THE BULLETIN 

the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION 

OF SECONDARY- SCHOOL 
_PRINCIPALS _ 


Vota 3. leven 1939. 




















NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF 


SECOND ARE Ses PRINCIPALS 
NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION , 


OFFICERS 
1939-1940 


President: K. J, Crarx 
Principal Murphy High School, Mobile, Alabama 
First Vice President: Oscan GraNcER 
Principe] Haverford Township High School, Darby, Pennsylvania 
mae dsc: my wer By eoneagd 
Principal Central High 


ot V. Guvecn 
$635 Kimbark wenue, Chicago 


Principal) Lewis and Clark 
Huon 
Principal Devie High Schcol, Mt. Vernon, New York 


NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL HONOR SOCIETY 


Cuanizs Forazsr ALLEN 
Ce See Little Rock, Arkansas 
Petia of ie Ha eee ee, SOREN rene 
Comsrocx 


Principal of North Dalles High School, Dallas, T 
S. S. Dicxsy a 


Published at Berrien Springs, Michigan, by the National Association of 
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5835 Kimbark Avenue, Chicag 
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NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF 


SED ARE ae PRINCIPALS 
NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION , 


OFFICERS 
1939-1940 


President: KJ. Craax 
First Vice President: Oxcan 
Principal Haverford Tc High School, 
Second Vice President: Joun 
Principal Central High 


$635 Kissberk j Pail : 


Mean mec 
ART 
Principel Devie High School, Mt. Vernon, New York 


NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL HONOR SOCIETY 
M. R. McDanim, President 
Principal of Oak Park and River Forest Township High School, Oak Park, lilincte 
coe ALLEN 
L. W. Brooxs 
Principal of Wichita School East, Wichita, Kansas 
. Comsrocn 


Principal of North Dalles High School, Dalles, Texas 
S. S. Dicxay 


Published at Berrien Springs, Michigan, by the National Association of 
Secondary-School Principals of the National Education Association 
nat Keneneee nie Cae 

the post office at 


second- November 8, 193 Berrien 
ee pk ae ire oe 12, ie B; Act of Februar wf 3 

















THE BULLETIN OF THE 
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF 
SECONDARY-SCHOOL 
PRINCIPALS 


OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


Issued Eight Times a Year 
Monthly October to May Inclusive 


OCTOBER, 1939 


Serial Number 84 








BULLETIN NO 84 
Part I 


Proceedings of the 
Summer Meeting of the 


NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF 
SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 


OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 
July 3-6, 1939 


Part II 


A Study of the Adjustment of Secondary Youth 
to Post-School Occupational Life 











THE CONTENTS OF THIS BULLETIN ARE LISTED IN EDUCATIONAL INDEX 


Published by 


THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF 
SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 
OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 


H. V. CHURCH, Executive Secretary 
5835 Kimbark Avenue, Chicago 

















Part I 


Proceedings of the 
Summer Meeting of the 


NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF 
SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 


of the 
National Education Association 
at 
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 


on 


July 3-6, 1939 


Part Il 


A Study of the Adjustment of Secondary Youth 
to Post-School Occupational Life 


fe 


Edited by 
H. V. CHURCH 


Executive Secretary of the Association 





Published by the National Association of Secondary-School Principals, 1939 














The Bulletin 


of the 


NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL — 
PRINCIPALS 


National Education Association 








Votumz 23 October 1939 Noumser 84 








SAN FRANCISCO CONVENTION 

The first session of the convention in San Francisco was held in Audi- 
torium A of Hotel Empire, Monday, July 3, 1939. The meeting was opened 
at 2:00 p. m. by the chairman, Virgil M. Hardin, Principal of Pipkin and 
Reed Junior High Schools of Springfield, Missouri, and member of the 
Executive Committee of the National Association of Seconndary-School 
Principals, who introduced for the address of welcome, Superintendent 
J. P. Nourse of the public schools of San Francisco. 

Following Superintendent Nourse, Charles H. Judd, Educational 
Consultant, National Youth Administration, Washington, D. C., spoke 
without manuscript to the topic New Materials of Instruction for the Jumor 


High School. 


NEW MATERIALS OF INSTRUCTION FOR THE 
JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL 
Cuares H. Jupp 
(Abstract of Address) 


Educational Consultant, National Youth Administration, Washington, D. C. 


The Junior High School arose because teachers in the public schools 
recognized the fact that the pupils in the upper grades of the elementary 
school differed in maturity and interests from pupils in the first six grades 
and were very much like pupils in the first two grades of the high school. 
In the early days of the American educational system, pupils attended 
schools for so short a period each year, the schools were so meagerly 
equipped, and teachers were so little trained that only the rudimentary 
three R’s were covered. As schools improved it became possible to com- 
plete instruction in the rudiments earlier than in the eight years that were 
devoted to the elementary schools and to recognize more fully the needs 
of the older pupils. 

The Junior High School was at first a very uncertain quantity. It was 
organized in some school systems for the purpose of better adjusting the 


5 

















6 Nationat Association oF SEconDARY-ScHOoL Principats [October 


hosing of pupils. It was regarded in some cities as an institution provid- 
ing terminal courses for pupils who were not going to complete the high 
school but were going into the trades. It served in other places various pur- 
poses. It consisted sometimes of grades seven, eight, and nine; sometimes 
of grades seven and eight only and in still other cases of other combina- 
tions. 

The fundamental fact has never been fully grasped that the Junior 
High School, like any institution of education, depends for its character 
on the materials of instruction which it employs. The type of instructional 
material appropriate for this particular division of the school system de- 
pends on the intellectual and social maturity of pupils. Pupils of the ages 
twelve to fifteen are on the threshold of adolescence. Their interests are 
in their future careers. Furthermore, the instruction of the first six years 
has given pupils a certain degree of power to read which makes it possible 
for them to carry on their studies with an independence which was im- 
possible earlier. Pupils of the ages appropriate to the Junior High School 
are eager to know something about the organization of the social world of 
which they are to be a part. The school fails to stimulate their interest in 
work if it does not teach them about such social institutions as govern- 
ment, industry, commerce, and communication. 

In order to meet the needs of young adolescents teachers must prepare 
a type of material which unfortunately has not up to this time been at all 
extensively used in the schools. Anthropology now has an abundance of 
new understandings about the way in which social life began and evolved. 
Pupils can be interested in the rise and growth of modern industry. History 
of the ordinary political and purely narrative type is not appropriate. What 
pupils want to know is the answers to questions such as these: Where did 
money come from and what is it? Why was slavery practiced and what 
were the forces that overthrew it? What are the inventions that changed 
the course of civilization, and what inventions are in prospect? Why has 
government taken on new and constantly expanding functions? 

Along with this anthropological material the school should offer infor- 
mation that will prepare young people to find through independent read- 
ing the openings into the adult world which are suited to their individual 
capacities. A program of guidance which aims to make pupils acquainted 
with their own abilities and their own limitations should constitute a large 
part of the work of the Junior High School. 

Not until there is a distinctive and fruitful body of instructional ma- 
terial prepared specifically to meet the needs of pupils from twelve to 
fifteen years of age will the Junior High School serve the purposes which 
have been vaguely recognized as demanding a new unit of the school 
system between the elementary school and the upper high school. 

Adjournment. 








vid- 
igh 
ur- 
nes 
na- 


ior 


nal 


JUNIOR COLLEGE SESSION 


The second day of the convention was devoted to the theme: THE 
JUNIOR COLLEGE BROADENS ITS CURRICULUM, and the pre- 
siding officer was Archibald J. Cloud, President of Junior College, San 
Francisco, who introduced Charles H. Judd, Educational Consultant, 
National Youth Administration, Washington, D. C., who spoke on the 
subject, New Materials of Instruction for the Junior College. 


NEW MATERIALS OF INSTRUCTION FOR THE 
JUNIOR COLLEGE 


Cuares H. Jupp 
(Abstract of Address) 


Educational Consultant, National Youth Administration, Washington, D. C. 


The World War taught the colleges of this country an important 
lesson. It suddenly became necessary to make people aware of the con- 
ditions that had led up to the entrance of the United States into the war. 
There was no single department of the colleges competent to give a course 
which would serve this purpose. There was organized a special course 
known as the War Issues course given by members of a number of differ- 
ent departments. The economist, the historian, the teachers of foreign 
languages, the teacher of ethics joined in a codperative effort to explain 
the war, its causes, and its problems. 

The experience of codperation between a number of specialists in 
organizing a course that explained the conditions of contemporary life 
was very enlightening and after the war many institutions of higher edu- 
cation undertook the preparation of courses on contemporary civilization, 
on man’s place in the physical and social world, on art and literature, and 
other subjects where the contributions of various fields of knowledge could 
be pooled. 

