Novemser, 1938 Vor. 22, No. 77 





The Bulletin 


of the 
Department of Secondary- 
School Principals 


of the 
National Education Association 





SERVICE OrGAN FOR AMERICAN SECONDARY SCHOOLS 














The Bulletin 





Vor. 22, No. 77 






Novemser, 1938 





Contents 









Relationship Between Secondary School and College, 
Rosert H, Tucker... enisiiaienchedatiinciniinniianiaeiinemiiainin 













Trends in the Junior High-School Curriculum, F. G. Macomber 11 









The February Convention 






New Patterns for Junior-College Curricula, Roscor C. INGAuts 





Modern Classroom Techniques in Secondary School, 
ArTHuR K. Loomis _. 









An Eventual Development in Health Education, D. OBERTEUFFER....... 






In-Service Training of Secondary Teachers in Minnesota 
Cuirrorp P. ARCHER 













Cumulative Case Study Record and Guidance, H. Q. Van Dyxe.___. 


Book Notices 












News Items... 














National Meeting of State Coordinators, Warten E. Myer 











Calendar of Professional Meetings 









Issued Eight Times a Year 
$2.00 a Year Fifty Cents 
Monthly, October to May inclusive 














Published at Berrien Springs, Michigan, by the Department of Sec- 
ondary-School Principals of the National Education Association 
5835 Kimbark Avenue, Chicago 


Application has been made for second-class permit to be chan from Danville, 
Ill, to the post office at Berrien Springs, Mich. 













The Bulletin 
of the 
DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL 
PRINCIPALS 


National Education Association 








VoLuME 22 Novemner, 1938 Numper 77 





RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SECONDARY SCHOOL 
AND COLLEGE* 


ROBERT H. TUCKER 


Dean, Washington and Lee University 


In an article in the Journal of Higher Education a few years ago, 
Charles A. Beard relates that a music hall wit in London brought 
down the house one evening by remarking in typical English drawl: 
“Darwin told us where we came from, Conan Doyle told us where we 
are going, and now if Stanley Baldwin will tell us where we are, I'll 


buy him a new top hat.” 

With respect to the educational system of the United States most 
of us are beginning to see where we came from. We can understand 
and appraise perhaps the major forces which have been at work. Few 
of us know just where we are or what the ultimate goal will be. Per- 
sonally, I do not claim to be one of these few. My only claim to the 
right of expressing even a hesitant opinion rests upon the fact that my 
own professional life has been about equally divided between state 
educational institutions and privately supported institutions and that 
it has included some years spent as a teacher in secondary schools. 

We have been passing through a period of far-reaching social 
change. Like all other social institutions, college and secondary school 
are plastic agencies, making their contribution to social progress, but, 
in turn, responding to the changing interests, needs, and capacities of 
the society which surrounds them and, in last analysis, provides their 
support. Eternal verities are probably no less rare in education than 
in other fields of human endeavor. 

Colleges and secondary schools are confronted with many per- 
plexing problems. It is no exaggeration to say that the most serious of 
these problems arise from the rapidity with which the educational sys- 


*Address delivered at the joint session of Colleges and Secondary Schools, annual 
meeting, Virginia Education Association, Richmond, November, 1937, 




















4 DépaRTMENT oF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [November 





tem has developed. It seems incredible that the number of students 
in higher educational institutions should have risen from 237,000 in 
1900 to more than a million in 1934. It seems more incredible that the 
number of students in public high schools should have risen from 519,- 
000 to more than six million in the same period. While there has re- 
cently been some decrease of enrollment in the elementary school, 
enrollments both in colleges and secondary schools have continued to 













increase since 1934. 
In other words, we are conducting in the United States an experi- 
ment in mass education without precedent in any other country or 
time. The founding fathers, we recall, laid down the principle in the 
Ordinance of 1787 that “schools and the means of education shall 
forever be encouraged for the promotion of good government and the 
happiness of mankind.” This is the principle on which our democracy 
was built. It is the only principle on which it can hope to survive. 


Forty years ago, in the South at least, educational debate was cen- 
tered upon the question whether it was the duty of the state to pro- 
vide free education beyond the elementary school. To-day few ques- 
tion the wisdom of providing a well-rounded high-school education 
for all at public expense. Secondary education is now being provided 
for six million pupils. Apparently it will eventually be provided for 
ten million or more. Indeed, some of the state universities, through 
the establishment of curricula for students who are unable to carry 
the regular college work, are bringing sharply to the fore the question 
of mass education at the college level. 

The impact of all these forces has changed the face of the educa- 
tional world in the short space of a single generation. The efforts of 
college and secondary-school authorities to meet the new conditions 
constitute one of the most interesting and creditable chapters in the 
history of American education. Certainly there was never a time 
when teachers and administrators were more constructively critical of 
educational organization and procedure, or more actively engaged in 


























their improvement. 

It would be a miracle if this growth had failed to result in many 
inarticulations in the educational system. These inarticulations have 
grown out of misunderstandings, conflicts of interest, duplication and 
other uneconomical practices, and failure to view the problem as a 
whole. The units concerned have been too independent in their pur- 
poses and too indefinite and variable in their procedures. At the pres- 
ent time, there is agreement only in a most general way as to educa- 
tional programs and procedures. Particularly, there is still uncertainty 
as to the place and function of the different types of colleges and uni- 


















inc 





1938] Retationsuip Between Seconpary ScHooL AND COLLEGE 


versities in the educational system and the relationship between these 
institutions and the secondary school. 


The great need, therefore, is for a comprehensive, well-rounded 
and fundamentally justified educational program, a program which 
will correlate all grades of education at least to the extent that there 
shall be a straight and open pathway from the lowest to the highest 
grade. The needed coordination will not be attained by chance. It can 
be accomplished only through cooperative endeavor. The functions 
of the various parts of the educational system must be clearly differ- 
entiated and these functions must, after careful experimentation, be 


arranged in orderly sequence. 

In this process the outstanding problem has been, and still is, the 
articulation of the work of the secondary school and the college. In 
this I do not refer, except incidentally, to the age-old controversy over 
the material content of preparatory and college courses. Recent expe- 
rience has relegated this question to the minor place it deserves. I have 
in mind articulation in the broader sense of intellectual quality and 
purpose. In this sense, the question of articulation involves not only 
admission requirements and procedures, but also the underlying phil- 
osophy upon which our educational system is based. Concretely, it 
raises the question of the functions and responsibilities of the second- 
ary school and the functions and responsibilities of the college. 


I am well aware of the tendency in some quarters to regard the 
secondary school primarily as an instrumentality for preparing stu- 
dents for college. Personally, I have never been able to accept the idea 
that high-school work should be planned solely, or even primarily, 
with a view to satisfying the requirements for college entrance. Sec- 
ondary schools are in the main committed to a much larger task, of 
which preparation for college is only an important phase. Nor have I 
been able to find adequate support for the notion that student failures 
in college are due primarily to the defects of earlier preparation. Fail- 
ures in college involve many factors, including the vagaries of college 
teaching itself. The problem of college admission is a joint problem 
which can be met only by college teachers and secondary-school 
teachers working in a spirit of frank and open cooperation. 


The problem of college admission is largely a problem of differ- 
entiation of students on evidence of interests, aptitudes, and capacities 
demonstrated in the earlier years of the secondary-school course. 
Ideally, education is a broad highway which every child has the right 
to travel in so far as his interests and capacities permit. Practically, 
individual differences cannot be overlooked. Uniform standards can- 
not be maintained in training human beings. We have learned by 














DeparTMENT or SeconpaRY-ScHooL Principats [November 


trial and error the fallacy of attempting quantity production in edu- 
cation. Mass education at the college level may eventually be realized, 
but the day of its realization is far in the future. 


These facts are already recognized by colleges and secondary 
schools. Most secondary schools require, very properly, one level of 
attainment for graduation and another level for recommendation to 
college; in other words, they have one grade for graduation and an- 
other higher grade for certification to college. Likewise, many col- 
leges require that the candidate for admission shall have graduated 
with a certain rank in his class. With the possible exception of the 
general average of the student’s grades, this is, for graduating classes 
of considerable size, by far the most reliable of the score or more cri- 
teria now in use. 


Adherence to the principle of selection, or as Thorndike calls it, 
distribution in education, enables high schools to differentiate their 
courses in such a way as to meet the wide range of abilities possessed 
by pupils at this stage of their development. It also enables the col- 
leges to specialize in aims and objectives and thus limit their work 
to the resources at their command. 


The truth is that the present overexpansion in our educational 
system and the growing burden on the community can be reduced 
only by an intelligent policy of selection in secondary school as well as 
in college. Everyone recognizes that there are varying levels of human 
ability and varying levels of achievement. The educational system 
must be so organized as to meet the requirements in the most effec- 
tive way. 

The problem is thus closely connected with the philosophy upon 
which the educational system is based. This philosophy implies that 
education is. the most powerful agency for maintaining and develop- 
ing the social structure. In a democracy, education must train pri- 
marily for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. Likewise, it 
must train for leadership, develop the more promising minds capable 
of analyzing conditions and directing the great majority. 


As Briggs has well said, the task of education is twofold: (1) to 
teach people to do better the things they would attempt anyway, and 
(2) to teach them to do things they would not otherwise undertake— 
in other words, to comprehend the social heritage and to add some- 
thing to it which may be passed on to future generations. The former 
is the central aim and function of the high school; the latter is the 
central aim and function of the college. The high school directs its 
energies primarily to the development of general education, cultural 
as well as vocational. The college accepts the task of training for in- 





1938] RevationsHip Between SEcoNDARY ScHOOL AND COLLEGE 7 


tellectual leadership. The fact that neither succeeds in accomplishing 
fully its purpose does not change the conditions or the essential rela- 
tionship between secondary school and college. 


Education should thus be thought of as a continuous, integrated 
process, but clearly it must be differentiated according to the needs 
and abilities of the individual as a member of the social group. In the 
elementary school, in the secondary school, and in the college, there 
is need of this differentiation. Completion courses should be provided 
for those who are unable to go on, whether the cause be economic 
limitation, lack of native ability, or other intellectual factors which 
cannot be overcome. Who then should go to college? Wilkins an- 
swers this question correctly and fully, I think, when he replies: 
“Every potential leader and no one else.” 

I need hardly add that the much-abused term leader is here used 
in a very broad sense. The man who organizes a great industry is as 
much a leader as the man who heads an army or the man who wins 
a place in the legislative halls of the nation. Likewise, the man who 
makes a useful invention, or discovers a new way of combating dis- 
ease, or develops the means of analyzing the atom, or writes a great 
novel or poem, is, from the social point of view, a leader in the full 
sense of the term. The great problem is to discover potential leaders 
and further their development, to find more dependable ways of de- 
termining whether the student can profitably go on through second- 
ary school and from the secondary school through college and how 
the work should be differentiated at each stage of his educational 
career. 

It is natural that in meeting this elusive problem our methods 
have fallen far short of success. In our inability to measure the intan- 
gible elements which determine the student’s success, we have been 
inclined to overemphasize the tangible, mechanical side—to measure 
everything by course credits and grades while self-discipline, charac- 
ter, personality, and general intelligence are really the decisive tests. 
The Carnegie units have served a useful purpose. They were intro- 
duced at a time when educational conditions were chaotic and almost 
any change was a step in advance. However, the tendency, until re- 
cent years, has been to make a fetish of units and course credits, to 
emphasize specific prescriptions while losing sight of the substance 
and the spirit. The need, as Learned has long ago pointed out, is for 
more flexible and more revealing standards. The real measure is not 
units, subjects, certificates, or examinations, but the actual progress 
made toward achieving the permanent ends of education. 


The remedy is to be found not in the further expansion of our 
already overextended educational undertakings, but rather in the 














DEPARTMENT OF SeconpARY-ScHooL Principats [November 


simplification and refinement of our educational procedure and in 
the establishment of closer articulation between the different parts of 
the educational system. Particularly, there should be cooperative 
effort to relate secondary education to education in college, not unit 
by unit, nor credit by credit, but by what the individuals concerned 
know and can do and may be expected to accomplish in the college 
course. 


In so complex a situation the solution is not to be reached through 
formulas. Several lines of procedure, however, seem to be desirable 
and clear: 

1. Secondary schools and colleges should reach an understand- 
ing as to their respective aims and functions and revise their curricula 
with a view to eliminating unessentials and limiting their educational 
commitments to what they can accomplish in an effective way. 


2. The secondary school should concentrate upon subjects and 
procedures which will be helpful to young people in developing apti- 
tudes, skills, and powers necessary for resourceful and constructive 
living on the one hand and effective college work on the other. This 
implies the continuance and further development of curricula provid- 
ing for general education, for college preparation, and for vocational 
training. 

Completion curricula should be provided at convenient stages for 
pupils whose abilities and resources make it undesirable for them to 
pursue their academic studies further. There is even greater need for 
providing continuation courses in trade and vocational education for 
students of this type. Secondary schools have very generally failed to 
meet the full possibilities in this respect. Courses should be so ar- 
ranged, however, that the doors of opportunity in the different types 
of education will be kept open as long as possible. 


3. College curricula should be so organized as to articulate more 
closely with the secondary school and avoid the deadening effect of 
duplicating the secondary-school work in the freshman year. Colleges 
should concentrate upon the type of work best suited to their indi- 
vidual purposes and resources rather than attempt, as many now do, 
to cover the entire educational field. Again the doors of educational 
opportunity should be left open certainly to the end of the freshman 
year and if possible to the end of the sophomore year. 

4. Both colleges and secondary schools should develop effective 
systems of educational guidance, under competent counselors, com- 
bined with carefully devised testing programs. 

The guidance and testing program should be state-wide and 
should become the center of the entire educational program. It would 


nite a Saay 


ec dackent kee 





1938] Re ationsHip BETWEEN SEcoNDARY SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 9 


serve to winnow out the pupils each year and afford the information 
necessary for directing them into the courses best suited to their abili- 
ties and needs. 


5. Cumulative records shoud be kept, containing not only grades 
and ratings, but as far as possible, a complete and accurate summary 
of the pupil’s intellectual, physical, and emotional development, as 
well as his special aptitudes, interests, and limitations as indicated 
from year to year. A promising means for the attainment of these 
ends can be found in the tests and record forms now being developed 
by the Educational Records Bureau or the Cooperative Test Service of 
the American Council on Education. 


6. Students should be promoted and directed in the secondary 
school on the basis of these records and admitted to college when the 
records indicate that they possess the requisite general intelligence, 
combined with well-defined interests and demonstrated ability to work 
in one or more of the fields in which the college offers instruction. 
The question of college entrance could thus be shifted from the quan- 
titative to the qualitative basis. Specific subject requirements could 
be relegated to their proper place in the background. 


The procedure here suggested involves increased expense, but it 
is entirely possible and feasible if colleges and secondary schools will 
pause in their programs of expansion and address themselves to the 
functions which lie clearly within their respective spheres. Unfortu- 
nately in educational affairs, as elsewhere, “no one lives content with 
his own lot, but rather praises those who follow other paths.” High 
schools aspire to be junior colleges. Colleges cannot rest content un- 
less they add at least some of the features of the university or the 
graduate school. Both seem to think that if they can expand their 
offerings upward and outward, the question of depth and thorough- 
ness of work may well be left to take care of itself. 


In the colleges, we are still obsessed with the notion that size and 
success are synonymous. The widening of knowledge has accelerated 
the multiplication of schools and departments and the introduction 
into the curriculum of hundreds of new courses, many of them not 
properly correlated, some of them not even clearly defined. In their 
desire to attract students, many of the colleges have assumed educa- 
tional obligations clearly beyond their powers to fulfill. Some of them 
have unfortunately thought it necessary to make themselves into in- 
tellectual apothecary shops where every conceivable nostrum can be 
found. 

Similarly secondary schools have tended to expand their curricula 
and to multiply in numbers beyond reasonable community needs. In 

















10 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [November 


the United States, there are more than twenty-five thousand high 
schools, ranging in size from a mere handful of pupils to more than 
ten thousand, but it appears that seventy-five per cent of these schools 
register under two hundred pupils, while more than fifty per cent reg- 
ister fewer than one hundred. In Virginia, with a high-school enroll- 
ment of 115,964 and a land area of less than 41,000 square miles, there 
are 628 public high schools. Clearly there is need of consolidation of 
small high schools, as well perhaps as the breaking up of a few unwieldy 
city high schools. With the present means of transportation, approxi- 
mately half the present number of high schools could serve all reason- 
able purposes more effectively and at a vast reduction of expense. The 
elimination of expensive duplication in this respect would release 
funds to meet the cost of providing not only effective guidance and 
testing programs, but the type of instruction which everyone agrees 
the high schools deserve to have. 

All these factors serve to emphasize the need of taking careful 
stock of the situation and planning definitely for the future. The 
problems involved are, as I have said, joint problems, implying joint 
responsibility on the part of the colleges and the secondary schools. 
The solution can be found only in cooperative action. The great need 
is for mutual understanding of purposes, for clarifying objectives and 
agreeing upon lines of procedure which will enable schools and col- 
leges to go forward more intelligently and more surely in the training 
and development of youth. 


