: 

Leaders: 

Mr. Frederick N. Westphal, Prin- 
cipal of Public School 23, The 
Bronx, New York City. 

Miss Mary Jordon, Sioux City, 
Iowa. 

Secretary: 

Miss Lillie Mae Spangler, Dallas, 
Texas. 


Kindergarten-Primary Group (Joint 
Session with Kindergarten-Pri- 
mary Association). 
Leaders: 
Dr. Willis Sutton, Superintendent 
of Schools, Atlanta, Georgia 
Mr. Robert H. Lane, Los Angeles, 
California. 
Mrs. Harriet Rose Lawyer, Berke- 
ley, California. 
Miss Margaret L. Hughes, Bridge- 
port, Connecticut. 
Secretary : 
Miss Mary Woods, Erie, Penn- 
sylvania. 


Rural Group: 

Leaders: 

Mr. Carl D. Davis, Registrar, J. 
Sterling Morton High School, 
Cicero, Illinois. 

Mrs. Grace Ryder, Marshfield 
School, Marshfield, Massachu- 
setts. 

Secretary: 

Mrs. Mary H. Prosser, Chitten- 
ango, New York. 





Wed 

















1938] New York City CONVENTION PROGRAM 61 





Tuesday, June 28, 8:00 P. M-SECOND GENERAL EVENING SESSION 
What the Arts Contribute to, World Citizenship 
Art—By a nationally known artist. 
Literature—Pearl S. Buck, author. 
Music—By an outstanding leader in this field. 
Recognition of States attaining Honor Roll in NEA membership. 


Wednesday, June 29, 9:00 A..M.—THIRD GENERAL MORNING SESSION 
Section A—A Symposium by Organizations Interested in Education. 


Section B—-New York City School Pageant—Dramatic and Musical Presenta- 
tion of the History of Education in New York City. (To be presented also 
on Monday evening and Tuesday afternoon.) 


Section C—Demonstration of Educational Broadcasting—Columbia Broad- 
casting System. 


THIRD SESSION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF 
SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 
WEDNESDAY SENIOR HIGH-SCHOOL DIVISION 


June 29 Presiding: Principal Gustave A. Fiengold 
2:00 P. M. of Bulkeley High School, Hartford, 
Grand Ballroom Connecticut. 


Hotel New Yorker HOW CAN PUBLIC SECONDARY 
EDUCATION HELP TO BRING ABOUT 
A MORE DESIRABLY STABILIZED 

SOCIETY? 


Greetings: Dr. Frederic Ernst, Associate 
Superintendent of Schools in Charge 
of the Junior and Senior High School 
Division, New York City. 

As a Professor of Education Sees It: Dr. 
Will French, Teachers College, Colum- 
bia University. 

As an Investigator of Secondary Schools Sees 
It: Dr. E. D. Grizzell, Professor 
of Education, University of Pennsyl- 
vania. 

As a High-School Principal Sees It: Dr. 
Hymen Alpern, Principal, Evander 
Childs High School, Bronx, New York. 

Evaluator: Dr. Galen Jones, Principal of 
High School, Plainfield, New Jersey. 


Wednesday,’June 29, 8:00 P. M@M—THIRD GENERAL EVENING SESSION 
Presiding—Caroline S. Woodruff, President of the NEA. 
Music by New York City Schools. 

Address—Hon. Fiorello H. LaGuardia, Mayor of New York City. 

































62 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS [May, 


Thursday, June 30, 9:00 A. Mi—FOURTH GENERAL MORNING SESSION 
Section A—Equal Opportunity for all Children 
Section B—Learning Through Seeing 
Section C—Problems of American Youth 
LUNCHEON SESSION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF 
SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 


THURSDAY Presiding: Principal Paul E. Elicker 
June 30 of Newton High School, Newton- 
12:15 P. M. ville, Massachusetts, and President 
Grand Ballroom of the Department of Secondary- 


Hotel New Yorker School Principals. 
Guest Speaker: Cameron Beck of 
New York Stock Exchange Insti- 
tute: Address, LEADERSHIP 
FOR TO-MORROW. 
Five-Minute Reports on the Previous 
Sessions by the Evaluators. 