It has not been easy to break the long established tradition that scholar- 
ship and strict specialization are synonymous. Instructors who have par- 
ticipated in general courses of the type described in foregoing paragraphs 
have again and again fallen back into the practices with which they were 
familiar—of lecturing on their own various fields. 

The Junior College has an opportunity to serve the young people of 
this country in a unique way. In order to do so it must abandon once 
and for all the idea that its duty is to imitate the traditional Freshman 
and Sophomore programs of long-established colleges. 

It would be possible to cite case after case in which a state university 
on some dominating private college has compelled neighboring Junior 
Colleges to adopt the exact pattern of the courses long given in higher 
institutions. 


7 


















































































8 NaTIONAL AssocIATION OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 






War Issues course served in its day. 

Junior College teachers can influence the course of secondary educa- 
tion if they will prepare the materials for new general survey courses. 
There can be no doubt that the future will see a closer affiliation of the 
Junior College with the high school. The work of the first two years of 
college is distinctly secondary in character. It is safe to prophesy that the 
growth of Junior Colleges in connection with municipal public school sys- 
tems will continue. Young people are unable under present economic con- 
ditions to find places in the industrial and commercial world. They can 
spend their time in adding to their education more profitably than in any 
other way. It is not especially useful for these young people who are not 
intending to become professional specialists to take various courses which 
are designed for the purpose of leading into specific callings. There is obvi- 
ous need for general courses in the high school as well as in the new 


Junior College. 


Dr. Judd’s presentation was followed by a panel discussion led by 
Walter C. Eells, Coérdinator of the Codperative Study of Secondary-School 
Standards, and Executive Secretary of the American Association of Junior 
Colleges, Washington, D. C., who introduced the treatment of the subject, 
The Junior College Curriculum: 


The growth of the junior-college movement in the United States dur- 
ing the past two decades has been little short of phenomenal. Twenty-two 
years ago, in 1917, when F. M. McDowell wrote the first doctoral disser- 
tation on the junior college, there were only one hundred thirty junior 
colleges with an enrollment of four thousand students. By 1922 the en- 
rollment had increased to sixteen thousand; by 1929 to fifty-four thousand; 
by 1934 to one hundred four thousand; and by 1939, according to the last 
available junior college directory, there were no less than one hundred 
fifty-six thousand students enrolled in five hundred fifty-six junior col- 
leges located in forty-four states, the District of Columbia, and the Canal 
Zone. The average junior college enrollment has increased in ten years 
from one hundred sixty to two hundred eighty-five students. There are 
one hundred thirty junior colleges which have enrollments exceeding three 


On the other hand, it is possible to cite the example of unique courses 
of such institutions as the General College of the University of Minnesota, 
of the University of Florida, and the general survey courses of the Univer- 
sity of Chicago as illustrations of the way in which the needs of great 
bodies of students who do not want to specialize can be met. A majority 
of students who attend colleges are not looking forward to careers as spe- 
cialists in limited intellectual fields. They want the training which will 
prepare them for successful participation in the life of communities. They 
want something that serves in times of peace the same purpose that the 





1939] ProcEEDINGs OF SAN Francisco CONVENTION 


hundred students, and twenty-nine which exceed one thousand. The larg- 
est has an enrollment of more than six thousand. 

More important than increase in size, however, has been the develop- 
ment of the curriculum, the subject under special consideration in to-day’s 
program. Probably the most significant question concerned with the future 
development of the junior college is the curriculum and its adaptation to 
student and community needs. Originally the junior college was primarily 
concerned with preparation of students for upper division work in the 
university. This is still an important function and has many questions con- 
nected with it. How closely should junior-college courses follow the pat- 
tern of university courses? How much are universities modifying their 
entrance requirements for junior-college graduates to permit greater flexi- 
bility in junior-college offerings? What valid methods may be used for 
measuring the university success of the junior-college product? 

With a realization of the fact, however, that only a minority of jun- 
ior-college graduates, the country over, ever enter higher educational in- 
stitutions, the more important questions concern the development of cur- 
ricula especially adapted to the personal, civic, and vocational needs of the 
majority. What shall be the content of so-called curricula for social in- 
telligence? What semi-professional courses are appropriate to the junior- 
college field? What ones are needed in the local community? What should 
be their content? How should it be determined? What proportion of the 
work of a particular semi-professional student should consist of strictly vo- 
cational work, what proportion of work of a more general character? 
What studies have been made of the success of graduates of semi-profes- 
sional courses? What valid measures of such success may be used? 

Another group of questions concerns the curriculum in even broader 
aspects. What courses should be offered which are designed especially to 
meet the needs of adults in the community? Should they be prevailingly 
cultural or vocational in nature? Should they duplicate courses offered to 
regular students or not? How should such courses be financed? How 
should instructors be chosen for them? 

These are just a few of the questions concerning the curriculum of 
the Junior College which may properly engage our attention here to-day. 
I hope that many of them will be considered by the men who are to 
participate in this discussion representing, as they do, junior colleges of 
various sizes in several different states. 

The following members of the panel succeeded: 

Frank W. Thomas, President, Fresno State College, Fresno, California. 

Herbert O. Williams, American Consul, Retired. 

E. W. Montgomery, President, Phoenix Junior College, Phoenix 

Arizona. 
William H. Conley, Dean, Wright Junior College, Chicago, Illinois. 























10 Nationa Association oF Seconpary-ScHooL Principats [October 





Eugene B. Chaffee, President, Boise Junior College, Boise, Idaho. 
Harland W. Mead, Dean, Washington Junior College, Washington, 

Iowa. 

Lloyd D. Luckmann, San Francisco Junior College, San Francisco, 

California. 

Charles H. Judd, Educational Consultant, National Youth Adminis- 

tration, Washington, D. C. 

Frank W. Tuomas: It is gratifying to find myself in almost com- 
plete agreement with Dr. Judd regarding the general principles which he 
set forth so clearly and well. If there is one feature in which I am a bit 
disappointed, it is in the fact that he did not carry far enough the logic 
of his approach. 

The forces which have operated to generalize the offerings of the 
lower division in both the junior college and in higher institutions are 
still operative. To an even greater extent the influences making for di- 
versification in those offerings are vigorously active and seem certain to 
produce even more impressive changes than have already occurred. It 
seems to me pertinent to emphasize the logical implications of these two 
jines of influence giving special attention to the latter because of its dy- 
namic pressures in modifying the junior-college curriculum. 

The need of developing a means of securing greater social integra- 
tion for students in collegiate institutions is obvious. Colleges and uni- 
versities are themselves taking the lead in this attempt. to broaden the 
basic foundations of studies for lower division students. It should be 
noted, however, that in the vigorous expansion characteristic of the junior 
colleges, these attempts at generalization have assumed greater variety 
and originality than has been the case in the more traditional disciplines 
of the university. It seems to me that there is a genuine opportunity for 
desirable revision on a codperative basis. In this meeting, at least, it is 
agreed that the junior colleges owe first allegiance to the needs of that 
majority of students who will not go beyond those offerings. Is it not 
possible that the general socializing program of offerings best adapted to 
providing this service may at the same time be more valuable for the 
prospective specialist in higher institutions than the rather rigid pattern 
of preliminary requirements which universities have so revered in the 
past? Perhaps the universities and the junior colleges may ultimately find 
a common answer to this problem. 

With the progressive postponement of the employment age, there 
has naturally come a demand for increased’ preparation of those to be 
employed. Perhaps the increasing complexity of the relationships in busi- 
ness and industry are even more influential in demanding added prepara- 
tion. The result has been the upward thrust of vocational training into 
the junior-college years. Not only has diversification of offerings multi- 





















11 





1939] ProcEEDINGS OF SAN Francisco CoNVENTION 








plied to meet this demand but the end is beyond prediction. Certainly 
the addition of innovations and diversified offerings in the junior college 
will continue to multiply for some time. 

In the enthusiasm of junior-college leaders to adapt the curriculum 
to these varied needs, there is real danger that the mistake of the high 
schools may be repeated. Diversification of offerings in our secondary 
schools has too generally been at the expense of standards and require- 
ments which challenge the respect of the students themselves. There is 
general complaint that our high schools have “gone soft.” Real service 
in the junior colleges will depend upon setting standards possible of at- 
tainment in any particular field by those fitted to undertake its offerings 
but challenging not the least the vigorous method of industry the efforts 
of the students to do the most thorough and efficient work of which 
they are capable. 