TRENDS IN THE JUNIOR HIGH-SCHOOL CURRICULUM 


F. G. MACOMBER 
University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 


The past decade has seen considerable modification of our think- 
ing in the secondary as well as in the elementary fields of education. 
It is not my purpose to discuss at any great length the causes of these 
changes in the modern junior high school, but rather to consider the 
trends themselves. I shall, therefore, merely give mention to the under- 
lying social and psychological factors which are largely responsible for 
the recasting of our educational philosophy in the secondary schools 
of America. 


The changing nature of the social scene, with its implications for 
curriculum revision, has been made the theme of numerous educa- 
tional conferences during the past few years. Out of this examination 
of society has grown a demand for a curriculum better suited to the 
needs of pupils living in a social and economic world greatly changed 
from that of a few years back. 


At the same time, we have witnessed what almost amounts to a 
revolution in our thinking in the field of educational psychology. We 
have seen our cherished laws of learning battered to pieces by the on- 
slaught of new experimental evidence, and a set of principles, based 
upon an organismic conception of growth, proposed as a guide to the 
learning situation. 


While there is much apparent confusion in our educational phil- 
osophy and practice at the present time, certain trends in the develop- 
ment of the curriculum for the junior high school are becoming more 
and more evident. Among these are the following: 


1. The so-called exploratory function of the junior high school is 
rapidly giving way to the concept of the junior high school as an in- 
stitution for continuing the general education of youth coming up 
from the elementary grades. The idea that the junior high school is 
an institution with a purpose different from that of the other units of 
the public school system is no longer tenable. The value and need of 
the numerous short “exploratory courses,” so common in the junior 
high school of a few years back, are being seriously questioned. With 
the passing of the time when the high-school youth, armed with a few 
years of vocational training in shop or commerce, could take his place 
in the industrial and commercial world, the necessity of exploratory 
courses as prerequisites to high-school vocational training has largely 
disappeared. The increased age at which the youth of the land can 


ll 





















































12 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [November 


hope to enter industry has raised grave doubts of the advisability of 
experences n the life of the pupl, coupled with a demand for further 
vocational training before the last year of the senior high school. In 
those states where the junior-college movement has made consider- 
able progress, there is a growing tendency to think of the junior col- 
lege as the agency fer vocational training for pupils not planning on a 
college career. The high school itself is, for most pupils, an institution 
of general education. Specialized vocational education is being pushed 
to higher levels. This trend relieves the junior high school of the ne- 
cessity of emphasizing vocational guidance, and of preparing pupils 
to select their fields for specialization in the senior high school. While 
it is desirable for the junior high-school pupil to give serious thought 
to vocational plans and to have a vocational goal in mind, an increas- 
ingly large number will make final plans for vocational education dur- 
ing their senior high-school years. 

2. The growing complexity of modern social and economic life 
in our democracy has caused growing concern over the low degree 
of social intelligence on the part of the adult population. At the same 
time, we are becoming convinced that the traditional school curricu- 
lum is, at best, ineffective in educating for intelligent social participa- 
tion in that democracy. This is especially true of the more academic 
areas of the junior high-school curriculum where important modifica- 
tions are being made. One of the most significant trends is the de- 
velopment of what is generally termed, for want of a better name, 
a social-living core. This area of the core curriculum, growing out of 
real life experiences of the learner, is dedicated to the ends of develop- 
ing better integrated individuals—citizens better able to adjust them- 
selves to the changing nature of our social and economic environment; 
citizens able to lead reasonably happy and worth-while lives as par- 
ticipating members of our democracy; citizens with a better under- 
standing of the problems of that democracy, and a determination to 
work out equitable solutions compatible with the ways and ideals of 


a democracy. 

In general, this “social-living core” is being developed on a 
twelve-, thirteen-, or fifteen-year basis, depending on whether a par- 
ticular city, county, or state begins public education at the kinder- 
garten or first-grade level, and ends it with the senior year in high 
school, or continues it through the junior college. A well-articulated 
sequence of experience units, developed around a central theme, or 
growing out of a so-called center of interest or activity area is sug- 
gested for each year or group of years. In general, these suggested 
units emerge from what have, in the past, been thought of as the social 


studies and science areas of learning. 


13 


1938 | TRENDs IN THE JUNIOR HicH ScHoot CurPicuLUM 


The units of the social-living core are integrative in nature, and 
generally consume from one third to one half of the day in the ele- 
mentary school. In the secondary school, there is a growing tendency 
to develop at least one fairly long period during the school day in 
order that real experience units may be developed. This period is 
usually obtained by combining the social studies and English periods 
to form a two-hour period for the social-living core. In some cities, 
this two-hour period runs through both the junior and senior high 
school, while in other cities is it shortened to a one-hour period during 
the junior and senior years. A number of cities are experimenting with 
the development of a three-hour period at the junior high-school level. 
It is very likely that the next decade will see all of the pupils in many 
of our junior high schools under one teacher for at least half of the 
day. Such an organization has many advantages aside from the op- 
portunity offered for developing real experience units in the social- 
living core. Not only is oral and written expression placed in more 
functional situations, but many other activities of the present English 


period become more purposeful to the pupil. 


3. Junior high schools are becoming more and more conscious 
of their responsibilities in developing a guidance curriculum that will 
really function. There is a definite trend toward making guidance an 
integral part of the social-living core, with each teacher of this area of 
the curriculum charged with the responsibility of being friend and 
counselor to every pupil enrolled in his class. There is a growing 
realization that if we are to give intelligent, and effective social, edu- 
cational, recreational, and health guidance, as well as some vocational 
guidance to the pupils of the junior high schools, the total teacher- 
pupil contacts must be drastically cut, and the time of these contacts 
greatly lengthened. Even though a real social-living core is not devel- 
oped, the two- or three-hour period under one teacher can well be 
justified if we can provide a situation where guidance can function. 
The two-hour period cuts in half the total teacher-pupil contacts and 
doubles the time of contacts. The three-hour period triples the time, 
and cuts the number of contacts to one-third that under the single- 
hour periods. Such an arrangement, if teacher and school are so in- 
clined, makes it possible for a teacher to get acquainted with his pupils 
and their home conditions, an arrangement which enables him to act 
intelligently as their counselor. The time is past when a single guid- 
ance expert, armed with records and reports, can be considered as giv- 
ing effective guidance service to three or four hundred pupils. The 
concept of guidance has so expanded that it will be effective only as it 
becomes a part of the pupil’s classroom curriculum, and as a large 














14 DeparTMENT oF SEcCONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [November 


number of teachers, each contacting his charges for fairly long daily 
periods, develop real guidance points of view. 


A number of schools are experimenting with the idea of assigning 
to a teacher two or three entering seventh grade social-living classes, 
and allowing him to continue with these same classes through the 
three years of the junior high school. This movement has much to 
recommend it, provided that only the finest of our teachers—those 
who love and understand the early adolescent youth—are allowed to 
handle these classes. A teacher, to successfully discharge the responsi- 
bility of counselor for his groups, must be much more concerned with 
the development of wholesome personalities and well-integrated indi- 
viduals than with the teaching of any body of subject matter. He must 
realize that modifications of pupil conduct and ways of thinking are, 
after all, the outcomes desired of the educational process, and that 
these can be accomplished only as the learner is really experiencing 
along desired lines. The guiding of pupil experiencing both in and 
out of school is the teacher’s real responsibility, not the teaching of a 
subject. 

If this movement towards a better guidance program, incorpo- 
rated as it is in the core-curriculum movement itself, is to be success- 
ful there must be developed a real social-living curriculum throughout 
the school life of the learner. Many experiments are bogging down be- 
cause of failure to do this. We have often failed to remember that 
learning is a growth process for the teacher as well as for the pupil. 
We have, in many instances, completely overwhelmed our finest 
teachers by suddenly thrusting upon them the responsibility for fusing 
English and social studies. The success of the whole integrative trend 
is dependent upon careful curriculum developments, together with 
continued teacher education, over a period of several years. A teacher 
does not become guidance-minded over night, nor does she learn to 
develop really fine units of work of an integrative nature except by 
continued experience in so doing. The whole movement is as much 
one of teacher growth as it is of curriculum and administrative reor- 


ganization. 

4. For years, we have been giving lip service to the philosophy 
that the curriculum must be adjusted to the child; and, at the same 
time, we have been expecting most children of a class to read the same 
texts, to work the same problems in arithmetic, and to meet the same 
grade standards. True, we have segregated children into ability groups, 
and we have made provision for some electives, but we have done 
little to develop a curriculum fitted to the nature and needs of the 
different groups. During the past several years, there has been increas- 
ing recognition of the nature of individual and trait differences, to- 





1938] TRENDS IN THE JUNIOR HicH ScHoot CurricuLuM 15 


gether with a definite attempt to develop a curriculum adjusted to 
these differences within and among children. 

Grade standards requiring more or less uniform subject matter 
or skill mastery at each of the different levels of the school system are 
indefensible in the light of what is known of the nature of the child. 
As determined by standardized reading tests, the upper fourth of the 
pupils in the seventh grade of junior high school will have reading 
ages at least two years above those of the lower fourth of the pupils 
in reading ability. The same differences in ability will be found in 
arithmetic. Obviously, to expect all, or nearly all seventh graders to 
read and understand the same books or to understand the same arith- 
metic problems is expecting the impossible. Successful participation in 
the activities of the school is essential to the mental health of each and 
every child, yet we have set impossible tasks for many of our children, 
while others, due to their mental superiority, have been allowed to de- 
velop bad reaction patterns through lack of a challenging curriculum. 


One of the most difficult problems of secondary education to-day 
is that of developing learning situations in which all pupils may suc- 
cessfully participate. The experience approach to education seems to 
offer a way out. An illustration will suffice to make this point clear. 
A certain eighth-grade class of unselected pupils is working with a 
unit on “Westward Expansion.” In this group of thirty-five, the 
teacher should expect to find several with reading abilities no greater 
than those of average fifth and sixth graders, while others can easily 
read books written for ninth, tenth, and eleventh year students. The 
material written for grade-school pupils on the subject “Westward 
Expansion” can be read and understood by the lower ability readers 
of this group. On the other hand, the better readers can, and should, 
utilize some of the books on the same topic written for high-school 
students. All pupils can successfully participate in the reading activi- 
ties of the unit if there is available a well-developed library with ample 
reading and visual materials of different levels of ‘difficulty dealing 
with the theme of the unit. The opportunities for successful partici- 
pation which result from excursions; creative and appreciative art, 
literature, and music; construction; research and other types of activi- 
ties growing out of a unit of work enable each and every pupil to 
make a valuable contribution to the work of the group and to experi- 
ence satisfaction in so doing. 

It is significant that publishers are beginning to recognize the 
need for materials which are of different levels of difficulty, yet which 
are written for pupils of the junior high-school age. A few excellently 
prepared books for the poor readers are already on the market, and 
others are in preparation. 














DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principacs [November 


After all, there are no set materials which every pupil must read, 
nor are there things which everyone must do in like manner. It is im- 
portant, however, that each pupil make continuous growth in effec- 
tive, democratic living. Reverting to the topic “Westward Expansion,” 
this unit should result in all pupils gaining valuable experience in 
common undertakings, in social understandings, attitudes, and appre- 
ciations, and in essential abilities. It is neither desirable nor possible 
for all to have identical experiences. 

Progress in the so-called fundamentals is, by the very nature of 
the abilities being developed, an individual matter. This does not im- 
ply completely individualized instruction in these areas. It does imply 
curriculum developments that would enable the pupil who comes to 
the junior high school with fifth-grade arithmetic achievement to con- 
tinue from there rather than to be thrust into work entirely above his 
level of insight. We are beginning to face the plain fact that if the 
reading activity is to have much value for pupils, we must not only 
have a pretty good idea of the reading ability of each, but must make 
available materials suited to their reading levels. To be continuously 
forced to read too difficult materials is both discouraging and harm- 
ful to the pupil. Progress, as well as a wholesome attitude, depends 
upon much reading of materials which can be understood readily. 


5. A trend, alluded to several times, is the growing recognition 
of the importance of creative and appreciative experiences in the cur- 
riculum. Not only are numerous junior high schools offering classes 
in creative writing, music, and art, but what is more significant, teach- 
ers and curriculum workers are seeing the possibilities for stimulating 
creative effort and developing appreciations in the regular classes. 
This trend is especially noticeable in the newer type social-living cur- 
riculum, where creative and appreciative activities become integral 
parts of the units of work. Some schools are freeing the music and 
art teachers for part of the day in order that they may work more 
closely with core teachers as situations demand. The motion picture 
and radio, long neglected in the public schools, are now receiving part 
of the consideration which they deserve. Some classes in radio and 
motion-picture appreciation are being developed. Many schools, how- 
ever, feel that these agencies are so important in the lives of every pu- 
pil that they should occupy a place in the social-living core where all 
will contact them under school guidance. 

6. Time does not permit a discussion of changes in all the areas 
of the junior high-school curriculum. Because of this, many signifi- 
cant trends will have to be omitted or dismissed with a few words. 


a. There is an increased recognition of the importance of science 
experiences in the life of the pupil, coupled with a demand for further 


Wnisan eee cela ednabeeederiete 





1938 | TRENDs IN THE JUNIOR HicH Schoo: CurricuLuM 17 


breaking away from the bookish type of teaching so common in our 
junior high schools, and for the development of an experience curricu- 
lum more closely related to the life interests of the pupil. A few 
schools are experimenting with special classes for girls in the hope of 
being able to stimulate activities more nearly in line with their in- 
terests and experiences. In some instances science is being fused with 
English and the social studies during the first year or two, followed by 
a two- or three-year sequence of life science running into the senior 
high school. In such cases, specialized classes in science are offered as 
electives during the junior and senior years. 

b. For a number of years, there has been a gradual trend toward 
a more natural method of teaching the foreign languages. Frequently, 
when taken primarily to meet college entrance requirements, the two- 
year study of foreign language results in wasted efforts for most pu- 
pils. In the future, the amount of time devoted to such study is likely 
to be increased for those pupils who have an interest in the modern 
languages; then the study will probably begin much earlier in the 
life of the pupil. 

c. As has been said before, there is a noticeable tendency to con- 
sider highly specialized vocational training as a function of the junior 
colleges and vocational schools, with possibly a beginning of speciali- 
zation in the senior year of high school. This does not mean a de- 
creased importance of the commercial, home-making, and industrial 
arts departments, but rather a changing concept of their function. 
Each of these areas has much to offer which should be a part of the 
general education of pupils. The ability to use a typewriter is rapidly 
becoming desirable for nearly all pupils, while modern home condi- 
tions make home-making experiences of vital importance to an in- 
creasingly large number of secondary-school pupils. The so-called ex- 
ploratory and introductory functions of the above areas of the junior 
high-school curriculum have changed, or are changing, to that of gen- 
eral education. 

d. In the health area, two trends are becoming more and more 
apparent. One is the increased emphasis throughout the whole school 
upon the development of wholesome mental attitudes, often termed 
mental hygiene; the other is the tendency to fuse much of the infor- 
mational phase of the health program with science and the social 
studies. 

e. One cannot close a discussion such as this without mention 
of the consideration being given at the present time to the develop- 
ment of reading ability. For years we have considered the teaching of 
reading as primarily a function of the elementary grades, even to such 
an extent that most junior high-school teachers find themselves totally 














18 DeparTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [November 


unprepared to guide pupils in remedial and developmental reading 
activities. In the past few years, most teachers’ colleges and universi- 
ties have offered classes for secondary-school teachers in the teaching 
of reading. Many books are being published on how to improve one’s 
reading and on how to teach reading. Special classes in remedial read- 
ing are now a part of the program of many junior high schools, and 
developmental reading is being emphasized as a function of all classes 
where reading is a major activity. 

This discussion is admittedly sketchy, and many of the statements 
are entirely too dogmatic. Nevertheless, it is important to realize that 
the junior high-school curriculum is being affected by the same psy- 
chological, philosophical, and social considerations which are making 
all units of the public-school system of to-day dynamic factors in the 
development of well-integrated individuals and in the improvement 


of the social order. 








The February Convention 


The twenty-third annual convention of the Department 
of Secondary-School Principals will be held in Cleveland, 
Ohio, February 25-March 1, 1939. Hotel Cleveland will be 
the headquarters. An outline of the four-day program follows: 

February 25—Saturday: The dinner meeting. 

February 27—Monday afternoon: Student activities pro- 
gram, conducted by Elbert K. Fretwell, Cleveland high-school 
students participating. 

February 28—Tuesday afternoon: Reports from the 


Planning Committee, Implementation Committee, and Dis- 


cussion Group Projects, followed by a business session of the 
Department. 


March 1—Wednesday afternoon: Junior high-school, 
senior high-school, and junior-college sessions, meeting sepa- 


rately. 
































NEW PATTERNS FOR JUNIOR-COLLEGE CURRICULA 
ROSCOE C. INGALLS 


Director, Los Angeles Junior College 


‘Lhe junior college as a part of the public secondary-school sys- 
tem has made a noteworthy development of a thirty-six per cent in- 
crease in the number of junior colleges and 170 per cent increase 
in enrollment in them during the past ten years. At the close of 1937, 
there were 553 junior colleges in the United States. Forty-four per 
cent of these were publicly controlled institutions and enrolled sixty- 
eight per cent of the 136,623 students in junior colleges. California, 
Texas, Iowa, in the order named, are states leading in the number 
of junior colleges. Only four of our forty-eight states are without jun- 
ior colleges, privately or publicly controlled. Current trends in educa- 
tion and demonstrated needs in the social and economic life of com- 
munities throughout the nation point to the continued growth in the 
number of junior colleges and in the number of men and women en- 
rolled in these institutions. 