REFERENDUM ON THE BULLETIN FOR 1938-1939 


The Committee on Publications is desirous of ascertaining 
the attitude of t”e members of the Department in regard to 
the THE BULLETIN. If the readers of the THE BULLETIN 
will check the referendum below and mail this sheet to the 
Executive Secretary, it will guide the Committee in the 
publication of the THE BULLETIIN for the school year of 
1938-1939. 


1. Eight issues (October-May) of THE BULLETIN were 
published during the school year of 1937-1938. Should 
the numbers of issues for 1938-1939 be: Five [} Six C} 


Seven [}, Eight [}, Nine [} Ten [}? 

2. The issues were printed one column to the page. Should 
the number of columns to the page be: One [_] or Two[ ]? 

3. The number of pages of the majority of the issues has 
been sixty-four. Should the number be: 32 [}; 48 [}, 64, }, 


96 []? 


4. The length of the articles has ranged from one page to 
fifteen. Should the number of long articles be: as of 1937-38 [} 
increased [}; decreased [}? 

















oe 











1983 ] REFERENDUM ON THE BULLETIN FOR 1938-1939 63 


5. The following general divisions have been more or less 
observed. Should the number of pages devoted to these 
divisions be: 


Administration Supervision Guidance 


as in present issues CT] C] C] 
decreased CT it LJ 
increased CT] C] CJ 


General Education Topical Subjects Building Finance 


as in present issues [] CO C] C] 
increased C] CT LJ O 
decreased Cc] Cc it C 


News Books Committee Reports 


as in present issues [] [] C] 
increased cs. oa CJ 
decreased cs eo LJ 


6. Should the following divisions which have been scanted 
be given a more prominent place in the issues regularly? 
Digests of outstanding professional articles in educational 
magazines: Yes C} No {]: digests of important articles in 
non-educational periodicals: Yes CJ , No, [}. 


7. Abstracts of important educational books have been 
omitted this year. If you think abstracts should be included, 
please indicate the number you think should appear during the 
year: One [_]}, Two C} Three [], Four C} Five C} Six C} 
Seven [], Eight ["]? (These abstracts could be made from 
the books that rank as the second and third choices each 
quarter of the Book-of-the-Quarter Club selections. 


8. A section devoted to personal news of men in the secon- 
dary-school field could be added to THE BULLETIN. Do you 
favor such a section? Yes [} Nof |. 

Please fill this referendum sheet and mail to: H. V. Church, 
5835 Kimbark Avenue, Chicago. 




















Announcing ... 
Your Life in the Making 


The Need For Guidance 

We live in a world that is baf- 
fling enough to adults but even 
more so to many youths at- 
tempting to secure a foothold. 

Despite ‘the complexity of the 
times there are certain central 
factors in an individual’s life 
which persist today as in earlier 
generations when the exterior 
world was simpler. Toward 
these essentials the Personal 
Growth Leaflets are directed. 

From time to time earlier edi- 
tions of these leaflets have ap- 
peared in the JOURNAL under 
such titles as Your Life in the 
Making, Learning to Be a 
Leader, and Your Mind in the 
Making. These leaflets are to be 
revised and issued in a larger, 
more attractive form than 
hitherto. The first in the new 
series is described in the op- 
posite column. 

These leaflets may be used in 
guidance classes, as gifts to 
members of graduating classes, 
and in other ways. 





National Education Association: 
1201 Sixteenth Street, N. W. 


Washington, D. C. 


Please send me 


Ce eee ees eee 


Signed 


Your Life in the Making 

The first leaflet in the new 
series of Personal Growth Leaf- 
lets is entitled Your Life in the 
Making. 

This leaflet is 3 x 5 inches in 
size and consists of 16 page 
units with these page headings, 
exclusive of cover and _ intro- 
ductory pages: 

Your Self 

Begin Where You Are 

Make a Plan 

Keep Yourself Fit 

Develop Your Skills 

Attach Importance to the 

Family 

Make Worthy Friends 

Earn Your Own Way 

Be Loyal to Your Country 

Enjoy Your Life 

Hold Fast to Your Ideals 

Make Your Influence Count 

Keep on Learning 

Toward Peace and Happiness 

Other leaflets in this series 
will be published from time to 
time. 


copies of YOUR LIFE IN THE MAKING. 











PRICE: One cent each. No orders accepted for less than 25 copies. 
Cash must be sent with orders for $1.00 or less.