Hersert O. Witiams: It is almost twenty years since I resigned the 
presidency of the Sacramento Junior College to enter the American con- 
sular service, therefore, my remarks must take the form of an answer to 
this query: After my experience outside educational circles, what would 
I add to the junior-college curriculum, or what would I insist upon and 
emphasize, if I were so fortunate as to re-enter my former profession? 

My answer is that I would insist upon students being taught to 
think independently rather than accept another’s conclusions, as is done 
in the schools of the so-called totalitarian states. Daily, through the press, 
and pre-eminently through radio broadcasts, we are confronted with un- 
substantiated statements and theories presented as domestic, social, reli- 
gious, political, and economic panaceas. Ability to think clearly should 
be the Aall-mark of an educated man or woman. 

To that end, I urge the value of a course in deductive and inductive 
logic to instill the principles of accurate thinking, since it is idle to ex- 
pect any subject (science, language, mathematics) to train the logical 
faculties except as those faculties may be applied to the special subject 
under consideration. 

E. W. Montcomery: It is a bit difficult to add anything of interest to 
a discussion which has been unusually harmonious for a panel discussion, 
and with which I am in complete agreement. However, in compliance with 
the request of the leader of the discussion and without hoping to add 
anything new to the conference, I shall briefly describe some of the cur- 
ricula which we offer at the Phoenix Junior College. 

We believe that a junior college should meet the needs of three main 
types of students, namely: 

1. Those students who are definitely planning for the professions— 
for these we have such curricula as pre-engineering, pre-medical, pre- 


legal and the like. 









































































12 Nationat Association oF SEconpARY-ScHoot Principats _ | October 
2. Students who may or may not plan to do upper division univer- 
sity work—for these we have the usual liberal arts curriculum with some 
general survey courses available. 

3. Students who are not planning to do upper division college work 
and are anxious to prepare themselves for a vocation as soon as possible— 
for these we have various terminal curricula—such as commercial courses, 
practical agriculture, radio design, training for radio operators, shop arts, 
homemaking courses, architectural drafting and others. 


Wixuiam H. Coney: The topic of the panel this afternoon might 
be discussed from two points of view: first, one might make an inventory 
of new courses and curricula, or secondly, one might attempt to discover 
the reason for the broadening of the offerings of the junior college. 

In the discussion so far this afternoon there has been a consideration 
of many new offerings and the reasons for adding them. One of the pri- 
mary reasons seems to be to take care of the differences of students. The 
thought has occurred to me that perhaps it would be wise to ask ourselves 
if we aren’t emphasizing too much the differences of students and for- 
getting about their similarities. Again, a brief analysis of the new courses 
that have been added in some cases would seem to indicate that there is 
a very definite need for a clear-cut statement of the criteria which should 
be used in determining whether or not a course should be offered. 


The Chicago Junior Colleges have been seriously concerned with 
these problems since their re-organization five years ago. Perhaps a brief 
description of their curriculum and of the criteria used in the addition of 
new courses would be of interest. In Chicago an effort has been made 
to realize that there are certain uniformities in students and in their needs. 
Whether a student is to become a professional man or a day laborer there 
are certain basic developments that he should have in virtue of the fact 
that he is a human being, living in society with a cultural heritage, living 
in a scientific environment, and living in a democratic state. To provide 
this, a core curriculum, making up approximately half of the student’s 
program, is required of every one. This core curriculum includes a one 
year course in each of the following fields: English, social science, biologi- 
cal science, physical science, and humanities. These courses have been jus- 
tified by the feeling that regardless of what the high-school graduate 
plans to do he will be better equipped by another year’s work in master- 
ing the powers of expression, that regardless of plans for a career every 
student is to be a citizen of a complex social organization and needs an 
understanding of it and training in the isolation of its problems and tech- 
niques of attempting to solve them. Since everyone living to-day must 
come in contact in everyday life with the developments of science he 
should know something about it and should have an understanding of the 
scientific method of thinking—hence two courses in science, one dealing 









1939] ProceEpincs oF SAN Francisco CoNvENTION 13 


with the physical world and one dealing with the living world. Finally, 
in order to live a more complete life with an appreciation of the culture 
of the race, the course in humanities is required. These courses deal with 
the problems that are uniform for all students and aim at a development 
that should be possessed by all. 

Chicago’s schools recognize that there are also differences and pro- 
vides for these differences by permitting the students to elect the balance 
of their programs according to their interests and capacities. Those who 
wish to go on to the senior college may elect sequences of courses to ful- 
fill the requirements of the college selected. Others who plan to enter 
professional schools may enroll in courses required for admission to those 
institutions. There has been little broadening in these offerings in any 
junior college so there is no need to dwell upon them. 


The field in which there has been the most rapid expansion, which 
is evident from junior college catalogues and from the remarks made 
here to-day, is in the semi-professional offerings. That large group of stu- 
dents in all public junior colleges who must complete their formal edu- 
cation with the junior college need and demand some training that will 
aid them in becoming productive members of society. The demands of 
these students are sometimes fantastic yet apparently some schools have 
yielded to the demands and have taught most anything that has been 
requested. I have not yet seen course descriptions for lawn mowing and 
dishwashing offered by some junior colleges but some of the courses al- 
ready offered would come within the same category. It seems to me that 
there is a real need for caution in this matter of expanding the curriculum 
and for the development of very definite criteria for the offering of new 
courses in the semi-professional field as well as in any other. In Chicago 
where there is certainly as great a demand and need for such courses as 
any place in the nation, we have attempted to introduce semi-professional 
courses only if they fulfill certain requirements. In the first place there 
must be an opportunity for the placement of students completing the 
training in the field. A continuous community analysis is made to de- 
termine the occupations in which there is an opportunity for students 
of junior-college age and training. Those fields which show such oppor- 
tunity are carefully studied and personnel officials are invited to confer- 
ences to discuss the feasibility of offering such work in the junior colleges. 
If it is agreed that junior-college training is desirable and there is a possi- 
bility of opening in the industry plans are made to set up a program of 
courses which will be taken in conjunction with the basic curriculum. 
Joint committees from industry and the faculty organize the courses and 
a continuous relationship is maintained with the personnel officers so that 
the courses may meet the needs of industry and so that industry will be 
interested in the students enrolled. Thus there are definite criteria for 














14 Nationat Association oF SECONDARY-ScHOOL Principats — [October 


the establishment of new courses. At the same time an effort is made 
to safeguard against over-differentiation by the requirement of the core 
curriculum. 

The Chicago junior colleges, therefore, attempt to meet their objec- 
tives: offering a general education to all students, giving preparatory train- 
ing to those desiring it, and offering semi-professional or terminal work 
to students wishing to complete their formal education at the end of jun- 
ior college, through the requirement of a core curriculum, and through the 
traditional college courses or the semi-professional sequences which may 
be elected. Thus they feel they are making an effort to expand with com- 
munity needs without sacrificing the essential development of all students 
in the basic fields of knowledge. 

Evcene B. Cuarree: Boise Junior College was started by the Epis- 
copal Church in 1932, two years later being taken over and sponsored by 
the local chamber of commerce, and lastly, the junior college legislation of 
this spring which allowed us to organize a district junior college here on 
March 24, 1935. From 1932 to 1939, our work at the junior college had 
been almost entirely academic in nature, but we are now entering the 
semi-professional field. After my visit to numerous California junior col- 
leges to study the semi-professional field, we are developing terminal cur- 
ricula in business and forestry. The need for such semi-professional work 
in this locality is apparent and at the present time we are trying to assess 
the needs of our area that we might fit the young people from this region 
for their life-long experiences. 

Harvanp W. Mean: Up until quite recently the public junior colleges 
of Iowa were in reality liberal arts colleges. Two important changes have 
taken place in the past ten years, or in most cases the past five years. 
When studies of the Iowa Junior Colleges began to show the per cent 
of students who transferred to institutions of higher learning was lower 
than had been expected, the need for terminal training was met in at 
least two fields. One being in the field of teacher training and the other 
was commercial education. Malcolm Love in his study of the Iowa public 
junior college states, “Two of the Iowa public junior colleges offer teacher 
training courses which prepare for the Iowa standard elementary certifi- 
cate, while fourteen additional colleges offer ten semester hours of edu- 
cation and psychology which leads to the first grade county certificate.” 
This study was made and published in 1938 and since that time many 
of the other eleven colleges have added the later type of teacher training. 
In commercial education courses in accounting, economics and secretarial 
science have been introduced. Both of these types of training have been 
added in the Washington Junior College within the past three years. 