The junior college has developed rapidly because the educational 
needs of many people have thus been met successfully. The curricula, 
in these junior colleges have been largely of the preprofessional and 
lower division university type and have continued the traditional aca- 
demic preparatory curricula found in the traditional high schools. 
Without in any way detracting from the value of the services ren- 
dered by the traditional curriculum practices in junior colleges, it is 
the purpose of this discussion to suggest certain new patterns for 
junior-college curricula. These new patterns will serve more effec- 
tively great numbers of youth not interested in, or adapted to, the 
patterns provided by the older type of curricula. Youth who have 
splendid abilities, worthy characters, high ambitions, great latent pow- 
ers for social, economic, and civic service, and enthusiasms that are 
ready and waiting to be captured for the promotion of community 
welfare. 

Educational workers in any community considering the estab- 
lishment of a junior college, or the extension into new areas, must de- 
termine the curriculum patterns that are to be followed. Shall old or 
new patterns be given major emphasis? How shall both types of pat- 
terns be provided successfully? Shall all youth be served?" 


4See three recent publications. (1) “Youth Education Today,” a National Educa- 
tion Association publication which is the sixteenth yearbook of the Department for- 
merly known as the Department of Superintendence but now known as the American 
Association of School Administrators.” (2) ‘How Fare American Youth,” a report to 
the American Youth Commission of the American Council on Education. (3) “School 
Life” for February, 1938, a monthly publication of the United States Office of Edu- 
cation. 


19 














DeparTMENT oF SeconpaRy-ScHooL Principats [November 


The public junior college has developed as a part of the second- 
ary-school system of the state. It is the end of the formal institutional- 
ized educational plan of the state for providing its citizens with a 
general education, liberal, civic, social, and vocational in its content. 


It has five functional services to perform: 

(1) To provide preprofessional curricula, preparatory to university courses in the 
professions, arts, sciences, and literature. 

(2) To provide courses or curricula that will give opportunity to students and 
faculty to determine adequately, from among those students who have university en- 
trance deficiencies in subjects or grades or both, those who have the ability and apti- 
tude to enter and to continue in preprofessional curricula and the university. 

(3) To provide balanced vocational curricula, best described by the word “semi- 
professional,” to meet properly the needs of that great number of young men and 
young women who, by aptitude, interest, ability, and desire, wish to enter the occu- 
pational life of the community within approximately two years or less following high- 
school graduation. 

(4) To provide a cultural center for the community by the extension of its serv- 
ices to those citizens who do not have opportunity to become regular full-time students 
at the institution under the usual hours and methods of administration. 

(5) To provide an extra-class body of life experiences in the environment cre- 
ated by the junior college, based on a broad foundation of personal and social and civic 
welfare. This body of life experiences will contribute constructively to the development 
of a more stabilized maturity in emotional controls, in social adjustments, in civic in- 
terests, and in vocational activities. 

New patterns for junior-college curricula can be introduced most 


effectively in the functional area of balanced vocational curricula, best 
described as semiprofessional. Here is the greatest opportunity for 
community service in the establishment and improvement of the 
junior college of to-day and to-morrow. Here will be found three times 
as many youth between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five years as 
are in the traditional preprofessional areas. Here will be found many 
occupations in the economic life of the community that have stand- 
ards for vocational competence considerably above those developed by 
high-school and trade-school training and yet different from those de- 
veloped by the four-year college or university liberal-arts and profes- 
sional training. Here is the opportunity to help youth to be a happier 
person, to be a better worker in his chosen career field, to be a better 
citizen in his community and to be more successful in every way in 
coordinating and integrating his knowledge, his life experiences, and 
his conduct. Here is democracy in education. 

Recreational leadership is a curriculum which trains young men 
and women to take charge of public playgrounds and recreation cen- 
ters. This is a highly competitive field as many university graduates 


"Examples of semiprofessional occupations: (1) Agriculture. (2) Art in its indus- 
trial merchandising and advertising applications. (3) Business, including bookkeeping, 
banking, finance, business law, management, merchandising, and secretarial. (4) Assist- 
ants for dentists and physicians. (5) Home administration. (6) Dramatics for stage, 
screen and radio. (7) Electricity, radio and sound. (8) Aviation. (9) Civil and me- 
chanical engineering. (10) Clerical library aides. (11) Music for radio, screen, and 
stage, including operatic roles. (12) Nursing. (13) Peace officers. (14) Photography. 
(15) Publications. (16) Recreational leadership and camp counseling. A survey of any 
community served by a junior college will disclose some of these as well as other occu- 


pations not named, 





1938 | New Patterns For JUNIOR-CoLLEGE CuRRICULA 21 
who are qualified as physical education teachers are applying fer play- 
ground positions. Junior-college graduates who might reasonably ex- 
pect employment must be outstanding in personality, skills, and quali- 
ties of leadership. 

Those students interested in obtaining the camp counselor’s cer- 
tificate which is authorized by the Camp Directors Association are 
eligible for such recognition upon completion of the starred (*) 
courses in the following recreational leadership curriculum and upon 
recommendation by the instructors of these courses. 


Alpha Seniester 


English 51 (Reading and 
Composition) ‘ 
Biology 51 eiadenaanie). 


Physical Education 53 (Games 


of Low Organization) 
Civic Health 53 (First Aid) 
Speech 57 (Public Speaking) 
*Drama 69 (Story Telling)... 
Physical Education 62 (Dramatic 
Games and Folk Dancing) 


Physical Education 
(Two Activities) - 


Gamma Semester 


Psychology 51 (Introduction) —.... 


*Physical Education 51 
(Principles of meaty 
Recreation) 


Physical Education 54 ‘(Methods 
in Officiating and Coaching)... 


*Library 65 
*Drama 77 


(Educational Dramatics)... 
*Physical Education 10 (Health) 


Physical Education 
(Three Activities) 


FIRST YEAR 
Beta Semester 
Units 


English 52 (Reading and 
en Composition) 
3 Physiology 51 (General) .. 


*Physical Education 61 
(Camp Crafts) 


ship of Club Activities) — 
*Physical Education 57 
(Theory of Camping)... ; 
*Biology 62 (Natural History) — 
Physical Education 63 (Dramatic 
1 Games and Folk Dancing) 
Physical Education 
~ 3 (Two Activities). 
16 
SECOND YEAR 
Delta Semester 


Units *Physical Education 52 
3 (Directed Practice in 
Community Recreation) 


Sociology 51 (Introduction) “ODE 


Political Science 50 
(American Institutions) 


Recreational Games) .. 
Physical Education 59 

(Teaching Gymnastics) 
Physical Education 60 

(Organization of Aapaien- 
Elective ‘ 
Physical Education 

(Two Activities) - 


16% 


*Physical Education 56 (Leader- 


*Physical Education 55 (Teaching ‘i 


16 


The task of providing, maintaining, and improving balanced voca- 


tional curricula of the semiprofessional type may be analyzed into four 
parts: first, the essential patterns for semiprofessional courses and cur- 
ricula must be identified; second, the factors that are to be overcome 
in carrying forward the program must be recognized; third, factors 
that encourage experimentation and promise assistance in the develop- 
ment of plans must be utilized; fourth, a typical two-year curriculum 
must be materialized. 























DeparTMENT oF SECONDARY-ScCHOOL Principats [November 


nm 
NR 


We may identify at least six patterns as essential for semiprofes- 
sional courses and curricula. These are: 

1. Existing needs of young men and women must be specifically 
recognized, understood, and met. Youth rather than subject matter 
will guide planning. We know that youth of junior-college age de- 
sires to become vocationally competent.’ 

2. The method and content of the instructional program must 
be adapted to attain the objectives that were set up. There must, there- 
fore, be introduced skill units and vision or appreciation units of in- 
struction. 

The “skills” units of instruction will not aim to train to a high 
degree of speed and accuracy one special skill for one specialized 
trade. They will aim to develop familiarity with a number of skills 
used by men and women employed in the selected occupations. These 
occupations are not single-track, blind-alley types. They are of the 
types that offer related fields and diversified opportunities for growth 
in and for continuous employment. Occupational families is a good 
descriptive term for these occupations. A core of skills is needed to 
get the toe hold so essential in getting employment in any given occu- 
pational “family.” These core skills are basic skills moderately devel- 
oped. They make it possible for the worker to be ready when con- 
fronted with employment opportunities. Because the potential worker 
has been trained to serve in an occupational family rather than in a 
single trade he is able to adapt himself to varying conditions. This 
adaptability permits the worker to retain more easily continuous em- 
ployment. He does not have to retrain for new skills constantly as 
employment opportunities shift. The worker is then better able to get 
hold and grow in an occupational family that has been purposely se- 
lected and which utilizes to the maximum his interests, enthusiasms, 
and abilities. 

Vision units of instruction and experiences supplement the skill 
units. They provide facts about the existing social, civic, and economic 
conditions and problems that the potential worker must understand. 
They aim to develop intellectual methods and skills for studying the 
needs and activities of industry, business, and public service. They 
aim to develop an adaptability in the potential worker that will help 
him to get along with his fellow workers and citizens. These units 





*Vocational competence means “not the ability to step at once into an involved and 
intricate job but such capacity as will enable the worker to make a promising start in 
some recognized field of work.” It includes also (1) the capacity to get along tactfully 
and intelligently with employers and other employees, (2) the ability to adjust to new 
conditions and to learn on the job, (3) sufficient skill to insure employment at what- 
ever the bottom of the beginners chosen field may be. The above statement was made 
by F. T. Spaulding in an address at St. Louis, February 24, 1936, to secondary-school 


principals, 


























Sere Nr AR Tze 


RE Oey 


NS cet 


q 





23 





1938] New Patrerns Fox JUNIOR-COLLEGE CURRICULA 






also aim to give an introduction to interests and activities that will 
give meaning, value, and direction to unoccupied leisure-time hours. 
They cannot be left out of any training program that has vocational 
competence as an objective. They will center about youth and his 
needs rather than on subject matter as such. Semester courses in these 
areas will be less intensive and more extensive than those of the old 
traditional patterns. They will present principles and broad vistas 
rather than research and detailed views. They will survey great areas 
of thought and human experience. They will provide comprehensive 
views rather than limited views. They will enlarge the horizon of 
the potential worker by removing old barriers set up by too minute 
time divisions of subject matter. They are not merely introductory 
courses preparing for further study in subject matter. They will pro- 
vide the “airway” view rather than the “public highway” or “bridle 
path” view of current life problems. They will aid the potential 
worker in coordinating and integrating his knowledge, life experi- 
ences, and conduct. 


3. The skills and vision units of instruction must be combined 
in determined proportions that will create a balanced vocational cur- 
riculum of the semiprofessional type. This may be done by the use of 
a 2-2-1 principle. For a total two-year course of study—two fifths will 
be made up of skill units—two fifths of vision units with the remain- 
ing one fifth selected from either type as determined by the interests, 
needs, and enthusiasms of the particular students. For any one semes- 
ter of the course of study, a similar distribution of instructional units 
and life experiences will exist. The use of this 2-2-1 principle is a safe- 
guard against a too narrow program of overspecialization in manual 
skills. 

4. The conception of education as a continuous and lifelong 
learning process must be strengthened in the minds of the student 
and potential worker. The use of the words terminal or completion 
to describe new types of junior-college curricula is in conflict with the 
right approach to education to-day. They do not fit any better than if 
we applied the terms “completion” and “terminal” to our professional 
courses in senior college, university, and graduate schools. The use of 
such terms is also objectively incorrect as well as psychologically 
wrong. The potential worker soon discovers that occupational situa- 
tions and standards are not static and that they cannot be described 
as completion or terminal situations. He finds that he is confronted 
by the necessity of keeping his education not a static thing but an 
organic force, living, growing, and adjustable to new situations, new 
problems, new needs. 























24 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [November 


5. Curricula of the semiprofessional type cannot operate in aca- 
demic isolation from the community which stimulates the introduc- 
tion of any given curriculum and which absorbs in its economic, so- 
cial, and civic activities, the human product of that currculum. 


This academic isolation is avoided by community surveys on the 
needs of youth, by limited surveys on special occupational situations, 
and by the establishment of standing committees for advisory and 
cooperative purposes. Members of such committees will be selected 
from the occupational leaders and potential employers in the occupa- 
tional family for which the given curriculum is established. The insti- 
tution must also establish and maintain a coordinated placement serv- 
ice that will help to reduce the gap between its training program and 
the life experiences that the student and potential worker must meet 
when he withdraws or graduates from the junior college. 

6. A new name plan by which to designate the groups into 
which junior-college students are classified should be used. The old 
name plan in which the terms freshman and sophomore are used 
should be discarded. A distinct personality can be given to the insti- 
tution by the use of a new name plan. Students following every type 
of curriculum provided by the junior college can be unified in their 
activities and loyalties. Feelings of inferiority that may otherwise be 
readily generated can be counteracted by the use of a new name plan. 
A new dignity can thus be given to classifications. The new name 
plan used successfully at Los Angeles Junior College classifies students 
as alphas, betas, gammas, and deltas, on the basis of first, second, third, 
or fourth semester attendance or on the basis of the number of units 
for which credit is accumulated to apply toward graduation from the 
Junior College. 

Careful consideration must be given to plans for overcoming 
those factors now in existence that tend to place effective limitations 
on the development of new patterns for junior-college curricula. These 
factors may be enumerated in part as follows: First, misconceptions 
exist in the minds of students, parents, and citizens about the major 
functions of a public junior college; second, there is a shortage of per- 
sonnel prepared adequately to lead the way in establishing and main- 
taining semiprofessional curricula; third, students, parents, and public 
tend to follow and demand traditional patterns of college preparatory 
and preprofessional curricula; fourth, criteria for evaluating the serv- 
ice of the junior college have emphasized the academic and prepara- 
tory preprofessional function thus compelling the new institution to 
confine itself to old patterns; fifth, techniques for avoiding failures in 
the establishment of new patterns have not been clearly defined and 
aggressively followed; sixth, conceptions about the meaning of voca- 























1938] New Patrerns For JUNIOR-CoELEGE CURRICULA 25 





tional education, and pressures for its inauguration, frequently are 
.00 specialized, too rigid, and too exclusive of cultural units; seventh, 
confusion exists about the proper relationships between general edu- 
cation and vocational education. Success in overcoming these seven 
limiting factors will bring the junior college closer to the needs of 
youth and to the realities existing in to-day’s life. 


Educational workers are encouraged in their plans and efforts 
to experiment with new patterns for junior-college curricula by the 
existence of certain factors to-day. These factors may well become 
forces that will aid in establishing and extending the junior college 
and its new patterns as a minimum essential in the public educational 
system of the United States. Among these factors are the following: 


(1) There are many unemployed and out-of-school youths, eighteen to twenty- 
five years old, for whom new patterns in educational training plans need to be cre- 
ated. 

(2) The public junior college has developed to a status of maturity and, there- 
fore, has a new freedom to experunent with new curriculum patterns, and to extend 
its service into new areas of community life. 

(3) Employment trends in economic life of our communities to-day point to an 
increasing demand for more training, more maturity, and more stability on the part 
of the potential worker before he enters upon occupational employment. 

(4) Notable achievements and success have been attained by some junior colleges 
that have elected to go forward as pioneers into new frontiers. These results are avail- 
able for the use of others in guiding plans and experimentation.' 

(5) Social and civic conditions in our various communities to-day also join other 
forces inviting leadership to establish new horizons in educational plans, to provide 
new patterns for junior-college curricula, to extend enlarged programs of educational 
service into new areas of community life. 

(6) Current experimentations and achievement in revised curricular practices in 
high school throughout the United States make it imperative for the junior college to 
move forward and to coordinate its work for an educational program that has con- 
tinuity. 

With many forces pointing to the continued growth and develop- 
ment of junior colleges in numbers and in enrollment, there exists to- 
day an unparalleled opportunity for those devoted to youth, educa- 
tion, and democracy to inaugurate and put on a functioning basis new 


patterns for junior-college curricula. 


*A catalogue and other printed material descriptive of the semiprofessional curricula 
at Los Angeles Junior College may be secured upon written request to the College. 

















MODERN CLASSROOM TECHNIQUES IN THE 
SECONDARY SCHOOL 


ARTHUR K. LOOMIS 
Superintendent of Schools, Shaker Heights, Cleveland, Ohio 


This paper deals briefly with the most widely used technique 
in the high school of to-day—the textbook method; it refers in passing 
to the most significant innovating practice in the field of method as 
reported in the National Survey of Secondary Education; namely, 
the use of the unit assignment; and finally, it presents the thesis that 
the most serious defect of the modern high school on the side of 
methodology lies in its utter failure to provide adequate experience 
in using the three distinctive modern methods of investigation, the 
historical method, the scientific method, and the mathematical 
method. 