Lioyp D. Luckmann: Mr. Chairman, the treatment of our theme for 
to-day has becn confined strictly to the administrative aspect of the prob- 





1939) Proceepincs oF SAN Francisco CoNvENTION 15 


lem of “New Materials of Instruction for the Junior College.” It appears 
to me that the fate of this whole problem of the junior-college curriculum 
lies with the various schools of education. No western college, and I dare 
say no American college, has found a place in its curriculum for studies 
in the philosophy of junior college education. Is it not true that much of 
the work accomplished in the field under discussion to-day will be frus- 
trated because junior-college instructors have not been properly prepared 
to teach on the secondary level and are for the most part university 
specialists ? 


Cuartes H. Jupp: The remarks of Mr. Luckmann are certainly to be 
taken very seriously. I think what he said could be extended to cover all 
divisions of the educational system. It is true that the preparation of teach- 
ers has been inadequate in the elementary school and secondary schools 
as well as in the junior colleges. I have always felt disposed to defend 
the American educational system when the legitimate accusation is made 
that its teachers are inadequately prepared. The fact is that the enrollment 
of the secondary schools and colleges has increased at such a rapid rate 
during the past thirty or forty years that it has been impossible to keep 
up with the demand for high-grade teachers. It is true that any person 
of fair ability and endurance enough to stand through the school day 
could be placed in a teaching position. It is this rapid expansion that has 
made it impossible for teacher-preparing institutions to do what is ex- 
pected of them. It was essential that something be done at once to solve 
the comparatively simple problems of the lower schools. For this reason 
teachers colleges and departments of education have spent such energy 
as they had in developing first the methods of education and the theory 
of education appropriate to the early stages of education. 


The time has come, I believe, when Mr. Luckmann’s suggestions 
should be followed. If we are to follow these suggestions, however, we 
must arrive at some agreement on the question: What is a junior college 
and what are its functions? I am sure that at the present moment there 
is no general agreement. I think we have to build up something like a 
general understanding of the peculiar functions of the junior college. Citi- 
zens who support schools and university presidents who are influential in 
determining policies must be reached. I think that a group such as this 
made up of those who are vitally interested in developing the junior- 
college program ought to undertake with vigor two tasks. The first is 
the preparation of excellent instructional materials and the second is con- 
verting the country to an understanding of the junior college. I do not 
believe that teacher-preparing institutions can do much until the people 
of the country are ready for the new junior college. 


Adjournment. 




















SENIOR HIGH-SCHOOL SECTION 
Wednesday, July 5, 1939 


The sessions of the third day were in two sections. 

The Senior High-School Section was held at 2:00 p. mM. in Auditorium 
A of Hotel Empire with Arnold A. Bowhay, Jr., Principal of High School, 
Beverly Hills, California, presiding, who introduced Aubrey Williams, 
Chief, National Youth Administration, Washington, D. C. 


YOUTH PROBLEMS AND CITIZENSHIP 
AuBrEY WILLIAMS 
Chief, National Youth Administration, Washington, D, C. 


(Abstract of Address) 


I want first of all to express my great appreciation of the codperation 
which the secondary-school administrators of the country and the college 
administrators have given to the National Youth Administration. In the 
administration of the student aid program we have relied entirely on the 
local educational authorities and we have had a vanishingly small num- 
ber of cases with respect to which any criticism could be made. In general 
the student aid program has been conducted as it should have been. 

This does not mean, of course, that with increasing experience we 
can not and should not improve our administration of governmental aid 
to young people. It is possible, I believe, to exercise new inventive inge- 
nuity in devising work for the young people to do. Some exchange of 
accounts of what is being done on the most successful projects will be 
helpful. We are always eager at the Washington office to have reports 
giving detailed accounts of what is done in the field. There ought also 
to be great care exercised in seeing to it that not a cent of the Federal 
money is misplaced. One case in which a student receives aid when he 
does not need it in order to continue his education does more harm to 
the cause than we can correct by hundreds of properly conducted cases. 

I shall spend a greater part of my time during the coming year in 
becoming more intimately acquainted with you and others like you who 
have been associated with our work. 

I want to call your attention also to the second part of the program 
of the National Youth Administration. In addition to giving work to stu- 
dents who are able to stay in school or college we give what we call work 
experience to two hundred fifty thousand young people who are unem- 
ployed but not in schools of any type. These young people are employed 
part time on socially useful projects. They are of a type, we feel sure, that 
would profit very greatly by some contact with educational opportunities 
of the kind that schools and colleges are equipped to give. It is my belief 
that some of the regular courses now given in educational institutions need 


16 





1939] PROocEEDINGs OF SAN FRANcIsco CoNVENTION 17 


to be modified in content and in methods of teaching if they are to be 
of greatest advantage to our work-project young people. I am not sure that 
the schools would not gain much if they would use the opportunity af- 
forded by the National Youth Administration to devise new instructional 
materials and methods for all young people. There certainly is an oppor- 
tunity for much to be done coéperatively by the schools and the National 
Youth Administration in meeting the urgent problems of a host of young 
people who are now inadequately prepared to take their places in adult 
society. ’ 

We of the National Youth Administration are very desirous of pro- 
moting in any way we can better adjustment of the training of young 
people. We have abundant evidence from our centers to show that the 
cultivation of good work habits and cultivation of fuller knowledge of 
the requirements of the working world are of the highest importance to 
youth. We believe that such experiences as we can provide are important 
and that they supplement in a significant way the opportunities that schools 
can offer. What is needed is, I am confident, a closer and more effective 
codperation between these agencies all of which are engaged in serving 
young people. : 

CuatrrMaN Bownay: We know that rarely do youngsters get into 
work for which they are trained. I would like to give you one illustration. 
We had a boy who wanted to be a Ford tractor repair expert, and after 
we gave him all the work in our shops, got him a part-time job with the 
Ford people. One day he came back to school, thrilled. He said, “Mr. 
Bowhay, I have a job.” 

I said, “What?” (thinking the Ford people had given him a job.) 

He said, “I am going to work in a bank.” (Laughter) 

That is one of the things we have to look out for—the changeableness 
of youth, and the fact that so many times the things that they do are the 
things that happen to be at the door when they want to get out and earn 
money, and take their place in the community. 

The suggestion was, and the National Association of Secondary- 
School Principals is doing something along this line, that we should make 
available to industry, the schools, young people, all kind of information 
about the occupations and occupational opportunities that are available. 
They are trying to develop the vocational outlook service. I know, how- 
ever, what we get will depend upon the coéperation of business and labor 
unions, government agencies, and schools. I want to go back to Mr. 
Williams’ very important suggestions, the importance of young people 
knowing what they really want to do, and for what they are fitted. 

I believe there are a number of people in this room, who can tell us 
what is going on in some of our communities, sponsored by the schools 
or the community to solve some of these problems. I am going to sit 




















18 Nartionat Association oF SEcoNDARY-ScHOOL Principats _ [ October 


down and trust to luck that the Quaker system of waiting until the spirit 
moves you, works rather quickly, because I don’t really want to call on 
people to make set speeches. 

There will be a bonus of some kind to the first person who gets up 
and starts the ball rolling. 

Guy M. Hoyt (Director of Attendance and Employment, Los Angeles 
City Schools): I would like to ask Mr. Williams if he has figures more 
or less approximate as to the size of this problem, how many young people 
in the United States need more help than they are getting along these 
lines? How many are you caring for through your NYA program, 
and if you aren’t caring for all of them, who is going to? 

Mr. Wittiams: Well, I think we are all familiar with the fact that 
the 1930 census shows around 21,700,000 in the age group above sixteen 
and under twenty-four, that we are particularly concerned with, and that 
there are some four to six million of that group that you see that aren’t 
accounted for, either in school or in industry or being married and at 
home as housewives, so that you have a tremendous number there—four 
to six millions. 

Of course this thing is not going to solve their problem altogether, it 
will help, but some of us have very significant material that is coming out 
of these studies that have been recently made as to what, if anything, in 


the way of help has been given to them through the school work that 


they have done. 

I suggest, if you haven’t a copy yet of the preliminary report on WPA 
study of Forty Thousand Urban Youth, that you write and get it. The 
WPA study on Urban Youth—that is a study of forty thousand youths 
who left sixth grade in 1929, ’31, and 33 and what happened to them 
after they left school, and what do they think the school could have done 
that it didn’t do to have helped them in their effort to get employment. 

You can get that by writing to WPA in Washington, 1734 New York 


Avenue. 
Then there is the Regents Study of some fifty-odd thousand, the New 


York Regents Study.* 

Those studies bring out some very significant things, they bring out 
the fact that most young people, while in school, had no idea that there 
would be any difficulty at all in landing a job; or in speedily advancing 
themselves. It is almost pathetic to read what they answer to such ques- 
tions, and even up to as late as ’33, eighty per cent of the youngsters who 


*Publications of The Regents’ Inquiry into the Character and Cost of Public Education in the 
State of New York, published by the McGraw-Hill Book Company: Education for American Life, A 
New Program for the State of New York, $2.00; Eckert, Ruth and Marshall, Thomas O., When Youth 
Leave School, $3.00; Grace, Alonzo G. and Moe, G. A., State Aid and School Costs, $3.50; Judd, 
Charles H., Preparation of School Personnel, $1.50; Laine, Elizabeth, Motion Pictures and Radio, $1.75; 
Maller, Julius B., School and Community, $3.50; Norton, Thomas L., Education for Work, $2.75; 
Reeves, F. W.; Fansler, T.; and Houle, C. O., Adult Education, $2.00; Spaulding, Francis T., High 
School and Life, $3.00; Wilson, Howard E., Education for Citizenship, $2.75; Winslow, C.—E. A., The 


School Health Program, $1.50. 








yirit 
on 








1939] 





left the eighth grade and then floundered around for four years, said at 
the end of the four years that they had no idea while in school that there 
would be any difficulty in getting employment. 

Many of them point out that they would have been better off if they 
had taken a general education course; they think that is one reason they 
didn’t get along; others felt that they would have been benefited if they had 

had some vocational work, but only about twenty-seven per cent of the 
total interestingly enough, very few of them, ever thought of going back 
to the school for any help in their trouble. 

I don’t think that is particularly to be held against the school, except 
that I think when I tried to get a job after I left college, I did write back 
to my president and asked him if he knew of any openings anywhere, and 
felt that that was the proper and desirable place to go, and I am sure many 
of you had the same attitude only that does not seem to be true in the 
high school as it is in the colleges. 

Most of them secured jobs through their friends; twenty-nine out 
of one hundred that got jobs got jobs through friends, and they list as 
the most valuable thing they got out of high school was to make acquaint- 
ances of people who were in a position to help them get employment. 
The next most helpful way of getting a job was through some employer 
that they worked for while in high school—quite interesting—I don’t say 
this in criticism at all, but only about ten per cent got employment through 
any kind of placement agency, sixty-five per cent got jobs through friends, 
former employers, or parents—and parents were the lowest one of the 
three. Newspaper advertisements and government employment agencies 
accounted for four per cent of those who got jobs. There is some ex- 
tremely significant material there and I think, Mr. Hoyt, it points up the 
job as well as being just about inclusive of the whole group. 

Of course understanding that the resourcefulness on the part of the 
young people is after all the basic content of our hope, and it is more than 
all the things that we are going to put in the pot together, we are all 
agreed to that, but you cannot say that this thing limits itself to just those 
out of work, because there are five hundred thousand coming on now who 
will be out next year and there will be no work for them, and you have 
got a million and a half to two million coming on every year, and that 
is really our group. We have opened ninety-six stations in thirty-seven 
states, where we have established Junior Employment Agencies and through 

those some two hundred seventy thousand youngsters have been placed. 
We are trying to get states to take those places over as fast as we can, as 
a matter of fact they are taking them over. I only agreed to put money 
into this for the simple reason that there wasn’t anybody else in Washing- 
ton that had any money they could put in. I think it is an integral part 
of the employment office’s work joined in with the school’s. I have the 


ProcEEDINGs OF SAN Francisco CONVENTION 19 





























































| October 





20 NationaL AssoctATION OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 


feeling that it has been a pretty economical expenditure of money for the 
government. It has cost us an average of about fifteen dollars-a placement 
and I have contended to the president that that was a mighty good fifteen 
dollars and well spent, as far as government expenditure was concerned. 
I don’t know whether the business world would always agree with me or 
not on the expenditures of the good taxpayers’ money but I think that is 
a pretty good expenditure. 

CuatrMan Bownay: Mr. Hoyt, would you let us know of some of the 
work that is being done in the employment line in Los Angeles? 

Mr. Hoyr (Director of Attendance and Employment, Los Angeles 
City Schools): Through some help the NYA provided and through a setup 
of a junior employment agency which we had there for some fifteen to 
seventeen years we have been able to bridge the gap for a considerable 
number of these young people who are leaving high school and flounder- 
ing around trying to get themselves located in a job. 

We have found this: that it seems to be very desirable, in fact neces- 
sary to hitch this school placement work up definitely with the state em- 
ployment service. If we didn’t do that we would be duplicating each 
others’ effort and the taxpayer and employer is fed up on people coming 
around to his plant and importuning him for jobs for youngsters from vari- 
ous and sundry publicly supported agencies. It seems that if any of you 
are fixing to go into the employment business in your state or in your own 
cities that you would probably want to get in touch first of all with your 
state employment service and see what affiliations might be developed there. 
I think that the points that have come out here, regarding the whole pro- 
gram of the National Youth Administration ought to be sort of empha- 
sized on this bridging the gap between the formal academic or vocational 
school and the entrance into industry and then the follow-up in industry 
to see if these young people are adjusting and if not why not, because 
there again we may learn a lot from the experience of these young people; 
as to our methods and our content in the schools I don’t suppose we have 
done enough of that yet. 

Herman A. Spinpt (Manager, Bureau of Guidance and Placement, 
University of California): I have some doubts about government—at least 
the Federal government, being able to set up any program that is going 
to take care of the situation. The problem is not merely that of place- 
ment. After all, placement doesn’t create new jobs, it merely places 
people in jobs that already exist, and the problem as a long term thing, 
at least we must create new jobs, additional jobs, over those that now 
exist. 

I was rather interested in talking with a business man not so very 
long ago about that problem and I asked him this question: Would it be 
possible to set up—would there be interest enough in the businessmen of 






for 
em 
fin 
but 








the 


ent 












21 





ProcEEDINGS oF SAN Francisco CoNVENTION 





1939) 





this particular community to set up a committee which with the state 
employment division, with the placement officers or the educational direc- 
tors of the schools, would sit together to attempt to stimulate the number 
of jobs that there might be in a particular community? 

He assured me that in his opinion that could be done, and he said 
that he himself would make a distinct, deliberate effort to accomplish 
just that thing. ; 

I am not sure how the businessmen feel about this, but I am quite 
sure in my own mind that many times the man frequently has to choose 
between the question whether he shall put on another man or not. I 
wonder if a community committee of some kind that would bring out the 
desirability of additional jobs might be able to create in each of the com- 
munities of California and of other states, a job or two in each community 
that might go a long way toward solving the problem of additional jobs. 

I read an article a good many years ago, which was headed something 
like this: that the prayer of the worker was, “Give us this day our daily 
job” and that is the prayer of so many of these young people who say: 
give us this day our daily job, and so it isn’t just a matter of placement. 

Neither is it primarily a matter of guidance. I know a lot of people 
say: if you can just guide these young people correctly we could answer 
all the questions. But like the boy who became a banker after training 
to be an automobile repair man, so we may be advising many in direc- 
tions where they cannot possibly go, and if we simply advise from the 
viewpoint of their interest then we must face the fact that twenty-five 
to thirty per cent at least, even of high-school seniors want to go into the 
professions and that only from five to seven per cent can go there. We 
have to recognize that forty-five to fifty per cent of these boys must work 

at ordinary labor the rest of their lives. We cannot get jobs in the line 
of their interests; we probably can in the line of their capabilities but mere 
guidance, mere placement does not take care of the situation, unless there 
is a recognition of the man who has the job that he ought to create, help 
out in creating, the additional one. 

I would like to know what the Oakland Circulation Manager does 
when he is considering a question of that kind, and whether he might be 
able through a committee to persuade his boss to grant him the additional 
help. 

P. M. Knox (Circulation Manager, Oakland Tribune, Oakland, Cali- 
fornia): The newspapers in the State of California in one way or another 
employ approximately sixty thousand boys; in the nation, as far as we can 
find out it is a little better than two million. Those are of varying ages, 
but at least a third of them are over sixteen—perhaps more. 

I don’t know that I can say to Mr. Spindt that if we sat down with 
a group of other people we could take on a lot more men, or a lot more 

















































22 Nationat Association oF Seconpary-ScHoot Principats — | October 


youth, We would have to have something for them to do if we did that. 
That seems to be the economic system that we have, and we will have to 
be guided by it. 

When we come to this subject of the youth problems, I am simply 
appalled by the scope of it. I am appalled when I think of the responsi- 
bilities that you school people have to those young people, and I am 
equally appalled when I think of the responsibilities that we who employ 
a lot of them have. 

It is along that line, in other words, the realization of our responsi- 
bilities that have brought the newspapers of this state and also of the 
nation to some sort of a program to see what we can do about it, to do 
better by those that we have and to take more of them on. 