It is interesting to note that the classroom techniques of the 
modern cosmopolitan high school are still determined by the makers 
and publishers of textbooks, workbooks, and laboratory manuals. 
While passing years have seen high-school enrollments increase many 
fold; while modern, well-planned high-school buildings have come 
to dominate the architecture of every hamlet and city in the land; 
and while teachers colleges and schools of education have granted 
bachelors and masters degrees to tens of thousands of candidates; 
the textbook method has held its own. In a recent study reported 
by Thomas H. Briggs in the School Review for December, 1935,’ the 
results of visits to 104 classrooms in thirty-two public high schools 
in New York City and several near-by suburban cities are given. 
The teachers visited were designated by their principals as the best 
teachers in their respective subjects. Only nineteen, or eighteen and 
three-tenths per cent, of these “best teachers” had departed from 
conventional teaching from textbooks. “All the others,” says Briggs, 
“were doing what thousands of teachers who follow their textbooks 
are doing daily throughout the country.” 


How shall we account for the persistence of the textbook method 
in spite of all the philosophers of education, all the educational psy- 
chologists and all the lecturers on method? Is it, after all, the best 
method? To this question the findings of our modern army of 
research workers give no answer. A careful examination of the 
numbers of the Review of Educational Research dealing with methods 
at the high-school level fails to discover any conclusive evidence. In 


*“The Practices of Best High-School Teachers,” Vol. XLII, pp. 745-52. 
26 





1938] Mopern Crassroom TEcHNIQUES IN SECONDARY SCHOOL 27 


fact, the committee which prepared the first report on this subject, 
published in 1932, admits that the determination of the relative merits 
of comparable instructional procedures meets difficulties which seem 
insurmountable. * 


Two factors, perhaps, are mainly responsible for the continued 
reliance on the textbook. The first is the inadequate preparation of 
many teachers who are teaching outside their fields of competence 
and of many others who possess, in fact, no fields of competence. 
The remedy for this condition rests jointly in the hands of the institu- 
tions which prepare and certify teachers and the administrators who 
select and assign them to their work. The second factor which oper- 
ates to cause four out of five teachers in the American secondary 
school, if we may consider Brigg’s sampling typical, to use the bare 
textbook method is lack of equipment. When the classrooms in a 
modern million-dollar school plant contain no classroom libraries 
and when study periods are regularly spent in study halls where no 
library facilities are provided, how can any activity involving the use 
of books be carried on save through the use of textbooks? 


The National Survey of Secondary Education was deliberately 
planned to discover and report innovating practices. In the field of 
method, the most significant innovation of the last quarter of a cen- 
tury was found to be the use of the unit assignment. This technique 
has been developed experimentally in several centers and under at 
least seven different names. As Billett has demonstrated in Mono- 
graph No. 13 of the report of the National Survey * these plans differ 
in name only. As he says, “The conclusion is inevitable that in prac- 
tice differentiated assignments, long-unit assignments, individualized 
instruction, the contract plan, the laboratory plan, the problem 
method, and the project method are one and the same thing.” 


Evidence is lacking as to the extent to which the unit assignment 
is actually being used. Whether the publication of Billett’s report in 
1932 has resulted in any wider use of the technique of the unit assign- 
ment may be doubted in view of the fact that Briggs in 1935 failed 
to find a single one of his “best” teachers in the metropolitan area of 
New York using it. That it should be widely used seems clear to 
this reporter on modern classroom techniques. The teacher or prin- 
cipal who would like to use this new technique can do no better than 
to begin his preparation for using it by carefully reading Billett’s 


*Review of Educational Research, Vol. II, No. 1, February, 1932, page 6, in the 
Introduction signed by the Committee: S. R. Douglass, Carter V. Good, and Walter S. 
Monroe, chairman. 

‘Part II, “Plans Characterized by the Unit Assignment,” pp. 227-382. See espe- 
cially p. 330. 














28 DeparTMENT or SeconpaRy-ScHooL Principats [November 


analysis of the Morrison plan, the Dalton plan, the Winnetka tech- 
nique, and other examples of the unit assignment as he found it in 
use in various public and private high schools the country over. * 

The so-called Morrison plan was used at the University High 
School of the University of Chicago. In this laboratory school 
Morrison carried on the experimental work over a period of years 
which resulted in the publication in 1926 of his book The Practice of 
Teaching in the Secondary School. In its revised edition, published 
in 1931, this book provides what is probably the best single source on 
the use of the unit assignment. It is interesting to note that the 
necessity of providing a combined study hall and library together 
with classroom libraries has long been recognized in this school. 
The Morrison plan requires books in the classrooms and study halls. 
The school refuses to enroll more than five hundred fifty pupils and 
provides on the average twenty books per pupil in the central library- 
study hall, a total of eleven thousand volumes, and another twenty 
books per pupil on the average for use in the classroom libraries, 
making a grand total of twenty-two thousand volumes. 


In order to abandon the textbook method in favor of unit assign- 
ments, it may not be necessary to have books available in such large 
quantities; but no substitute for the textbook is likely to be found in 
a classroom where no books are available except the textbook, or in 
a school where study halls are separated from the library and con- 
tain no library facilities. 


It appears that the American secondary school has utterly failed 
to provide adequate experience in using the three distinctive modern 
methods of investigation. These are the methods of investigation 
which have enabled our historians to reconstruct the past and inter- 
pret the present, our men of science to understand and to some degree 
to control the world we live in, and our mathematicians to construct 
what Keyser calls autonomous systems of thought. 


The historical method, the scientific method, and the mathema- 
tical method are proposed as indispensable classroom techniques be- 
cause of their instrumental values; because they are essential intellec- 
tual tools in the modern world. To know something about these 
methods of investigation without having actual experience in using 
them is superficial and inadequate. 

The thesis here proposed is that modern classroom techniques 
are most seriously defective in that they make no provision for use 
of these methods. This thesis carries no implication that all teaching 
of history should be limited to practice in the use of the historical 


‘Ibid., pp. 237-356. 





1938] Monern Crassroom TecHNigurs IN SECONDARY SCHOOL 29 


method, all teaching of science to practice in the use of the scientific 
method, nor all teaching of mathematics to the use of the mathema- 
tical method. It proposes only that these types of experience are in- 
dispensable in modern secondary education and should have some 
attention. To be sure, the teacher of history should be the one best 
qualified to guide the pupil in experiencing the historical method; 
the teacher of natural or social science should guide him in experi- 
encing the scientific method; and the teacher of mathematics should 
guide him in experiencing the mathematical method. 

As school administrators, we need to have a definite understand- 
ing of each of these methods of investigation. In the rest of this 
paper, I shall depend almost entirely on direct quotations or adap- 
tations from three sources which have proved especially helpful to 
me during the past three or four years. 

These sources are: (1) Fred Morrow Fling, The Writing of 
History, An Introduction to Historical Method, published by Yale 
University Press in 1920; (2) Morris R. Cohen and Ernest Nagel, 
An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method, published by Har- 
court, Brace and Co., in 1934; (3) Cassius J. Keyser, Thinking 
About Thinking, published by E. P. Dutton and Co., in 1926. 

First, then, what is the historical method? It is, says Fling, “the 
process employed in the search for historical truth. The historian 
is concerned with tracing the unique evolution of man in his activities 
as a social being, the unique life record of humanity.” Historical 
method, as he points out, may be distinguished from the method of 
natural science by noting that natural science uses common nouns 
to name its terms and arrives at generalizations whereas history uses 
proper nouns to name its terms and arrives at unique complex wholes. 
Natural science establishes its generalizations by experimentation. 
History reconstructs the past by using historical sources. These 
sources are of two kinds— remains or objects which man has pro- 
duced, and traditions or records of impressions made upon human 
brains. In the modern world, the newspaper, the radio, the news- 
reel all combine to force us to pass judgments every day upon the 
truth or falsity of reports of historical events, to apply the tests of 
historical method in handling historical evidence. The recent jour- 
nalistic venture in the monthly News-Letter dealing with “Propa- 
ganda Analysis” is only one indication of the value of a knowledge of 
historical method. 


The insistence on the value of the use of sources in teaching his- 
tory even in the elementary schools is best illustrated by reference to 
Henry Johnson’s Teaching of History in Elementary and Secondary 
Schools, published by Macmillan in 1915. He says: 




















30 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [November 


“The desirability of discrimination in dealing with historical 
data is too apparent for argument. Not all of us read histories, but 
all of us begin with the first dawning of intelligence to use facts 
known to us historically and not directly. . . . It is a commonplace 
that data historical in character enter into most of the thinking and 
planning of life from childhood to the grave. It ought to be a 
commonplace that schoolroom history should give the pupil some 
consciousness of what historical knowledge is and some training in 
the method by which historical knowledge is established.” * 

But can training in the historical method be given in the second- 
ary school? On this point Johnson says: 

“A first grade can be led to see that something is learned about 
the Indians from things dug up out of the ground, something from 
writings of white men who reported what they saw, and something 
from stories told by Indians about themselves and later reported by 
white men. First grade children will themselves often suggest that 
the Indians did not write books. . . . The greater part of school 
history must be presented as ready-made information, but .... there 
should be illustrations of the historical method sufficient to indicate 
the general nature of the problems behind organized history, and 
sufficient to give some definite training in the solution of such prob- 


lems.” ° 

The second method of investigation is the method of science. 
This method, say Cohen and Nagel, “consists in the persistent search 
for truth; constantly asking: Is it so? To what extent is it so? 
Why is it so? ... And this can be seen on reflection to be the de- 
mand for the best available evidence. . . . Scientific method is simply 
the way in which we test impressions, opinions, or surmises by exam- 
ining the evidence for and against them... . In essence, scientific 
method is simply the pursuit of truth.” * 

Lacking the scientific method in the modern world, we can 
banish doubt and arrive at stable beliefs only by continuing to hold 
our beliefs because we have always believed them; or by appealing to 
some authority which we invest with infallibility and finality; or by 
resorting to self-evident propositions so obviously true that the under- 
standing of their meaning will carry with it an indubitable conviction 


of their truth." 


Quoting again from Cohen and Nagel: 
“What is called scientific method differs radically from these by 


encouraging and developing the utmost possible doubt, so that what 


Op. cit., p. 358 f. 

“Ihid., p. 360 f. 

7Op. cit., p. 192. 

“Ibid., Adapted from p. 193 ff. 
































Mopern CLAssrooM TECHNIQUES IN SECONDARY SCHOOL 31 





1938] 


is left after such doubt is always supported by the best available evi- 
dence. . . . Its method, then, makes science progressive because it is 
never too certain about its results.” * 

“A recognition of what assumptions we are making and a readi- 
ness to consider all possible alternatives to them is the one outstanding 
trait of the method of science.” ” 

“In general, the chief social condition of scientific method is a 
widespread desire for truth that is strong enough to withstand the 
powerful forces which make us cling tenaciously to old views or else 
embrace every novelty because it is a change. Those who are en- 
gaged in scientific work need not only leisure for reflection and mate- 
rial for their experiments, but also a community that respects the pur- 
suit of truth and allows freedom for the expression of intellectual 
doubt as to its most sacred or established institutions. Fear of offend- 
ing established dogmas has been an obstacle to the growth of astron- 
omy and geology and other physical sciences; and the fear of offend- 
ing patriotic or respected sentiment is perhaps one of the strongest 
hindrances to scholarly history and social science. 

“Scientific method is the only effective way of strengthening the 
love of truth. It develops the intellectual courage to face difficulties 
and to overcome illusions that are pleasant temporarily but destruc- 
tive ultimately. It settles differences without any external force by 
appealing to our common rational nature. The way of science, even 
if it is up a steep mountain, is open to all. Hence, while sectarian 
and partisan faiths are based on personal choice or temperament and 
divide men, scientific procedure unites men in something nobly de- 
void of all pettiness. Because it requires detachment, disinterested- 
ness, it is the finest flower and test of a liberal civilization.” ™ 


The very life of our society depends upon the acceptance of the 
method of science in dealing with social problems. To this end, the 
secondary school can make no greater contribution than to establish 
as a national habit of mind the scientific method in studying every 
question that concerns our social order. To be sure, the extensive use 
of scientific method in natural science would constitute no guarantee 
that social problems would be approached in a scientific spirit. Not 
only is it desirable, therefore, to provide experience in the scientific 
method in natural science, but such experience must be constantly 
provided in the classes in social science. 


The third type of experience in methods of investigation which 
should be provided in the secondary school is the mathematica] 





Ibid., p. 195. 
Ibid. p. 415. 
MIbid., p. 402 f. 

















32 DeparTMENT oF SECONDARY-ScHOOL PrincipaLs [November 


method. In his little essay entitled Thinking about Thinking, Cas- 
sius J. Keyser points out that postulational thinking or autonomous 
thinking, as he calls the method of mathematics, is a strictly modern 
activity. “Indeed,” he says, “its very earliest outstanding achievement 
was produced only twenty-two centuries ago—hardly more than a 
yesterday in the long backward stretch of a half million years or more 
of human time.” “With that achievement,” he continues, “most 
readers have some acquaintance, for I am, of course, referring to 
Euclid’s Elements. It is the most famous example of postulational 
thinking in the history of science.” ” 

The fact that Spinoza failed in his attempt to construct a body of 
ethical doctrine by the method used by Euclid, as Keyser points out, 
proves only that the postulates of any science must be regarded as 
mere assumptions rather than as statements of fact. Similarly, the 
fact that most of the modern scientific doctrines which have been 
stated in the autonomous form have been in mathematics or physics 
by no means indicates that postulational thinking is available only 
in these fields. But it is certainly true that we little realize the nature 
and functions of this type of thinking. Keyser holds that it is, indeed, 
the kind which surpasses all the others in power and importance. 
He goes on to say, “It is so rooted in the nature of intellect that any- 
one having talents above the level of a moron’s can be led into a 
fair understanding of it and be disciplined in a measure to follow its 


» 








ways. 
This type of thinking is characterized by its form and its form 
is the If-Then form. “What is asserted and what is true is that, if 
the postulates are true, then their implicates are true.” ™“ 

In every example of this type of thinking some terms must be 
undefined and some propositions must be taken for granted, that is, 
must be used without demonstration. The clear and cogent state- 
ment of any doctrine requires that the minimum number of unde- 
fined terms and undemonstrated propositions shall be used. 

But the use of postulational thinking involved in stating a scien- 
tific doctrine is relatively uncommon, whereas its use in the detec- 
tion of the postulates which underlie all of our empirical thinking 
is of universal value and should be “engaged in habitually and regu- 
larly as an essential part of our intellectual business from day to 
day.” ” In all our opinions and creeds, in all our discourse, spoken 
or written, formal or informal, sane or insane, and in all our planning, 


Op. cit., p. 25. 
*Ibid., p. 2. 
“Ibid., p. 22. 
*Ibid., p. 75. 











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33 


1938| Mopern Ciassroom TECHNIQUES IN SECONDARY SCHOOL 


organizing, managing and conducting of practical affairs and insti- 
tutions, there is essentially involved explicit or implicit reference to 
postulates—reference, that is to propositions which, whether formu- 
lated or not, are consciously or unconsciously taken for granted. 

“Suppose the generality of men and women were educated, as 
they might be, to realize the truth of that proposition keenly,” says 
Keyser; “what would be the effect of it upon their thinking? Know- 
ing well that wherever empirical thinking occurs there are hidden 
postulates to be discovered, would they be eager and alert to dis- 
cover them and bring them forth from their hiding into the light? 
When seriously engaged in thinking upon an important matter 
would they habitually and insistently ask themselves: What are the 
propositions that we are taking for granted? What are the con- 
cealed postulates upon which the validity and the significance of our 
conclusions depend? They would do so, I believe, as soon as they 
discovered that the doing of it is the sole means for meeting certain 
of their most deeply felt needs; and the discovery is not difficult to 
make. It is fairly obvious that postulate detection is demanded by the 
most momentous of our rational desires: the desire not to be deceived 
—the desire to know whether the propositions which our love of wis- 
dom or the exigencies of life require us to consider are true or false. 
It is not difficult to see, but it is very important to see, that when 
we are bent on ascertaining which of the two qualities belongs to 
a given proposition, we are in every case driven to the consideration 
of postulates and that when these are unknown, which is the usual 
case, they have to be discovered.” * 

“Postulate detection . . . is essential as a means to many good 
ends; it increases knowledge in all fields; it is a powerful instrument 
for doctrinal criticism; it shows us how hard it is to know, it fosters 
scientific modesty, discourages dogmatism, favors tolerance, and 
makes for the maintenance and advancement of good will in the 
world.” 

In this paper we have dealt with three examples of modern class- 
room techniques in the secondary school: (1) The textbook method 
is the most widely used technique. We have taken for granted the 
desirability of finding substitutes for this technique, and have in- 
dicated the need for better-trained teachers and better-equipped class- 
rooms and study halls. (2) The unit assignment is the most sig- 
nificant “innovating practice” in the field of method as discovered 
and reported in the National Survey of Secondary Education. We 
have pointed out the need for careful preparation by teachers and 


“Ibid., p. 78 ff. 
"Ibid., p. 90 f. 

