I don’t mean to particularly make a speech on this subject, but I think 
we newspapers as a group are perhaps the largest employers of youth in 
the country, and therefore what we do may have some bearing on this 
problem. 

But a large appropriation has been set aside in the East, and a survey 
of some six hundred thousand young men will be made during the next 
year to determine what effect newspaper work has on their educational 
advantages, their vocational training, the moral effect, and the general 
health aspect. From that survey we hope to do a more constructive job 
and to take on more of the youth group as we go along. 

The same thing applies in the State of California, to a lesser degree. 
I might tell you that in working with them, though, we have run into 
some problems which perhaps you can help us solve, at least they should 
be interesting to you people who are turning these young fellows out we 
have to use later, and that is the lack of acceptance of responsibility. 
That is one thing. And we find that we get no help from the parents. 
When I say that I mean in the aggregate. Perhaps you educators also 
know when they send Willie down to you in the morning it is with a good 
deal of the feeling: well, that is disposed of until half-past three. 

We catch them until half-past three, and they until dinner time. We 
have frequent contact with the parents of each boy in our employ, or each 
boy that in any way is engaged in the distribution and sale of our product 
on our particular newspaper and I am astounded at the lack of interest 
that parents have in what he does. I am even more astounded at how little 
they know what he is doing. They don’t understand it, and the only 
thing that happens is that if the boy gets in a little trouble or doesn’t do 
the job as well as we think he should and we have to take it up with him, 
the parent feels that we are abusing little Willie. 

I think if educators could include in their program some place some- 
thing to make the parents understand their problem. (Laughter)—I see 


you share my difficulties. my, 





1939] ProcEEDINGS OF SAN Francisco CoNvVENTION 23 


Well I am glad we recognize that the difficulty is not my own. I am 
very much concerned about something else and that is the regimentation— 
I don’t profess to be a rugged individualist, and get into a controversy, 
if I could on that subject—but I will say this: that we find that when we 
attempt to work with boys, I wonder if school people have the same prob- 
lem, I am sure the NYA will eventually if they haven’t had it yet, but 
when you regiment these boys you won’t get very far. I think the Boy 
Scouts have the best solution of the way to handle young people that I 
have yet seen, in that they interest each boy in some phase of the work, they 
have a varied program, they interest him in it; if he does well they pat 
him on the back; they recognize the thing which he is doing thereby in- 
spiring further interest and greater progress. 

We have adapted that to newspaper practice with great success. It 
is paying off in our box office, and I am wondering if the schools cannot 
individualize their efforts in some way. 

I talk a lot to school principals in our work with boys, they usually tell 
me if the taxpayers could give them a little more money and they could 
have more courses and more instructors that could be possible, but I think 
in the projects Mr. Williams may foster, if they can get individual interest 
on the part of that boy, so they develop in those kids something they want 
to do so badly they will make a success of it later. While they won’t solve 
the problem en masse, they will inspire some individuals to set a better pace. 

I got a little off the track, but this boy thing is a thing I feel very 
deeply—I am glad to report to you that newspapers as a whole, as great 
employers of boys are recognizing the responsibility, and even feeling it 
more keenly along the line of Mr. Spindt’s suggestion—if any group or 
individual wants to approach the organized newspapers in the State of 
California either through the publishers’ association or the circulation 
managers’ association, we will sit down and work with them any time to 
help put more boys to work and to do the job-constructively. (Applause) 

ANNE DE G. TreapweELt (Director, National Youth Association, Cali- 
fornia): I should like to enter this discussion at the point where it began 
with Mr. Williams’ response to the question of support, based on our 
own very limited experience in California with the organized placement 
services, of the public placement services of the community, I think we 
can definitely conclude that the problem of adequate service in this field 
of the youth group is not necessarily so much a matter of support as it is 
a matter of alignment of existing facilities for the benefit of this group. 

I think before the development of the National Youth Administration 
program the existence of junior divisions in the placement service was the 
exception rather than the rule. 

The Youth Administration at the beginning of its program and 
largely for demonstration purposes as Mr. Williams has pointed out, 








24 Nationa AssociaTION oF SeconDARY-ScHoot Principats [October 


helped to institute counseling services for the individual guidance of young 
people with problems in the selection of vocations and in certain personal 
aspects of their lives. And I think the establishment of those counselling 
services has pointed very definitely to the necessity for setting apart junior 
divisions in the employment service which shall be equipped by reason of 
the personnel employed in them to have responsibilities solely for this 
group of inexperienced young workers. They are certainly better equipped 
to make available to industry those young people who are—although they 
may be inexperienced, although they may be only partly trained—capable 
of performing certain of the jobs which a community has to offer, and 
those same young people certainly are very much discriminated against 
in a system in which they are grouped together with persons who can be 
accurately classified occupationally, and where they must compete with 
the skilled experienced workers of the community. So much is this the 
case that in California the state employment service has officially taken 
the step of recognizing the necessity for setting up specialized junior divi- 
sions in each of its offices and is moving along in that direction as rapidly 
as possible. 


I think the other extremely important result of this experience is to 
point out again for the first time in many communities the necessity for 
a coordination of school services to young people in the field of preparation 
for employment and of employment services where it alone is performing 
the placement function, and I think we are perhaps convinced that either 
we must operate these services on the basis of affiliation, as has been done 
in Los Angeles, affiliation between the school department and the place- 
ment service, or the two agencies must be so codrdinated in their work that 
the placement service shall have available through the school records and 
the advantage of advice and counsel from persons who have handled young 
people during their school years, and may in turn be in a position to inter- 
pret to the school the occupational requirements and standards imposed by 
the industries in the community. (Applause) 


Mr. Wittiams: Mr. Chairman, I am sorry, I have just got to go. I 
wanted to say this one thing before I go: that I hope you all will take this 
business of joining forces with the NYA this coming year, in making an 
experiment in your schools whereby we do the thing I talked about. 
What I would like us to do everywhere is to have you say to us—I have 
got a group of boys in the school here that I would like to put into your 
work project structure, and I will tie their work in the school in such a 
way into the work that they will do in the field as to make possible this 
thing that you are talking about. 


I wish to ask you to join with us everywhere to do that, and I suggest 
you get in touch with your state directors of the NYA, sit down and say: 





1939] ProceEepIncs oF SAN FrRANcIsco CONVENTION 25 


this is what Williams said, and I want to try to do it, and he tells me that 
you will want to do it, and see what you can do locally along that line. 

I think that something like that is terribly important for the two 
reasons: first of actually giving this boy work, and second doing it under 


an auspices that puts a little money in his pockets. 

I thank you all. I am delighted to have been here with you. 
(Applause) 

CuarrmMan Bownay: Our style may be cramped by not having Dr. 
Williams here but we are not going to close just yet. 

I am going to ask what industry can do to help out in this situation. 

We have had a suggestion from Mr. Williams as to a fine type of 
vocational guidance, how to guide youngsters in the proper vocation— 
however we find out—(I don’t want this to go too far, this discussion, 
because as Mr. Williams said, I am absolutely in harmony with labor in 
its great big fundamental fine ideas), we find youngsters who can get jobs 
if they can get union cards; if they can’t get union cards they can’t get 
jobs. That means that we are right up against some problem that we 
are going to have to solve with the help of the labor unions probably it 
cannot be solved by the school people alone, it cannot be solved by busi- 
ness alone. It will have to be solved by some codperative scheme. 

I know that Mr. Rich has some ideas on training by the apprentice 
system. I know that vocational training in high school cannot go as far as 
some people would like, that is you cannot make experts in high school. 
I know that in the large number of industries you top off a rather good 
general education with a six-months intensive vocational training and you 
will have all the vocational training that might be necessary, but I would 
like to know what the answer is for the schools, if we can give all the 
vocational training needed in the most skilled trades you are sure that 
the youngsters aren’t going to do what they prepare for when they are in 
high school—what is the answer? Does the apprenticeship system have 
anything to do along that line? 

Nevitte J. Rich (Vice-President and General Manager of Precision 
Electrotype Company, San Francisco, California): I don’t think we can 
go into the apprenticeship question at all; it is too complex; you are talking 
about your union regulations in many crafts. Even if you had an open 
apprenticeship problem you would still have to have the jobs. Your main 
problem with your youth, obviously is to create the jobs for them; if the 
jobs aren’t there they don’t go to work, but I would like to develop it 
along a different angle, in connection with what Mr. Spindt was saying, 
of making extra jobs, I really think something definite can be done in the 
school systems, and the vocational guidance system along that line. 