34 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PrincipaLs [November 


principals and for adequate classroom and study-hall libraries in addi- 
tion to the central library if the technique of the unit assignment is 
to be used successfully. (3) The lack of provision for actual ex- 
perience in using the three distinctive modern methods of investi- 
gation, namely, the historical method, the scientific method, and the 
mathematical method, has been described as the most serious defect 
of the modern high school on the side of methodology. It has been 
shown that every reader of the newspaper, the news magazine, the 
journal of opinion; every listener to news broadcasts and every per- 
son who sees newsreels in the motion-picture theaters needs to have a 
high degree of skill and an established habit of using the historical 
method in order to detect propaganda and arrive at reasonably accur- 
ate knowledge of the world he lives in. It has further been shown 
that the secondary school can make no greater contribution than to 
establish as a national habit of mind the scientific method in study- 
ing every question that concerns our social order. And in the last 
place, it has been shown that the detection of the postulates which 
underlie all of our empirical thinking should be engaged in habitu- 
ally and regularly as an essential part of our intellectual business 
from day to day. 





AN EVENTUAL DEVELOPMENT IN 
HEALTH EDUCATION 


D. OBERTEUFFER 
Professor of Physical Education, Ohio State University 


It should be said at the outset that this paper will deal only with 
one of the two principal aspects of health education—health instruc- 
tion. The other, health service, involving as it does the many and 
varied services performed or arranged for the child in school, will 
enter our consideration only as it inevitably must in dealing with a 
completely integrated program. We will, however, for these purposes, 
set aside a direct consideration of such matters as the physical exami- 
nation, immunization campaigns, the healthful school environment, 
and the relation of the physician to the school program in order to 
approach the problem of instruction in its own right. 

During the past 120 years, health instruction in one form or an- 
other has been carried on in our schools and colleges. It would seem 
that enough time has elapsed since its beginning to give us a perspec- 
tive on it and perhaps to bring out certain central tendencies of or- 
ganization and approach. Indeed it has. Since the introduction of 
the original seven lectures on hygiene given to Harvard freshmen in 
1818, followed by the course in human anatomy in his senior year, 
at least one of these central tendencies has been manifest. The adult 
now, as then, assumes the position that he knows what the student 
ought to know and proceeds to organize the course in hygiene ac- 
cordingly. Hygiene, in the early days, consisted of a small amount 
of applied knowledge from the great basic areas of anatomy and 
physiology; and the few human problems to which this knowledge 
was applied were chiefly problems of exercise, the venereal diseases, 
and the prevention of illness. In many places, it amounts to little 
more than that now. 

For a hundred years, this process of choice was a rather simple 
one. The adult kept his eye on the developing fields of human bi- 
ology. As new facts were discovered and new relationships were seen, 
these were given to the student in the form as close to the original 
nature of them as the student could assimilate. Thus the sympathetic 
nervous system was described in detail because a knowledge of it was 
thought somehow to affect the ability of the student to organize bet- 
ter his emotional life. When the name sympathetic gave way to auto- 
nomic the change was made; and the additional relationships to the 
glands of internal secretion were described, so that the student could 
learn something of the technicalities of body processes. When the 
purpose of the white cells in the blood was described, after long years 


35 

















36 DeparTMENT OF SecoNnDARY-ScHOOL Principats [November 


of investigation in the laboratory, the student was forthwith taught 
that they existed in two forms, the leukocytes and the lymphocytes; 
and from a knowledge of them, he was to gather some insight as to 
means of disease control and prevention. Likewise, the knowledge of 
the structure of the glomerulus, the alveoli of the lung, and the is- 
lands of Langerhans preceded his understanding of kidney disease, 
tuberculosis, and diabetes as personal or public health problems. 


The reasoning was clear. Give the student a scientific background 
in the structure and function of his own body, and he will develop 
the ability to solve the multitude of personal and public health prob- 
lems which will later beset him. The adult used his own judgment 
in selecting things to be learned. He knew the basic facts. It was left 
to the student to take them and apply them to his own life. The early 
courses in hygiene became heavily laden with anatomy and physi- 
ology, and, of course, the physiology requirement for the general stu- 
dent to-day has remained nearly the same for more than a century. 


This adult-judgment-of-content technique set up perfectly the 
need for textbooks. Many have been written. No grade in school 
to-day need want for a textbook written by well-meaning authors who 
presume to know what is good for the youngster at any age and 
whose teaching is mainly good solid anatomy and physiology. To-day 
a teacher will write in the oft-repeated request, “Please recommend a 
suitable textbook for my ninth-grade hygiene class.” And the pro- 
fessor need only turn to the publisher’s catalogue or his own file and 
send back the name of the appropriate one. To fill out the picture 
you can imagine the rest. The class meets, the assignment is made, 
the recitation is held, and knowledge is amassed about the human 
body and “how like a machine it is!” At the end of the term, a final 
examination is given and the grades made up. At this point, one can- 
not resist the fair question, “How much bearing has this process had 
on developing the student into an effective, well-adjusted, self-con- 
tained life?” But that will be discussed later. 

This adult-judgment process of selecting subject matter to be 
learned perpetrated the hygiene or the physiology course as its best 
vehicle. Schools and colleges everywhere put them in the curriculum 
where they remain to-day as an instrument by or through which the 
student is supposed “to come into increasing possession of himself and 
his powers.” The whole process has come to be known as the direct 
teaching of hygiene. It is 120 years old and is still an important 
factor in the health education of the student. 


There is another tendency, however, which is gaining ground 
daily and which may alter things somewhat. This tendency is a direct 
reflection of the twentieth century process in all of education to exam- 





1938 | An Eventuat DevetopMenT 1N HeattH Epucation 37 


ine into life, particularly the life of the student, and to use the findings, 
the problems there discovered, as the substance of the curriculum. This 
problem-discovery technique has had a profound effect on health edu- 
cation. It has revitalized the whole purpose and nature of health in- 
struction. A few years ago critics were despairing of the hygiene 
course. To-day, where student problems are made the substance of 
the teaching, there is new life. The vehicle may remain the same, 
a specific course in healthful living. It may not be necessary or desir- 
able to change that; but the content, the material of the course alters 
considerably. 

Certainly, to anyone who knows modern educational tendencies, 
this idea is not new. But to use the facts of human anatomy or physi- 
ology as material in explanation of a health problem rather than as 
the approach to them, seems exceedingly difficult to bring about. It is 
so easy to follow the traditional pattern. We have always been taught 
that way, and even now we prepare our professional teachers by giv- 
ing them anatomy and physiology their first year to store away until 
later when problems in their profession bob up to be answered by this 
supposedly well-preserved body of basic knowledge. 


The transition will come, nevertheless. There is too much evi- 
dence being piled up about the learning process and too much doubt 
about the efficiency of the older procedure in producing healthy, well- 
integrated persons to defer its coming forever. From the axiom, “Peo- 
ple will not think vitally about a problem unless the problem is vital 
to them,” have come the beginnings of research into the actual, the 
real health problems of students. A»alyses of physical examination 
records show that compensating for an irremediable handicap is a 
real problem with some students. Analyses of morbidity and mortality 
tables show that to teach directly about tuberculosis and its prevention 
is psychologically desirable in the fifteenth or sixteenth year. Analyses 
of the same tables show that if the venereal diseases are to decrease 
as a personal and public health problem, the school must not shirk its 
responsibilities here; to teach something about these diseases in the 
early adolescent years is definitely necessary. Analyses of community 
or family life show problems of ‘ine availability and quality of food. 
Students may be malnourished not only because they do not know 
what to eat, but also because they may not be able to purchase the 
recommended balanced diet. A knowledge of the fact that proteins 
differ from carbohydrates because the former contain nitrogen, is of 
little consequence in this predicament. A more real and vital problem 
exists. 

Of all the analyses which have been made in modern times, per- 
haps the most fruitful ones have been those of student questions about 






















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3 ia Aaa, 


















































38 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [November 


their health. It seems strange that, in a hundred years, scarcely any- 
one thought to ask the student what he might like to know about his 
health; and what help he might need in solving his problems. Such 
analyses are being made now. Many schools are making their own 
studies; and when the curiosities of their own students are brought 
out into the open, the questions not only represent a refreshing and 
surprising kind of teachable material but they can be organized into 
lifelike and functional categories for teaching purposes. You may be 
sure these categories will not be the digestive, the excretory, the endo- 
crine, nor the other vital systems of the body. They will, on the other 
hand be problems of the recreational life, of emotional control, of dis- 
ease prevention, of eating, of love-making and friendship-forming, 
and of making adjustments to the difficult situations in life. 


That sort of thing is real. It is germane to the life of the student. 
It is the life of the student. Take the evidence from all these analyses 
mentioned, make any others which investigate problems of living. 
Check them for completeness against each other. Validate them as 
real life problems. The end products will be data which can serve 
readily as the content of health instruction. Certainly human biology 
will be taught but the facts of anatomy and physiology will appear 
only in explanation of a problem at hand. The problem-discovery 
technique seeks the facts of student life from analyses of it and its 
environment and organizes the learning accordingly. 

All of this discussion so far has dealt mainly with kind and quality 
of the learning experience. Education has to think eventually in terms 
of machinery. How is health instruction best accomplished? What or- 
ganization of the school day or the school curriculum is best? These 
questions are already partially answered. 

Originally a specific course using the direct approach was the ve- 
hicle used. This was, and is, a course known variously as physiology, 
hygiene, health education, or health instruction, depending on the 
terminology favored. It was, and is a reservoir from which applied 
knowledge about the science of living springs. It has been useful in 
the past, and it will probably remain as a useful and important tool 
in the eventual integrated program. It may not survive as a course 
unto itself, but its central idea, which is a direct and specific considera- 
tion of health problems, has many useful possibilities. 

At the turn of the century, however, other things began to hap- 
pen which led people in health education to believe that health infor- 
mation could be correlated with other areas of the curriculum. Health 
was seen to permeate all of living, thus all of the curriculum had 
something to do with health. Many of the curriculum areas were 
asked to explore thoroughly the possibility of working in some health 









1938 | An Eventuat DeveLopMENnT IN HeattH EpucaTion 39 


information. Correlation opportunities were visualized in every field. 
In home economics, the preparation of meals was a major considera- 
tion, and the health building properties of the balanced diet was an 
obvious correlation. In general science, the effect of climate on health 
and growth, or on disease processes, was no great labor to accomplish; 
and in physical education, the hygiene of exercise was readily ex- 
panded and made effective. Correlation seemed rich in its possibilities, 
and of course it is. There is a danger, however, that it will be overdone 
to the jeopardy of both the health material and to the host—as in the 
creation of horrible operettas centering around vitamins or milk 
bottles, or in spoiling the adventure of Treasure Island by dwelling 
too long on Stevenson’s tuberculosis. But, nevertheless, the idea of cor- 
relation has been a good one and to the mutual advantage of the co- 
related parts. 

The possibilities of correlation are definite but limited. Much of 
general science, biology, home economics, and physical education can 
be related to the real problems of healthful living. The two obvious 
drawbacks, however, are (1) the inability of the host areas to absorb 
all the health problems of the student, and (2) the fact that not all 
students enroll in all the areas of study where the different health 
problems are worked in. A plan for correlation of health with other 
parts of the curriculum plus a direct and specific attack upon health 
problems as such, is safer if a complete health education is to be ap- 
proximated. 

Even this combination, however, is giving way to still a third de- 
velopment in curriculum construction. It is known as the integrated 
program. An understanding of it begins with the dictionary defini- 
tions of correlation and integration. Correlation means the relation of 
parts to parts; of hygiene to general science, of hygiene to home eco- 
nomics, all parts of the curriculum. Integration means the relation of 
parts to the whole, and the “whole” means in this case, the whole 
child. The parts mean every part of the school experience, not just 
courses, but every single thing about the school from the temperature 
of rooms and the color of the walls, the personality of the teacher and 
the length of the day, to the laboratory experience in science and the 
books in the library. 

The integrated program throws the child into the spotlight. It 
forces every influence in that school to measure its worth by its contri- 
bution to his best interests. It seeks to define his best interests, not in 
terms of his whims or fancies, but in terms of his demonstrable needs 
as a growing organism in a social environment. It begins its organi- 
zation by agreeing on a set of objectives relating to child development. 
These objectives may be specific or general, few or many. It is only 


































































40 DEPARTMENT of SEcONDARY-ScHOOL Principats [November 


that they be agreed upon by the whole school staff as things to work 
toward. Some such objectives as these’ may be agreed upon: 
Physiological and structural maturity. 
Knowledge of powers and limitations. 
Social acceptance of and in the group. 
Self-direction in work. 
Independent or creative thinking. 
Effective interest or curiosity. 
Ability to organize—not only specific task but whole problem 
of living. 
8. Social sensitivity and cooperation in work and play. 
9. Intelligent tolerance. 

10. Faith in intelligent methods. 

11. Sense of proportion and of values. 

12. Sense of security. 

The next step then is to begin the laborious process of getting all 
the parts of the school program to relate to those objectives for the 
whole child. The school program itself must become a smoothly 
working cohesive whole influencing the child only for the best and 
with contradictions within itself eliminated as far as possible. There 
will be no teaching about how to avoid skin diseases, for example, 
while the school athletes are exposed to ringworm in unsanitary 
shower and locker rooms. There could be no teacher, domineering 
and fearsome, who would destroy the creditable efforts of others to 
foster self-confidence and courage. There could be no satisfaction from 
lessons on the prevention of disease if the morning inspection were 
omitted and an epidemic of measles allowed to run through the 
school. There would be no possibility of the physician withholding 
the facts discovered about the student on the physical examination, 
because of an alleged privileged communication, while the physical 
education teacher remained in ignorance of the handicap and offers 
a program contrary to this student’s best interest, or while the girls’ 
counselor did not know that the cause of study failure was dysmenor- 
rhea. The school program itself will become an integrated whole. Its 
parts will all mesh. They will all have the same purpose—the develop- 
ment of the student. 

What kind of organized instruction will be a part in this inte- 
grated whole? In the first place, the instruction will be based on dis- 
coverable problems of student life. The solutions to these problems 
will be steps toward the attainment of the objectives. The objectives 
themselves might become problems for consideration. The problems 


"Adopted from H. H. Giles, The Ohio State University. 


important that they be clear and related to child development, and 


















— 
— 


Oo wae << 


or lO seselCUTWSTCO TT O(CCTOCOCUClhrhrhlUCChrLrTlhlCU UrOrlUCLCLlUC<“ SS 


1938 | An Eventuat DeveLopMENT IN HeattH EpucaTion 41 


used will allow for student investigation to arrive at the answers. No 
single textbook will suffice. A series of learning experiences which will 
include reading, discussion, and doing will require a greater variety of 
library facilities, greater freedom for out-of-school investigations, more 
debate and less authority in the teaching, and more active and inter- 
ested participation in the learning process over all. The health prob- 
lems up for discussion will all be demonstrably real. They will be 
problems of worry or of traffic safety, tuberculosis or cancer, premar- 
riage relationships or athletics. They might even be problems of the 
candy bar or the beauty parlor. The learning will be functional not 
static. No pride will be taken in the amassing of anatomical knowl- 
edge. The names, in order, of the twelve cranial nerves may disappear 
from general consumption to appear only before the student of an- 
atomy, as he specializes in his profession. 


The integrated program will probably use the technique of direct 
teaching and of correlation and fuse them into its own pattern. There 
will, I hope, be some direct teaching done. It may not be called hygi- 
ene or by any other name. It may evolve into a common search upon 
the part of the biologist and the sociologist for the answer to some 
human problem. There is certainly nothing unfortunate about an 
attack directly upon human problems. In fact, the objectivity of the 
attack is wholesome. The progressive school can be progressive by 
insisting on its curriculum being centered not only for students on the 
world around them but also, in part, on the students in their world 
around them. Illustrating this point the incident is recalled of the 
progressive school where no direct attack was made on human health 
problems. On the contrary, learning about health was supposed to 
come through large science projects; and in one of them the students 
raised chickens, we were told, to learn, not only about hens and roos- 
ters, but also about the phenomenon of reproduction in all living 
things. It was hoped that by some process of deduction the students 
would learn about sex and its mysteries from the hencoop. During 
that same week, however, the faculty agreed to a conduct rule which 
forbade the students who ate their lunch at school to leave the school 
grounds at noon because there was evidence of promiscuous relations 
between the sexes on short automobile rides around the neighborhood! 
It would seem that the lessons from the study of the reproductive life 
of the fowl were tried and found wanting! To learn about human sex 
relations from a study of the birds, bees, or butterflies has always been 
a dubious procedure. 

Correlation techniques will be used also in the integrated pro- 
gram. In fact, correlation will be so enhanced, so spread out that it 
will dominate the relationships of all instructors and all projects. All 

















42 DeparTMENT ov? SEcoNDARY-ScHooL Principats [November 


the parts of the school program will be helpfully related to each other 
in order to attain the objectives of child development. And that rela- 
tion of the parts is exactly what good correlation is. 

This eventual development in health education is not beyond at- 
tainment. It is more complicated than it seems here because in this 
discussion no detailed account was given of the many health services 
which are performed for the students by school personnel other than 
the teachers. But the integrated program is attainable. It requires a 
personnel trained in the functional biology of the human being, aware 
and understanding of social movements as they relate to the health of 
the individual, and skilled in the use of the best of educational 
method. It seeks to apply science to student life for purposes recog- 
nized and felt by the student. And it depends for its success upon the 
willingness of the many adults involved to make the student their 
first concern, regardless of what traditional compartments that may 
shatter, or what new administrative or teaching patterns it may es- 


tablish. 





IN-SERVICE TRAINING OF SECONDARY TEACHERS 
IN MINNESOTA 


CLIFFORD P. ARCHER 


University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 


The emphasis of modern educational philosophy on the society- 
centered school and the desirability of meeting child needs and inter- 
ests gives added weight to the necessity for in-service training of 
teachers. While we have always considered such training important, 
it might be considered of less importance under a traditional classical 
curriculum where the subject matter of teaching is quite static and 
little attention is given to differences in interests and ability. The 
teacher stored up facts during her preservice training and then handed 
them out to the children year after year. But under a live functional 
curr:culum, the teacher is continually forced to make adaptations in 
her material and practices as social changes create new needs and in- 
terests for the children. Preservice training for teachers is far from 
perfect and even if it were, continued growth on the part of teachers 
would still be necessary. 

The present trend in curriculum building is to provide general 
outlines or guides for the teacher and to encourage her to utilize com- 
munity resources wherever possible as a point of departure for educa- 
tional experience. Such added responsibility for selection of activities, 
evaluation of learning possibilities, and adaptation to individual dif- 
ferences requires teachers who are constant students of children and 
of the educative process. 

An atmosphere of study and experimentation is especially neces- 
sary for the large body of beginning teachers who enter the profession 
each year. Every good administrator recognizes the paramount impor- 
tance of selecting good teachers and keeping them stimulated to work 
with the children in a creative way. 

The Minnesota Secondary-School Principals’ Association, through 
its committee on the education of teachers, has attempted to survey 
the practices of Minnesota schools in furnishing opportunities for con- 
tinued growth in teaching. A preliminary survey was sent to forty 
high schools to get a list of present practices. From this a check list 
was prepared and mailed out to four hundred high-school adminis- 
trators, including the eighty-five members of the association, one hun- 
dred fifteen principals, and two hundred superintendents (in smaller 
schools), selected at random from the state educational directory. 
Forty-four per cent or 177 replies were received; eighty of the schools 
replying had an average enrollment of over three hundred, and ninety- 
seven had enrollments under three hundred. The average enrollment 


43 














44 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [November 


for all was 507, the median 273, the mode between one hundred and 
two hundred, and the range of enrollment was fifty-two to twenty-two 
hundred in the high schools reporting. The replies were proportion- 
ately distributed among the four-year high schools, junior high schools, 
senior high schools, and six-year high schools. 


A tabulation by types of schools showed no divergence of practice 
among the different types of organizations, but a tabulation by sizes 
of schools showed slight differences in practice for the larger and 
smaller schools as will be indicated elsewhere in the report. The relia- 
bility of the reports may be questioned, but several checks were thrown 
in to get answers to the same question in several ways. Principals 
were asked to report only for the year 1937-38. 


Common Practices Used for In-Service Training 


In answer to the question, “What methods for improving instruc- 
tion are reported to be used most frequently?” the following were 
reported as the model practice (Often, those used most often; some, 
those used sometimes; and best, those judged to be the best of the ones 
tried): 

Per cent of 177 cases 
Often Some Best 
General teachers meetings 73 21 
Classroom visits by supervisors 57 23 
Conferences with supervisors 49 18 
*Required lesson plans 72 9 
Improve extra-curriculum work 54 27 
Teachers help select texts 66 21 
Teachers select library books 68 14 


In answer to the question, “Do you hold individual conferences 
with teachers?” ninety-four per cent reported that they did, the largest 
per cent after visitation by the supervisor. In seventy-two per cent of 
the cases the conferences were requested by the supervisor and in a 
smaller per cent of cases by the teacher, which indicates that such 
conferences are more popular with supervisors than with teachers. 
This agrees with evidence previously reported in other studies. In an- 
swer to the question regarding the topic for these conferences, sixty- 
seven per cent reported that merits of instruction observed was dis- 
cussed most often, sixty-six per cent discussed improvements needed, 
forty-nine per cent of the conferences dealt with disciplinary proced- 
ures most often, and forty-one per cent often talked about the failure 
of certain pupils. 


*In another phase of the survey, this question was asked in another form and sev- 
enty per cent said they required lesson plans. 





1938 | In-Service Tratninc IN MINNESOTA 45 


In this study, the model teachers meeting was reported to be held 
at irregular periods of “on call” and after school hours. Sixty-six per 
cent of the meetings were attended by high-school teachers alone, fifty 
per cent of the meetings included both grade- and high-school teach- 
ers, while twenty-eight per cent were departmental meetings held 
chiefly in larger schools. Sixty-six per cent, the mode, of the reports 
showed that routine matters of administration were most often dis- 
cussed, with supervised study ranking next in order of reported fre- 
quency, forty-one per cent. 

In sixty-eight per cent of the schools reporting, the superintendent 
recommends teachers without consulting the principal, fourteen per 
cent consult the principal, and seven per cent of the school boards 
select without consulting either official. Failure of the superintendent 
to consult the principal is not confined to small school systems. 

In answer to the question, “How often do you visit the teacher?” 
ninety-two per cent reported visits only at irregular intervals. Fifty- 
eight per cent sometimes advise the teacher of the visit, while thirty- 
three per cent never do. Under such circumstances, it is evident that 
cooperative improvement of instruction is not present. In seventy-six 
per cent of the cases, the supervisor studies pupil attitudes, sixty-seven 
per cent, methods; forty-nine per cent, discipline; and about an equal 
number, pupil interest and responses. 

Forty-seven per cent of the reports indicated that intervisitation 
among teachers was encouraged but thirty-four per cent reported that 
they did not encourage such practices. Fifty-eight per cent reported 
that they recommend teachers for promotion within the system while 
forty-nine per cent reported they did not unless the teacher requested 
such a recommendation. A knowledge that one’s services are appreci- 
ated, and that he will be promoted automatically for meritorious serv- 
ice would seem to be an excellent method of stimulating teacher 
growth; yet about half do not follow the practice. Seventy-five per 
cent recommend teachers for promotion outside the system even with- 
out the request of the teacher, but twenty per cent report they do not 
follow the practice. One may lose good teachers by recommending 
them to other officials, but the knowledge that teachers are being pro- 
moted will have a salutary effect upon those who follow in the system. 
It might be better to lose a good teacher occasionally than to keep hex 
on the job continuously while she stagnates professionally. 


Evidence of Progressive Practices 
In two different phases of the survey, principals were asked 
whether or not they encouraged intervisitation. Forty-seven per cent 


reported they did. Nine per cent encouraged it often and fourteen per 
cent sometimes within the system. Seven per cent encouraged such 














46 DeparTMENT or Seconpary-ScHoot Principats [November 


visitation often to other schools and twenty-nine per cent sometimes. 
A small percentage, eleven per cent, judged such practices to be among 
the best techniques for the improvement of instruction. The percent- 
age would be low because principals were only asked to judge the 
merits of those practices tried this year. 

Demonstration teaching would seem to be a highly commendable 
technique for the improvement of instruction. Two per cent said they 
used it often while only eight per cent used it sometimes. Yet the 
National Survey of Secondary Education reports the following:’ “The 
main approach to the problem of improving instruction is no longer 
the classroom visit with its inevitable ensuing conference. That ap- 
proach is still an important one, but in outstanding schools supervisors 
are realizing, as never before, the potential aggregate benefits which 
may accrue from many methods of supervision, proceeding simultan- 
eously.”” Melby found that principals were quite certain that class- 
room visitation was of value but the teachers were not so enthusiastic. 
The value of demonstration teaching seems to be quite evident to 
most leaders in education.’ Jacobson emphasized that there seemed 
to be a notion abroad that only elementary teachers could profit from 
such techniques. The writer is inclined to believe that the real reason 
why the practice is followed oftener in grade schools is due to the fact 
that elementary teachers had their training in a professional school 
where demonstration teaching is the vogue, while many high-school 
teachers were educated in liberal art schools and are not accustomed 
to giving demonstrations for their fellow teachers. 

While some may question the writer’s classification of what con- 
stitutes progressive practices regarding in-service training, many will 
doubtless agree that teachers are stimulated through the preparation of 
new curriculum material and experimentation. In several phases of 
the survey, principals were asked to report the use of such. experi- 
mental procedures. In answer to the question, “What methods for 
improving instruction are used most often?” the following were given: 

Per cent 
Often Some Best 
Experimental study of a teaching problem 10 17 7 
Investigate procedures in other schools 9 27 8 
Develop directed study program 28 21 17 
Develop guidance program 31 30 235 
*Engelhardt, Fred, Zeigel, Wm. H., and Billett, R. O. National Survey of Second- 


ary Education, Monograph No. 11, U. S. Dept. of Interior, Office of Education, Bulletin 
No. 17, 1932, p. 140. 

"Melby, E. O. “A Critical Study of Organization and Administration of Supervi- 
sion—a Study of Current Practice,” Northwestern University Contributions to Educa- 
tion, 1929, Public School Publishing Company. 

"Jacobson, Paul. “The School Principal and Modern Supervision,” Bulletin of the 
Department of Secondary-School Principals, N. E. A. Vol. 22, No. 72, February, 1938. 





1938} In-Service TRatnine 1n MINNESOTA 


Develop home-room program 42 21 
Study curriculum looking to revision 18 17 
Adjust teaching to individual differences 30 31 
Develop specific type of teaching 

as problem, project, etc. 14 14 
Organize and select material for teaching 12 12 11 


In view of the above information, one must discount somewhat 
the answers to the questions given below for another part of the sur- 
vey. However, the conflict is not so great if you consider that the fre- 
quency of use is not given. 
Per cent 
Do You — Yes No 
Encourage wide use of activities 77 10 
Encourage experimentation 77 8 
Encourage the large unit assignment 68 13 
Encourage building curriculum units 
and trying them out 45 37 
Urge use of local environment 82 3 
Urge keeping in mind pupil needs 80 3 
Use motion pictures 62 45 
Use lantern slides 84 5 

The evidence does seem to point to an effort to use the principles 
of progressive education in a considerable percentage of the schools, 
with varying degrees of success. Topics covered somewhat in teach- 
ers’ meetings show the same tendency—some reported were “work 
done by outstanding teachers, demonstration by outsider, guidance, 
unit activities, differential assignments, integration of the curriculum, 
home-room activities, directed study, visual education, correlation of 
English with other subjects, safety education, use of radio, academic 
freedom, and democracy in school policies.” 

Thirty-two per cent of the schools report they issue regular bulle- 
tins, while sixty-five per cent say they do not. The greatest percentage 
of these bulletins merely deal with matters of administration such as 
use of the building, examinations, program of studies, care of build- 
ing, holidays, requisitions, and the like. However, a few furnish ref- 
erences on problems being studied, and some deal with supervised 
study, visual aids, home rooms, changes in curriculum, radio pro- 
grams, special projects, or activities worked out by teachers and the 
names of teachers who attended summer school. 

Financial rewards in the form of a salary schedule are used by 
twenty-three per cent of the schools reporting. Properly administered 
such a technique, together with provision for sabbatical leave with all 
or part salary, would seem to be a very effective stimulus to teacher 
growth. Such practices are not common in our secondary schools. 














48 DEPARTMENT oF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [November 


those teachers who have been away from school for a period of years, 
money invested in the stimulation of additional study should bring 
good returns in the form of more effective instruction. 

There is some evidence of the objective testing techniques being 
used to diagnose pupil difficulty, but many principals said little use 
was made of the material. One said he wondered why they gave the 
tests. 

The in-service training of teachers constitutes one of the most im- 
portant functions of the superintendent or principal if not the chief 
one. It should include the cooperative study of educational problems. 
One might suggest that desirable techniques would include the fol- 
lowing: 

1. Cooperative survey of educational problems. 

2. Discussion of these problems in teachers’ meetings and selec- 
tion of those to be studied. A few activities would be selected 
for study during the year. It might include the development 
of new curriculum units. 

Committees could then work on problems with the principal 
and discuss them in group meetings. 

Bulletins might be issued giving material for study on the 
problem of the moment. 

. Demonstrations of the new units or methods would be given 
frequently. 

. Teachers might be sent where possible to see the work of oth- 
ers dealing with the same problem, the visit to be followed 
by discussions. 

Where visits to the classroom are made, they are with the 
knowledge and cooperation of the teacher for the common 
study of the activity in operation. 

Financial rewards for progressive efforts are always stimulat- 
ing. The criteria of meritorious service is more difficult to 
develop. 

. Sabbatical leaves for study would help prevent professional 
deterioration. Added funds for this purpose may make the 
difference between stale stereotyped procedure and enthusias- 
tic educational experiences. 

. Democracy in administration, cooperative planning by teach- 
ers, patrons, pupils, and supervisors will help meet child needs 
and stimulate teacher growth. 


The value of the superintendent or principal is dependent largely 
upon his ability to secure good teachers and to keep them growing. 
The best teacher will become ineffective in a few years without an 
adequate in-service training program. 





CUMULATIVE CASE STUDY RECORD AND GUIDANCE 


H. Q. VAN DYKE 
Superintendent, La Porte, Colorado 


Four years ago at La Porte, Colorado, the teaching staff became 
convinced that the permanent office record cards were inadequate and 
failed to help in the guidance of the individual in the socializing proc- 
ess called education. The record system then in use contained the fol- 
lowing information: personal, family, and scholastic history; record 
of attendance, health, and classification showing grade placement, 
promotion, or retardation. This seemed to the administration but a 
card index system in which there was no life nor human touch in 
which the individual was not recognized, and in which the record of 
digestion of subject matter was the great criterion. With the need for 
something better in mind, the staff attacked the problem as a major 
challenge; and, after two years of research, round-table discussions, 
committee findings, and constant study, a plan of permanent, cumu- 
lative case study records was evolved. 


Objectives of the Plan 


The present plan has as its objectives: 

First, a recognition of the child as an individual; every youngster 
has a right to the chance of attaining the highest plane possible for 
himself, and the teachers should contribute to this attainment in every 
way within their power. Subject matter is not the basis for, nor the 
purpose of, public education; but it is the function of the school to see 
that every individual shall be well fitted to social living and shall 
have an opportunity to be happy. 

Second, a cumulative record case study in which teacher observa- 
tion shall become the important factor in guidance for each pupil shall 
be carefully considered. Guidance is merely living together, and the 
teacher must be a constant observer and counselor in order to know 
the child and nourish him. That is education. 

Third, through a careful study of each case, we hope to do this 
sympathetically, humanely, and with common sense. Teachers and 
administrators must be trained for this sort of work. 

Fourth, a healthy program for each child that will consider not 
only what he has “had,” but also his every need. Schools have sought 
to do something for youth through a routine process of administering 
compartmentalized doses of subject matter to each aad everyone alike 
basing the criteria of success or failure in terms of units, grades, and 
credits; and they have been so busy with these that they have over- 
looked the physical and mental health of the child. In the field of 


49 














a eee 








50 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [November 


health, we have found a great need for study, observation, and reme- 
dial action; not merely a record of whether the individual has had 
measles, mumps, or scarlet fever, but how these have affected the child 
and how we might help him to overcome deficiencies. Other commu- 
nicable diseases, underweight and overweight, malnutrition, eye and 
ear weaknesses and defects, throat and nose troubles, glandular dis- 
turbances, teeth, toxins, prophylaxis innoculations, vaccines, serums, 
diet, etc., were included in the study. 

Fifth, through a personal knowledge of each child we shall try 
to help him find himself in the world of social, economic, aesthetic, 
and spiritual living, for now is the time to inculcate habits, attitudes, 
and appreciations. Each child is a social being; and unless the school 
becomes a factor in assisting him to find and develop himself, it fails 
to promote the civilizing process which society should demand for its 
own perpetuation, and which the individual has a right to expect as 
his heritage. 
The Child as an Individual 

Perhaps the child should not be regarded as an individual, but 
merely as a type. Perhaps he should find his individuality or develop 
it when he “gets out into life.” On the other hand, if he is your child 
or mine, we probably want him to be considered as an entity, a some- 
thing with a soul, an individual to be recognized as such, a person- 
ality to be cultivated. 

“No two of our pupils are identical physically; and if that is true, 
they are less likely to be identical mentally, emotionally, aesthetically, 
or spiritually. If society is to have the service of the individual, then 
society should help that individual to develop in the way that will best 
fit him for society. The whole is not better than its parts. 

Guidance as a separate program cannot be set up in our public 
schools, but as an integral part of all school experiences and social liv- 
ing can be made worth while. This, we are finding, can best be done 
through recognition of each as an individual. Teachers should try to 
become acquainted with all their pupils both in class and out, and 
this should lead to home visitation, conversation in which pupil in- 
terest is predominant, consideration for all the differences that make 
for individuality, sympathy for pupil problems, and real comradeship 
that is breaking down the old barrier that has stood so long between 
student and teacher. 

Cumulative Case Record 

In following up the plan outlined above, the next step is record- 
ing the observations. This may be done by filling in certain data on 
the folder card or by inserting memoranda. The latter is proving to be 
more usable and is more popular with teachers who make the observa- 


Aa &. ff & = AO 





1938] In-Szrvicz Train:nc 1n MINNESOTA 51 


tions. In memoranda they can say fully and in their own words what 
they wish to say; whereas, merely filling in blanks either is not com- 
plete or tends to become trite. 