At the present time I don’t have a great deal of contact with employ- 
ing of youth, but in the last decade, before the present one, 1920 to 1930, 








26 NationaL AssociATION OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats — [October 


I hired thousands of men and boys, interviewed thousands of men and 
boys, and the most extraordinary thing in that experience, I am talking 
now entirely of the high-school boy, because in the offices in those periods 
of expansion (1925 to 1930) there was a tremendous expansion in the 
force, both in the office and the factory, so I am confining this entirely to 
that group from high school, when as I say, we would see ten or fifteen 
a day, sometimes. 

I don’t think that the boys have changed at all since then. I still have 
hired some boys in the last months. They will come down with a card 
from the vocational guidance or from the employment office, whichever 
it may be, and they will have the street address, and won’t know the name 
of the firm they are coming to; they will come in and say a friend sent 
them in; they won’t remember the friend’s name; they won’t remember 
the name of the firm; they won’t know what they are applying for. Boys 
will come into the employment office absolutely and completely ignorant 
of why they are coming in there, yet they are coming in for a job. 

They know the box score in the baseball games; they know who is 
playing at the Coliseum Theater, but they have given apparently no 
thought to the necessity of the approach to getting a job. 

That is a very severe indictment, and I suppose people will say that I 
am talking through my hat. But that is my experience—it still is my expe- 
rience, by the same token this is true, I have talked to employers. The boy 
comes in to a temporary job and is not very good, and the employer can’t 
wait to get rid of him; but if the boy comes in for a temporary job and 
shows certain trends, that temporary job is likely to be a permanent job. 

I think industry is still—though conditions are poor—anxious to get 
boys who will really go to work and take an interest in it. 

The average kid can’t wait until lunch time to go out on the lot to 
play baseball; he can’t wait until five o’clock to get out of the place. We all 
know we can’t give him any responsibility, he has to be trained, but you 
can’t have a boy who is playful. There is a tremendous amount of hazard, 
of his damaging material, misplacing material, and disturbing the routine 
by carelessness. 

I don’t think the average employer expects a boy of seventeen or 
eighteen to have the judgment or the responsibility of an adult, but he 
does want him to be a little bit considerate, and anxious to learn, but you 
don’t have a chance to teach them—they know! 

I think for vocational guidance along certain industries we have had 
splendid results from boys in specialized fields, taken from vocational 
training, but I think it is limited to very specialized technical training 
fields. 

I do want to urge this one point though, it is not on the subject at 
all, Mr. Chairman, but if boys (if I don’t say anything about the girls it is 





1939] ProcEEDINGs OF SAN Francisco CONVENTION 27 


because I have never had much to do with them) could be given a six- 
months course in how to ask for a job, so that their hands are clean, 
so they have a tie on, a shirt on even, if it is only a tail of a shirt, it 
doesn’t have to be a two-dollar shirt, but a shirt, their hair brushed, their 
faces reasonably clean and if they could be taught not to fiddle around 
with the stuff on my desk, and keep from reading my mail while I am 
talking to them—I am not exaggerating, and if they have a few minutes 
to find out the name of the firm and what it does, and to be slightly mod- 
est in their desire to learn, I think jobs could be created. I know most 
firms would try to get fellows like that. When I get a boy like that, I 
keep him even if it means spreading the work out; I would rather use a 
skilled man and make him work a little overtime than take a chance on 
one of these donkeys. 

Forrest G. Murpock (Principal, San Jose High School, San Jose, 
California): Everyone has spoken on the panel but myself. The speaker 
is gone, and a number of people are leaving, and I would not dare to go 
home and face my wife and say that I hadn’t said anything. 

I haven’t much to offer, perhaps, but I must say a few words to clear 
my conscience anyway. 

It seems to me that there is a great deal in what Mr. Rich has just 
said. I believe that I can subscribe more and more to the theory of the 
rugged individualist even in these days, regardless of the arguments 
against that theory. I know that you can’t work if you don’t find a job, 
that is, you have to have a job, but in many instances I could support Mr. 
Rich in what he has said. The reports that come from other people, about 
young people trying to find a job, and instances where youngsters have 
gone out and gone in to a concern where apparently there was no opening 
and they have created an opening—jobs beget jobs; income begets income, 
and I think that we would all agree that if the seven or eleven or whatever 
there were million people out of work to-morrow, that we would probably 
solve many of our problems. 

I cannot subscribe to this theory: that was pronounced very shortly 
after the beginning of the so-called depression, one of our noted educators 
made this statement: the whole world is in a mess, and we are part of the 
mess. And I think even in governmental agencies all the way through we 
have immediately attempted to reconstruct everything, forgetting the fact 
that there was a pretty good basis, and that we should reconstruct prob- 
ably in part, but the reconstruction of everything—I think we have got 
to go back to our fundamentals to a certain extent. 

For example, I would not quite agree with Mr. Williams when he 
bemoans the fact that a student does not know what he wants to do. I 
think that is fundamentally solved. I am glad that the secondary-school 
boy does not always know what he wants to do; he has a searching mind. 








[ October 


28 Nationat Association OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 


Many of our college people don’t know exactly what they want to do, and 
I think sometimes that is quite healthy. There are exceptions, of course. 
A youngster who knows that he is going to be a doctor and begins at an 
early age and continues on through with that idea in mind that he does 
become a physician and surgeon, that is very fine, but there are many of 
us in this room, I dare say, if we took a vote we would find that a good 
many have wavered a good deal from the profession or occupation from 
which they started, and probably it is a good thing, but I think there is 
a lot to be gained in training our youngsters and in impressing them with 
the fact that they must go out and employ a little bit of this rugged indi- 
vidualism in order to get jobs, and that brings us back I think to that 
fundamenal that we have to have probably a basic curriculum 

The facts of the matter are that with few exceptions it doesn’t seem 
to me it matters much what you teach them. I know that a good many 
will not agree, but I rather believe that it doesn’t make much difference, 


with little exception what you teach youngsters, and I think you can prove 
that definitely. It would take some time to prove it, but I think it can be 
proven. We have a basic curriculum, or basic things that we all should 


know—English, spoken and written, and so on, but outside of a few 
fundamental things it is attitudes, conceptions, and ideas, and I think 
that we have to start from where we are, and if we can, by using Mr. 
Spindt’s method of gathering a group of business men together and finding 
out what businesses in a town can absorb a few more boys and girls, and 
I think in part we would solve it in that way. 

It is not a problem that can be solved over night, and it is not a prob- 
lem that you can have a plan which will immediately be put into effect, 
but it is going back to some of these original things and developing some 
of these rugged individualisms that I think is of great deal of value. 

CuarrMan Bownay: Our group here has been so polite that they have 
not interrupted the panel. I hope there is someone in the audience who 
will have something to say at this time. 

Mr. Fursisu (Oakland): Mr. Rich’s experience with boys seeking em- 
ployment made me wish to take a few minutes to tell of an attempt to 
prevent that experience, in a few of the schools of Oakland. 

A year ago last fall there were two men and two women freed from 
work in their classes for about six weeks to study the industries of the 
community in Oakland, and on the basis of that study and of their many 
conferences with employers, they made a plan for a five-months course, and 
we have been working it now for three semesters. 

These teachers found out what employers would be willing to have 
groups visit their plants and they found out what men in the community 
would be willing to come into the classrooms and tell what employers 
expected of the young people when they came to their positions to work, 

















29 





ProcEEDINGs oF SAN Francisco CoNVENTION 


1939) 





and a course of study was made out, some of the parts of it were: filling 
out application blanks, for instance; finding out the names of the firms 
in the community, so that when they went there they would not go in 
without knowing what firm they were applying to for a job. 

They were even taught to put on a shirt and a tie when they went to 
make application, and the girls were taught to put on stockings. I don’t 
know that we have been one hundred per cent successful in this course 
that we call “Special Planning,” but for three semesters three high schools 
in Oakland have been giving the course. We do know that a great many 
of the people who have taken that course have gone into employment. 
We rather carefully selected those who should go into it. We could not 
put all of our high 12’s into it because we didn’t plan for that. Those who 
intended to go to college, for instance, we felt had a vocation that they 
were preparing for in doing college preparatory work, and we know that 
a large fraction of them aren’t employable anyway, in most of the indus- 
tries of the city, so we left those two groups out, and we selected our two 
classes in the school, thirty boys and thirty girls who wanted employment 
immediately after graduation and who we thought had the qualities that 
might be trained for employment, and we feel that it has been fairly suc- 
cessful. 