I have chosen at random some items taken from the record of a 
boy whom I shall call by the name of James Gordon. James was 


graduated from the high school a year ago. 
record.—Football III-IV; Track III-IV; junior play, senior play, glee club 


Activity 
III-IV; boys’ quartet IV; student body president, IV; class president, III. 
‘amily tions —James is a member of a cultured family consisting of himself, 


F, 
father, mother, and one brother six years younger than he. His father was formerly 
designing engineer for the International Harvester Company, and the family was in 
the best of economic circumstances. In 1929, Mr. Gordon contracted a tubercular 
trouble, and the family moved from Kansas City to La Porte for his health. From their 
savings a small fruit farm was purchased, and this, with fifty dollars a month from 
insurance has furnished the income for the family living. They have taken their loss 
in good spirits, and James has helped to carry on the work his father cannot do. The 
father is a talented musician and continues to do whatever he can to help with the 
music of the community. Mrs. Gordon is from an old southern family and never had 
done household work or physical labor before the trouble mentioned above. She has 
learned to do all anyone could do and uncomplainingly has reconstructed her whole 
scheme of life. The younger brother is an electrical genius. The family is highly inte- 
grated and is very closemouthed concerning its own welfare. eg boys are manly and 
well mannered and are very considerate of their parents.—Mr. 

Sex Attitude—October 15, 1935—James had his first real yo last night at the 
all-school dance. He is certainly a manly fellow, and always seems to have an entirely 
wholesome attitude toward girls—Miss K. 

Civic Attitude.—James Gordon was elected president of the student body today. 
He has a constructive program for student development and social activities. His civic 


interest is of high order. We expect much of him.—Mr. 
I Remarks.—James exhibited in the main corridor to-day a complete set of 


Genera 
car models dating from the first car of 1897 vintage down to the ultramodern car of 
to-morrow. Fifteen models, all done in monies clay. The exhibit practically stopped 
school. It is a marvelous piece of work and shows exact detail in every respect. An 
unusual feature of the display was a Ford V-8 engine block. It was all there.—Mr. L. 
A week later, the display of car models which James worked out for the school, 
was obtained by an auto agency for the annual auto show in Denver. Thousands have 


viewed it with “Oh’s” and “Ah’s.” 
Later, James Gordon was offered a position with the General Motors Company 
as a result of his model car exhibit. He will enter Detroit University for technical train- 
Ww. 


ing on a scholarship provided by General Motors.—Mr. 

These are actual extracts from memoranda and observations, and 
the case history is a true one. Every boy and girl is so observed, al- 
though all have not the type of comment as was given in the case of 
this boy. However, teachers are doing many, many times as much 
work in guidance as formerly, and every pupil is carefully considered. 


Testing and Guidance 

If tests are to be given in order to find a score, they had better be 
burned beforehand. But through prognosis, diagnosis, and remedial 
action we find that every person in school can be helped to find his 
niche. Intelligence tests are used to help determine mental ability. 
Aptitude, personality, and achievement tests all contribute to an un- 
derstanding of the boy or girl and help teachers in the orientation of 
the boy or the girl. Some teachers have become especially interested in 
clinics, and they are making a scientific study of the pupils that is 



































































52 DeparTMENT oF Seconpary-ScHooL Principats [November 


continuous. This will become far-reaching in its development. Here 
lies a new field in public school education that has scarcely been 
touched. 


The Health Program 


Although this problem seemed stupendous, we tackled it, never- 
theless. Health is a prerequisite to successful school life and accom- 
plishment, but it had hardly been considered when “grades” were 
given out. All must be regarded alike; do the assigned bookwork 
regardless of physical or mental health. Now we are trying to base 
our whole program on the fitness of the child to do the things he may 
be called upon to do. We are trying to develop a complete health pro- 
gram in which each youngster will be properly examined, treated, and 
cared for. Much has been done to eliminate malnutrition, glandular 
trouble, eye, ear, throat, nose, and mouth ailments. Teeth are to be 
kept in constant repair, diet watched if need be, exercises given in par- 
ticular cases, etc. Vaccination, prophylaxis, and serum treatments have 
found a place in the health program. This costs more than the old 
hit-or-miss method, but much less to society as a whole; and there is 
no comparison as to results. Happiness cannot be measured. 


Fitting for Leisure Time 


This phase of the guidance program we are trying to develop to 
the best of our ability, but there is still much to learn. Each student 
of the school is observed, guided into new channels, carefully nour- 
ished in social growth; is introduced to the world of beauty, art, and 
culture; is led from the level upon which he was found to a place 
where life offers more than a living. We are finding our case study 
records invaluable aids. The records are alive. They breathe person- 
ality and warmth. 


Conclusion 


There have been times of discouragement. Teachers have failed 
to understand. There has been very little background for this type of 
work. There are far too few teachers, and they are poorly paid. Ten- 
ure is short and insecure, and new teachers have to be trained con- 
stantly in these studies and practices. Much of the work is too scientific 
for all. But with all these difficulties, we have made a start; and the 
joy of better teaching through a better understanding has been recom- 
pense enough. We have scratched the surface, and now we are ready 
to begin real cultivation. 




































BOOK NOTES 


Youth Education Today. Sixteenth Yearbook. Washington, D. C.: Ameri- 
can Association of School Administrators, 1938, Pp. 509. $2.00. 

A review of the educational and occupational problems of young 
people which suggests the next steps to be taken by educators in their 
efforts to help youth to find their places in our present-day social and eco- 
nomic order. 


Simpson, Ray H. A Study of Those Who Influence and of Those Who Are 
Influenced in Discussion. New York: Teachers College, Columbia 
University, 1938. Pp. 89. $1.80. 

To determine the individual traits and background characteristics 
affecting influence in discussion and those relating to being influenced in 
discussion was the major problem of the study. A comparatively minor 
issue was to ascertain the extent to which students were influenced by 
opinions of experts in making their aesthetic judgments. 


Norton, Joun K. anp Marcaret ALLTucKer. Wealth, Children and Educa- 
tion. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1938. 
Pp. xviiit138. $2.00. 

The authors present the results of important researches on the financ- 
ing of public education in the United States and show the varying abilities 
of the states to support schools and the existing need for federal aid in 
maintaining a national program in line with current economic needs. This 
the second edition of the book comprises revisions and important additions 
including an account of the research conducted by President Roosevelt’s 
Advisory Committee on Education. 

PowDERMAKER, THERESE. Physical Education Play Activities for Girls in 
Junior and Senior High School. New York: A. S. Barnes & Company, 
1938. Pp. xit+369. $3.00. 

Written principally to help women graduates in physical education as 
they undertake their first year of work, the book covers organization and 
administration, self-testing activities, games, coaching hints and technique 
for game skills, and swimming. 

Cassipy, Rosatinp. New Directions in Physical Education for the Adoles- 
cent Girl in High School and College. New York: A. S. Barnes & 
Company, 1938. Pp. xvit+231. $2.50. 

Intended as a guide for teachers in cooperative curriculum revision, 
the volume embodies a careful study of the problems of the girl of sec- 
ondary-school and college age in relation to her environment, with particu- 
lar reference to actual case situations, and it provides bases and methods 
by which teachers may study together and plar programs. 


Tuorpz, Louis P. Psychological Foundations of Personality. New York: 

McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1938. Pp. xvi+602. $3.50. 

This book is a methodological treatise for teachers whose aim is the 
development of the child’s personality. It discusses such things as the con- 
cept of personality, biological foundations of personality, educability of the 
personality, emotional conditioning of personality, etc. 


53 










































54 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PrincipaLs [November 





Stratton, CLarENcE. To Read and To Act. New York: McGraw-Hill Book 

Company, Inc., 1938. Pp. xii+411. $1.24. 

Thirty-three readings selected from the works of famous authors 
comprise the materials of To Read and To Act. The ultimate object of the 
book is: “to have pupils appear before their classmates, and with little or 
more action, make these scenes, prepared by careful reading, spring to life.” 
For high-school pupils. 


Davis, Joun E:szce. Play and Mental Health. Principles and Practice for 
Teachers. New York: A. S. Barnes & Company, 1938. Pp. xvi+202. 
$2.50. 

The author presents principles and practices “as usable material for 
the organization of effective mental hygienic practices in school and, to 
this end, to develop a psychology of play in line with the spirit and the 
recent advances of psychiatric practices in child education.” 


Educational Broadcasting, 1937. Edited by C. S. Marsh. Chicago: The 

University of Chicago Press. Pp. xvit386. $3.00. 

The Proceedings of the Second National Conference on Educational 
Broadcasting contains discussions by educators, government officials, jour- 
nalists, radio broadcasters, musicians, and representatives of social agencies 
on subjects emphasizing radio as a democratic institution. 


The Purpose of Education in American Democracy. Washington, D. C.: 
Educational Policies Commission, National Education Association, 
1938. Pp. 137. Sixty cents. 

The Educational Policies Commission believes that the thesis “our 
education needs democracy” is as important as the frequently proclaimed 
one “our democracy needs education.” Accordingly, the Commission has 
set forth: (1) a statement of what the schools of the United States should 
accomplish; (2) a description of what should be done if these purposes are 
to be realized. 


Dovctass, Ausrey A. Modern Secondary Education. New York: Hough- 
ton Mifflin Company, 1938. Pp. xviii+782. 

A revision of the book Secondary Education which reviews the 
changes that have occurred in secondary education within the past few 
years, and which restates the aims, means, and purposes of the secondary 
school in the light of the needs of all the children of all the people rather 
than the needs of only the academically-minded intent on the pursuit of 
older forms of learning. The problems include pupil interests and abilities, 
home environment, civic needs, probable vocational destination, health, 
extra-curriculum activities, and intelligent use of leisure, to mention only 
a few. 


MenereE, Louis ARNOLD, AND CHAMBERS, M. M. American Youth. An anno- 
tated bibliography. Washington, D. C.: The American Council on 
Education, 1938. Pp. xii+492. $3.00. 

If you are looking for articles on youth movements, on what youth is 
thinking and doing, on the relation between education and recreation, and 
on the outlook for rural youth, etc., this volume will prove an invaluable 


guide. 








1938] Boox Notes 55 


Sears, Jesse B. City School Administrative Controls. New York: McGraw- 

Hill Book Company, Inc., 1938. 

The author presents an impersonal approach to the scientific study 
of school control, the theory and principle of legislaive and administrative 
control, board regulation, special administrative instruments, and pupil 
management controls. 


Jones, Artuur J. The Education of Youth for Leadership. New York: Mc- 
Graw-Hill Book Company, 1938. 
The author analyzes the qualifications of leadership and contributes a 
valuable guide for the intelligent selecting and training of leaders. 


Mann, Erika. School for Barbarians. New York: Modern Age Books, Inc., 

1938. Pp. 159. Fifty cents. 

Erika Man, the daughter of the exiled Thomas Mann is well-fitted to 
expose the cunning machinations, the political propaganda, and the sinister 
system of education which has subjugated the German schools to aid the 
Fuhrer in the accomplishment of the Nazi aim: to make the Nazis the 
rulers of the world. 


SHepp, CLarENcE Prouty. The Church Follows Its Student. New Haven: 

Yale University Press, 1938. Pp. xvii+327. $2.50. 

Formerly, when students attended their own denominational schools, 
the church ministered to their spiriutal needs without much effort. Later, 
however, when students began attending the various tax-paying institu- 
tions, the churches were faced with the problem of having students scat- 
tered in undenominational schools. Accordingly, the author gives the his- 
tory of what the churches have done, and what they are doing, in looking 
after their students. 


Briccs, THomas H. Improving Instruction: Supervision by Principals of 

Secondary Schools. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938. 

Pp. 587. 

The meaning and the organization of supervision, school principals’ 
sesponsibilities and relationships, the process of supervision for improving 
instruction, classroom observations, supervisory conferences, teachers’ 
meetings, as well as other means of supervision, measurement, and experi- 
mentation, are discussed by the author. 


‘Berz, Wittiam. Algebra for To-day. Second course. Chicago: Ginn and 
Company, 1938. Pp. x+518. $1.36. 


Crark, Joun R.; Smitu, R. Rottanp; Scutorinc, Raretcu. Modern-School 
Geometry. New York: World Book Company, 1938. $1.36. 


Meier, W. H. D., anp ScHormaker, Lois Meter. Essentials of Biology. 
Boston: Ginn and Company, 1938. Pp. viit+725. $1.80. 


Becker, Cart L., ann Duncatr, Freperic. Story of Civilization. New 
York: Silver Burdett Company, 1938. 


Haccerty, Mecvin E., anp Smitu, Dora V. Reading and Literature. New 
York: World Book Company, 1937. Volumes I and II. 

















NEWS ITEMS 











BRING CRISES INTO CLAssrooMs. United States Commissioner of Fduca- 
tion Studebaker urges the rearrangement of high-school and college sched- 
ules to enable students to hear firsthand the most important pronounce- 
ments being made by history-making leaders. Mentioning recent foreign 
broadcasts in which Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Reichfuhrer 
Adolph Hitler were heard and other news releases portraying up-to-the- 
minute changes in world history as having real educative value, Dr. Stude- 
baker said: “Our democracy depends not so much on the number of facts 
our students remember about Victoria or Napoleon, but upon how compe- 
tent young people become in thinking through the real issues they them- 
selves are going to confront as adult citizens.” 


NEEDED: COURSES IN PERSONALITY ADJUSTMENT. Lessons in human re- 
lationship are needed in every school in America, in the opinion of Elsie 
Robinson, syndicated feature writer, who says: “Under our present system, 
a youngster is taught practically everything on earth save the one requisite 
for a happy life—how to get along with other people. Each year sees new 
novelties added to the curriculum: tap dancing, flower arrangement, win- 
dow trimming, endless devices for enriching one’s personal store of infor- 
mation and catching the elusive penny. But where will you find a class on 
that most indispensable of all human arts—how and when to keep your 
mouth shut? “Yet,” says Miss Robinson, “it is a safe bet that more careers 
have been crippled by ignorance on this subject than by all the other 
handicaps put together.” 


“To FREE HIGH-SCHOOL STUDENTS FROM THE TRADITIONAL CREDIT SYS- 
TEM,” is the plea to colleges made by Benjamin M. Steigman, principal of 
the High School of Music and Art, New York City. Mr. Steigman be- 
lieves that a smattering of language and a bit of mathematics are futile to 
the boy or girl who intends to have a creative career, and he urges the 
adoption of purposeful guidance programs to replace the “aimlessness” 
now generally prevalent, aimlessness which, he says, is the worst blight of 
our schools today. 


EpucaTors AND BUSINESSMEN CONFER. Paul R. Mort, director of the 
Advanced School of Education of Teachers College, Columbia University, 
is developing a program of conferences between educators and leading 
businessmen and bankers for the purpose of healing the rift between edu- 
cation and business. The misunderstanding lies in the fact that professional 
educators have little contact with the people who foot the bills for educa- 
tion, according to Dr. Mort, who says: “The educators don’t know what 
the public wants from the schools, and the laymen, in turn, are equally 
ignorant of what the educators hope to accomplish.” 


A NEW TYPE OF REPORT CARD FOR CHILDREN rating personality and 
traits of character is to be introduced this year in the elementary schools of 
Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond, New York. Thus parents will get a 
report on the “whole child,” his reaction to play and his work character- 
istics. 


56 





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1938] News Irems 57 


MENTAL HYGIENE IS A METHOD NOT A SCIENCE, according to Elizabeth 
T. Sullivan, educational psychologist of Los Angeles County Schools, in 
an article, “Mental Hygiene,” in which she points out that at the begin- 
ning of the century the term mental hygiene, which means the best mental 
condition in everyone, was unknown. A great deal is said about mental hy- 
giene to-day because it plays an important part in the development of chil- 
dren. As a method, mental hygiene utilizes the generalizations from all 
fields dealing with human behavior. 


SURVEY REVEALS INADEQUATE PREPARATION OF TEACHERS. Educational 
policies Commission reports that, with the great shifts in population, new 
types of personnel must be met. Data from the National Survey of the 
Education of Teachers show that teachers are not adequately prepared for 
their jobs. This is true to a greater degree in the rural communities than 
in the villages and cities. In different-sized communities, the proportions 
of teachers having less than two years of college education were as follows: 
open country, one- and two-teacher schools, sixty-two per cent; open coun- 
try, three- or more-teacher schools, twenty-eight per cent; villages of less 
than twenty-five hundred population, twenty-one per cent; cities of twenty- 
five hundred to 9,999 population, twelve and six-tenths per cent; cities of 
ten thousand to 99,999 population, ten and five-tenths per cent; and cities 
of more than one hundred thousand population, nine per cent. Yet the 
present population trends indicate that the future population of our cities 
is coming from the very communities served by teachers who are least 
qualified to teach, and who receive lowest remuneration. 


TRENDS IN HIGHER EDUCATION, Newer Aspects oF CoLLeciaATe Epuca- 
tion, by Kathryn McHale and Frances Valiant Speck, discloses the trends 
in higher education. The booklet should prove useful as a study guide to 
boards of instruction and curriculum committees in colleges, and to 
branches of the A. A. U. W. and other organizations that are studying 
educational standards and trends and that are carrying on guidance pro- 
grams. 


AMERICAN EDUCATION STRIVES TO ADVANCE DEMOCRACY. That American 
education is making strides toward meeting the needs of democracy is evi- 
denced in (1) the transformation of courses of study, (2) introduction of 
new types of courses built to survey broader fields, and (3) concentration 
on each student as an individual rather than as a “standard particle of a 
mass.” These hopeful signs were enumerated by Donald P. Cottrell, of 
Teachers College, Columbia University, in an address entitled “Redirect- 
ing General Education in High School and College,” given recently over 
the radio. 


REPORT CARDS FOR TEACHERS. In Fairbury, Nebraska, the teachers were 
given report cards graded by parents of senior students, and most of the 
grades were “pretty good.” 


HIGH-SCHOOL PROGRAMS LACK UNITY. L. Thomas Hopkins, of Teach- 
ers College, Columbia University, declares that the present high-school pro- 
gram lacks unity since it is made up of a series of disjointed segments in 
a number of unrelated areas. Therefore, homogeneity, he states, is accom- 
plished largely through social activities of the school rather than through 
regular classroom work. 
































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58 DEPARTMENT or SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [November 


NEVADA PRINCIPALS ORGANIZE. A department of secondary-school prin- 

cipals for the Nevada State Education Association, affiliated with the Na- 
tional Education Association, was organized recently with officers as fol- 
lows: President—B. W. Wheatley, superintendent of schools, Ely; vice- 
president—Golden R. Tueller, principal of Storey County high schools; 
secretary-treasurer—Paul Thurston, superintendent of educational district 
No. 1 of Clark County. 

Two ALTERNATIVES FOR FARMERS. “Whether the farmers want the 
es to take over the land and divide it up so they can make a 

rst-class living or whether the farmers themselves want to organize into 
large cooperative farm groups, are two future alternatives. The first is 
not the democratic form of agricultural improvement, but I am convinced, 
after years of research, that the future of agriculture lies in more efficient 
methods and farming of a large scale.” This is the opinion of Jacob G. 
Lipman, of the Agricultural College of Rutgers University, as expressed 
recently in an address delivered at the annual meeting and Harvard Festi- 
val of the National Farm School in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. 

CHILEAN FELLOWSHIPs FOR AMERICAN STUDENTS. Fellowships for 
United States students are offered by the University of Chile in return for 
courtesies which have been extended to Chilean students here. The Insti- 
tute of International Education will administer these fellowships; and dur- 
ing the academic year 1938-1939, the Institute will have ten Chilean stu- 
dents studying in the United States. 

VocaTIONAL HIGH SCHOOLS IN New York. In a paper entitled “New 
York City Trains for To-day and To-morrow,” Franklin J. Keller says, 
“The twenty-four vocational high schools in New York City are bursting 
their walls to accommodate more than 52,000 pupils. If the space and 
equipment could be doubled overnight, the children would flock in the 
next morning to use it to capacity.” 

Wovutp curs “pEGREE cHasiING.” Edward F. Ahearn, president of the 
Board of Education, Hartford, Connecticut, addressing 150 educators in 
the Men’s Faculty Club of Columbia University, charged that teachers 
seeking higher degrees have some pay schedule in mind rather than the 
pursuit of knowledge in the foreground. He said that a curb should be 
put on “degree chasing,” for there are many teachers who neglect their 
classes while seeking these academic laurels. 

Equatity oF opportunity. George D. Strayer, of Teachers College, 
Columbia University, believes that education should be organized and 
financed so that every person from childhood throughout adult life would 
have equality of opportunity. He warns against centralization of education 
through too rigid a Federal control. He says, “To centralize the control 
and administration of education in the state or in the nation will lead to 
mediocrity and may result in the use of the schools for purposes of propa- 
ganda by groups temporarily in control of government.” 

A SPECIAL PEACE syLLaBus. At the James Monroe High School, the 
Brenx, New York, a special peace syllabus has been introduced which 
outlines phases of peace education in such courses as arithmetic, accounnt- 
ing, art, Engish, bioiogy, the social studies, and even typewriting. In the 
classroom, the subject of war and peace is brought into the daily lives of 

all the pupils. For instance, children in the arithmetic classes find their 
studies correlated with the “economic wastage of war.” 












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1938} News Items 59 


LEARNING COMMUNITY CIVICS FIRSTHAND. Thousands of New York 
school children saw the sights of Gotham for the first time only recently 
as part of their community civics courses. The municipally-owned ferry- 
boat was the classroom, and a loud-speaker was the teacher. 


Tue INTERNATIONAL ScHOOLBoy FELLowsuiP provides the auspices un- 
der which ten German students are now enjoying a year’s study in nine 
American preparatory schools. The boys arrived on the Deutschland, Sep- 
tember 30. 

THE NEED FOR RURAL-SCHOOL-CONSCIOUSNESS. Since half or all the chil- 
dren attending elementary schools are in rural areas, there is no question 
of the great need for arousing interest in improving the conditions of in- 
struction. Rural school children have as instructors the youngest, the most 
inexperienced, the most unstable, and the poorest trained and poorest paid 
teachers in the profession. 

A CURRICULUM TO MEET INDIVIDUAL NEEDS. Instead of setting up a 
curriculum pattern in which all pupils must fit, Reading High School, 
Reading, Michigan, is reorganizing its curriculum to meet the need of 
individual students, 

WINNETKA’s SUMMER CAMP. Last summer, the opportunity to benefit 
by camp activities was provided children who were unable to attend sum- 
mer camps elsewhere, when, on June 21, the school doors of Winnetka, 
Illinois, were opened for a six weeks’ camp program that included excur- 
sions, nature study, horseback riding, swimming, athletics, shopwork, 
handicraft, art work, folk-dance study, puppet making, dramatics, and a 
story hour. The children chose the subjects they liked. The camp was 
self-supporting, with tuitions as follows: For eighteen dollars, a Winnetka 
pupil could attend all day; for twelve dollars, half day; riding was five dol- 
lars extra, and swimming was three dollars extra. 

SPEECH OF PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS TO BE EVALUATED. The Board of Ex- 
aminers of the New York City schools has codified its tests in speech. A 
six-point scale to evaluate the speech of prospective candidates has been 
formulated. Each candidate must pass an oral English test. At the very 
top of this group will be those applicants seeking licenses to teach speech 
improvement, or as first assistants in English. At the other end of the list 
will be the category for shop maintenance men and teachers of trade and 
industrial subjects. In the four intervening categories will fall the majority 
of elementary and academic high-school teachers, assistants and special 
teachers. 

A Parent-Teacner Association TuaTt Is Dirrerent. The Stanford 
Mothers’ Club, of Leland Stanford University, is an active organization 
that looks after students who run short of funds, and who need suits, 
overcoats, shoes, ties, shirts, sweaters, and handkerchiefs. This club also 
gives an annual Christmas party for students who are unable to go home 
for the holidays; and it also serves Thanksgiving dinner for those who 
must be alone at that time. 

STUDENTs LEARN THE NEED FOR SAFETY RULES. A method found to be 
startlingly successful in the study of the history of land transportation was 
the operation of model railroads by model students. Students thereby 
learned the advisability of establishing safety rules and many things about 
the construction of trains. 








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60 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-ScHOOL Principats [November 


REASONS FOR STUDENT F‘\ILURES. A questionnaire drawn up by George J. 
Davidson, principal of the summer session, and William J. Shine, guid- 
ance counselor, of Erasmus Hall High School, Brooklyn, New York, asked 
two thousand boys, from more than fifty public and private schools why 
they were obliged to repeat courses in summer schools. About 150 said 
they had too many subjects to study; 130 said their failure was due to ab- 
sence from school. Most of these admitted an indifferent attitude, that 
they had no particular goal in life. When asked how failures could be 
avoided the most typical answers were: “I could study more;” “I should 
pay more attention;” “I should ask more questions;” “Teachers ought to 
have more personality;” “Classes should be smaller.” 


A BASIS FOR RELIGIOUS VALUES IN SCHOOL work. The feeling that there 
can be no divorcement of religious values from daily education is growing 
among school administrators and teachers. At the tenth conference of ele- 
mentary school workers at Teachers College, Columbia University, last 
May, educators sought religious basis for school work. Those present were 
from the Protestant and Roman Catholic groups; they agreed on “a com- 
mon ground for all believers that might be expressed in a ‘love-thy-neigh- 
bor’ policy.” 

THE NEED FOR A GAUGE IN SELECTING TEACHERS. Frank M. Rich, prin- 
cipal of Public School No. 2, Patterson, New Jersey, says that teachers’ 
marks in examination may serve in protecting the schools against ignora- 
muses, but that there is little if any relation between skill in teaching and 
managing a roomful of youngsters and skill in putting down eloquent 
answers on an examination paper. The feeling that a superintendent may 
have a sixth sense or a hunch which enables him to select or reject appli- 
cants on a moment’s conversation or by a glance at examination marks or 
a photograph, is one of the commonest delusions. When definite examina- 
tions and interviews can be designed as a gauge in selecting teachers, su- 
perintendents and boards may then be justified in choosing their teachers 
on the basis of interviews and examinations. 


THE LEISURE ACTIVITIES OF TEACHERS. Reporting on the leisure activi- 
ties of school teachers in New York, Jacob Greenberg states that the 588 
teachers who’ answered his questionnaire have published 973 educational 
books besides 135 books of other kinds. How they spend the rest of their 
time, whether or not they spend it reading the books that they write, is 
not stated. At any rate, it would be quite impossible for the fastest and 
most persistent of readers, reading one book a day, Sundays and holidays 
included, to read the books listed in less than three and a half years. 


Rapio EpucaTion 1N Onto. The Radio Division at the Ohio State 
University is concerned with stimulating and developing radio education 
in the schools of the state. The Division has carried on research seeking 
to evaluate radio broadcasts planned and produced for classroom use. A 
monthly periodical called the Ohio Radio Announcer lists the educational 


programs. 


PARENTS TO’ LEARN OF SCHOOL OPERATIONS. The schools of Springfield, 
Missouri, plan to distribute to parents a comprehensive report telling how 
the schools operate. 


NATIONAL MEETING OF STATE COORDINATORS 
WALTER E. MYER 


The Discussion Group Project of the Department of Secondary- 

School Principals was given a decided impetus this fall, when the co- 
ordinators of the states met together in Chicago to consider common 
problems and to work out programs for the coming year. This con- 
ference was held on October 3 and 4, and every state of the Union 
except Rhode Island was represented, as was also the District of Co- 
lumbia. 
These forty-eight men, together with the staff of the national 
office of the Discussion Group Project, gave first consideration to 
problems of organization. All but twelve of the states were already 
organized locally and were ready to carry on the work of local dis- 
cussion group conferences, most of them on the monthly basis. Re- 
gional directors had been appointed and state organizations were 
fairly complete. Plans were made at the conference for completing the 
state organization work in the other states, and that activity is now 
going forward. As one result of the conference, it is expected that 
within a few weeks principals will be meeting regularly in local dis- 
cussion groups in practically all the states. 

The coordinators’ conference also considered the problem of fu- 
ture programs for discussion. During the last year, many groups 
have been discussing the “Issues of Secondary Education” and “Func- 
tions of Secondary Education,” making use of the study outline, en- 
titled “Problems of Secondary Education,” which has been prepared 
and is being distributed without charge by the national office of the 
Discussion Group Project. It was the general opinion that discussion 
in most of the states might well proceed along the same lines, and that 
the attempt should be made to extend the discussions to the high- 
school teachers. Principals are being encouraged to devote part of 
their faculty meetings to professional discussion, the work being car- 
ried on along the same lines as those followed by the principals in 
their local meetings. 

It was the opinion of the members of the conference that the dis- 
cussion groups would soon be ready to shift emphasis from a consid- 
eration of the theoretical problems of secondary education to the pro- 
posed development of actual practices. The coordinators and their 
regional directors plan to work in close association with the Imple- 


mentation Committee. 

This Committee, sponsored by the Department of Secondary- 
School Principals, and headed by Dr. Will French, of Teachers Col- 
lege, Columbia University, met with the coordinators in the final ses- 


61 








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62 DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [November 


sion and outlined the program through which the Implementation 
Committee and the discussion group organizations may work to- 
gether. It was decided that the Implementation Committee should 
send out a questionnaire to the principals of the nation, asking along 
which lines the principals were most in need of help and guidance. 
The Implementation Committee will be guided largely in its work 
by the replies which it receives. 

The plan now is that the Implementation Committee shall dis- 
cover and bring to light the most promising practices now being fol- 
lowed in the most successful schools. Attention will be given to the 
practices which seem effective as a means of handling the most difh- 
cult problems of the secondary schools and the problems with respect 
to which the most promising efforts may be made. The Implementa- 
tion Committee will bring these effective and progressive practices to 
the attention of principals everywhere, and these practices may be 
given immediate and systematic consideration by the local discussion 
groups throughout the nation. 

According to this program, the Implementation Committee im- 
plements and brings to concreteness the work of the Orientation Com- 
mittee, and the Discussion Group Project furnishes the machinery by 
which the leadership afforded by these two committees may be made 
effective. 

It was decided at the coordinators’ conference that the discussion 
group work in each state should be a function of the state principals 
association. It is particularly important that a strong principals asso- 
ciation: be maintained in each state and that it keep the discussion 
group work going. The encouragement and guidance afforded by 
the national office of the Discussion Group Project is to be but tempo- 
rary, and after the work of organization directed from national head- 
quarters is complete, each state is expected to maintain the work 
within its own jurisdiction. 


TALKING IT THROUGH 


The Planning Committee of the Department of Secondary-School 
Principals of the National Education Association is anxious that the 
discussion group work which it has initiated may be maintained per- 
manently in all the states and in every section of each state. It is anx- 
ious, further, that the discussions be carried on in a really effective 
manner. In order to assist in the effort to organize and maintain these 
discussion groups and to keep the discussion within them on a high 
plane, the Committee has prepared a booklet called “Talking It 
Through.” This booklet is intended to serve as a guide for discussion 


groups. 





1938} News Items 63 


“Talking It Through” furnishes information about the Discussion 
Group Project and its purposes. It offers counsel concerning the or- 
ganization and maintaining of groups. Probably most important of 
all, it carries chapters on the art of discussion. It points to the dangers 
which beset any discussion group, to the danger particularly that the 
discussion may not result in real cooperative thinking. It then offers 
concrete suggestions concerning means whereby discussion may be so 
directed as to result in the kind of thinking and planning which plays 
so important a part in educational progress. 

This booklet sells for 15 cents a copy, and may be obtained from 
the Discussion Group Project, 1201 Sixteenth Street, N. W., Washing- 
ton, D. C.; or from Mr. H. V. Church, 5835 Kimbark Avenue, Chi- 


cago, Illinois. 








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DEPARTMENT OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 


CALENDAR OF PROFESSIONAL MEETINGS 


National Council of Teachers of English, Hotel Statler, St. Louis, Missouri, 
November 24-26, 1938. 

Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 
November 25-26. 

Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, Atlantic City, 
New Jersey, November 25-26. 

National Council for the Social Studies, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Novem- 
ber 25-26. 

Southern Secretaries, Dallas, Texas, November 25-26. 

American Vocational Association, St. Louis, Missouri, November 30-De- 

.  cember 3. 

Ohio Education Association, Columbus, Ohio, December 27-29. 

Associated Academic Principals of New York State, Syracuse, New York, 
December 28-30. 

Massachusetts High School Principals Association, Boston, Massachusetts, 
January 14, 1939. 

National Vocational Guidance Association, Cleveland, Ohio, February 22-25. 

National Association of Principals of Schools for Girls, Cleveland, Ohio, 
February 23-25. 

National Association of School Secretaries, Cleveland, Ohio, February 25-26. 

Department of Secondary-School Principals, Cleveland, Ohio, February 25- 
March 1. 

Department of Rural Education of the N. E. A., Cleveland, Ohio, Febru- 
ary 25-March 2. 

American Association of School Administrators, Cleveland, Ohio, Febru- 
ary 26-March 2. 

National Association of State High School Supervisors and Directors 
N. E. A., Cleveland, Ohio, February 28. 

American Association of Junior Colleges, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 
March 3-5. 

Public School Business Officials, Oakland, California, March 15-18. 

The Harvard Teachers Association, Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 18. 

New York State Vocational Association, New York, New York, April 11-13. 

American National Red Cross, Washington, D. C., April 24-27. 

Conference of Principals of Junior and Senior High Schools, Boston, Mas- 
sachusetts, April 28-30. 

Manitoba Teachers Federation, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, April, 1939. 

District of Columbia Congress of Parents and Teachers, Washington, 
D. C., May, 1939. 

American Library Association, San Francisco, California, June 18-24. 

National Conference of Visual Education and Film Exchange, Chicago, 
Illinois, June 19-22. 

National Association of Student Officers, San Francisco, California, 
June 28-30. 

National Association of State Libraries, San Francisco, California, June, 
1939, 

National Education Association, San Francisco, California, July 2-6. 

National Amateur Press Association, Oakland, California, July 4. 

World Federation of Education Associations, Rio de Janeiro, South 
America, August, 1939.