Mk. Fitzceratp: In my city it happens to be my task to supervise the 
taking of the school census; at one time we employed a great many boys 
and there was a time after the war for over twenty years it has been my 
job to supervise the school census and I found that there were a great 
many young people employed in the various industries. Of course when 
the depression came on we found very few young people were being em- 
ployed, although there were firms that were glad to have them, but they 
were putting on married people mostly. For the last few years I have been 
quite surprised that there never were very many young people employed 
where there had been in some of the industries hundreds of them, and I 
investigated that. 

I found this difficulty and I believe our public schools have something 
to do with it. We are trying to make everything soft for our boys and 
girls now-a-days. We don’t make them do the things that they ought to do 
whether they like to do them or not, and I say no boy and no girl will 
ever be successful if they do not learn in their childhood to do the things 
they do not like to do, whether they want to do them or not, if they are 
the right things to do. (Applause) 

I have followed that same thing up, and have found a lot of our 
young people were getting divorces too, for that reason. Their parents 
raised them to do the things they like; when they got married and found 
they had to do some things they did not like they went to the divorce 


courts. 





















































30 Nationa AssoctaTIon oF SECONDARY-ScHOoL Principats [| October 


I find too a good many of them want the same wages experienced men 
have been getting. I go to industry and say: don’t you want these boys? 
And they say they do, and that they don’t know what they are going to do 
when the older men become unemployable, but they can’t pay for inex- 
perienced untrained help what the experienced employees are getting. 

Is it the fault of us who are teaching, or not? I dont know. I am afraid 
it is. 

We can’t make things soft for a youngster and then expect him to 
take jobs that are not pleasant to do. 

Mr. Murvock: I would like to ask Mr. Knox if he is in close touch 
with the councilors of the schools where he secures employment for the 
different boys. How many have you employed? 

Mr. Knox: We do not take them unless the schools say that they are 
competent to do the work and also do their school work, and then as the 
boys progress in their work we check with the schools frequently, not as 
frequently as we would like to, and perhaps too frequently for some of the 
schools; they seem a little annoyed with us, but we stick with them. 

Mr. Murpock: My question was that if the NYA agencies are more 
and more controlled by the schools (in other words Mr. Williams inierred 
that the schools could take over this program), I wondered if it would be 
possible in the years to come, for example, in California, or any place, 
where NYA is being conducted—supposing the schools, if they had for 
instance a six or seven youth on a six-dollars-per-month basis, if they were 
allowed thirty or forty units, on the fifteen dollars adult basis unit if they 
could take their grades and place them in an occupation, business, wouldn’t 
be able to hire and pay their wages perhaps, but the school might super- 
vise this job and secure the money from the NYA in order to help the 
boy along, in the same way that we have provided jobs in the school. 

Mrs. Treapwe tt: I should say that—in answer to that question—that 
that proportion of Mr. Williams’ discussion, to which you refer, was very 
definitely connected with the program of the youth administration for the 
young person, who is out of school and unemployed, unemployed for the 
reason that he cannot adjust to such job opportunities as may exist in his 
community, and I think that we feel definitely as an agency that the re- 
sponsibility that we have to that group is a very great one. 

Now the expense which Mr. Williams described of employing young 
people in that category as is done in a variety of situations throughout the 
country, has demonstrated I think to the satisfaction of those of us who 
are immediately concerned with its operation, the value of practical work 
experience for such young people as preparation for absorption into the 
industrial life of their communities. 

What Mr. Williams was definitely pointing out I feel was the growing 
realization on the part of the Youth Administration that that kind of 


















31 





Proceepincs oF SAN FrRANcisvo CoNVENTION 





1939) 


practical work experience is valuable as it is augmented and enhanced by 
increased educational opportunity, educational opportunity at the level of 
the young person who is so employed. 

Mr. Murpock: I mean, suppose you take thirty boys and girls and 
place them in industry for a half day at a time, and bring them back to 
the school the other half, and increase their education to thirteen or four- 
teen years, meanwhile supplementing their going and paying them, but 
have it under the control of the school rather than an agency outside the 
school. 

Mrs. Treapwett: I think there is no possibility at all of the Youth 
Administration operating a program which involved the employment of 
young people in private industry. I think necessarily such activities on the 
part of the youth administration must be confined to public service and 
public work of various kinds. 

Mr. Williams’ concern with increasing inclusion of the schools and 
the school systems in planning this type of activities and in assisting to 
actually operate it, is in the interest of enhancing such practical work ex- 
perience as can be provided through the medium of employment in the 
activities of various public and quasi-public agencies by a sound and inte- 
grated program of the latter training to accompany such practical work 
experience, and when Mr. Williams speaks of the schools entering this 
picture more and more, it isn’t with the idea, I am sure, that were they 
to take over entirely such program as he indicated might be the case, it 
would be on a basis of providing a practical work experience similar to 
that which is now provided for the Youth Administration and backing 
that up and laying a foundation under that of appropriate related train- 
ing, but I want to repeat that the concern of the Youth Administration in 
a large area is for his young boy or girl who is both out of work and out 
of the school. who is not a graduate student, who has not had the oppor- 
tunity, the privilege which has enabled him to secure more than in many 
cases the barest elements of educational preparation, for assimilation in 
the community. 

Question: We have been talking entirely this afternoon about boys, 
and I am wondering if anything special is being done with this large group 
of unemployed girls? 

Mrs. Treapwett: The Youth Administration is of course concerned 
with the opportunities of the kind Mr. Williams has discussed for both 
boys and girls, nationally; it is my belief that the program is divided about 
equally between boys and girls; the girls are employed in much the same 
way that Mr. Williams described in appropriate activities for their prepa- 
ration for their future life. In many cases such activities would be in the 
field of industrial experiences; in the cases of many of the girls the appro- 
priate field very definitely is homemaking, nursery scho.l work, and care 








32. Nationa Association or Seconpary-ScHoot Principats — [| October 


of children, so that in the case of girls Youth Administration is concerned 
both with the development of young people for later absorption into in- 
dustry and for their better preparation for making their own lives; the 
problem of unskilled girls who are numerous in such program, is the most 
acute that we face in connection with planning the work program, but 
as a matter of fact the activities which now engage girls through the NYA 
program are quite varied and I think it is safe to say that certain new 
fields have been opened to girls through that medium, for example, in 
Los Angeles, again to go back to that good example of a varied program, 
we have employed through the sponsorship of the school department, girls 
in nursery work and have found that they are extremely successful in it. 


In many of the activities related to plan propagation, in seeding and 
salting of roots, and cataloging, they have done a great job; part of the 
job of propagating plants for schools, through the school department in 
Los Angeles; again, they are employed in poster work in the fields of 


commercial art, and in the more stereotyped activity of sewing, which we 
do to a great extent on the power basis, and in homemaking and nursery 


school clinic assistance, and other such fields. 


CuairMan Bownay: Just supplementing what Mrs. Treadwell has 
said, if we say why we have been talking about boys—it is the same as 
when we say, “The teacher—she,” we mean both; so when we say, “The 
boy—he,” we mean both. 

Mr. Hoyt: Maybe I am just having a brain storm here this afternoon, 
but it seems to me, Mr. Williams has brought us an unusual message; he 
is the head man, so far as this youth is concerned, in the re-organization 
program in Washington, because that Youth Administration has been 
shifted from the WPA into another group that we will hear more about 
later. It is also significant it seems to me that the ante was raised from 
seventy-five million to a hundred million dollars, and came pretty nearly 
going to the original hundred and twenty-three million requested, it seems 
to me very significant if a man comes here from Washington and says to 
us school people representing the whole United States in the secondary 
field, we have practically put this problem in your lap, it seems to me we 
haven’t this thing clear enough in mind here in this group. Maybe we 
can’t do it. I am inclined to think we school people are not going to be 
able to do it. I think we have been cloistered so long and we have been 
so far out of touch with the community, particularly with the indus- 
trial part of the community, that we cannot handle it. 

I don’t know whether you want to take time to discuss that or not, 
but it seems to me when a man comes from Washington and puts that 
in our lap, we ought to squirm around a little; we might find we have 


something. 





1939] PRocEEDINGS OF SAN Francisco CoNVENTION 33 


CuairmMan Bownay: Dr. Judd, who is in charge of the educational 
program oi the NYA is right here. Is there anything you can say at this 
time, Dr. Judd, that will help us out? Remember, we have a sectional 
meeting to-morrow and we might talk some about this type of thing. 

Dr. Jupp: Well, Mr. Chairman, I am not very official; I am a new- 
comer in the NYA, but I rather re-inforce what Mr. Hoyt has just said. 

I am perfectly clear from my own point of view, let me speak for a 
moment from that point of view, that unless NYA and the secondary- 
school people get into codperation, both of them are going to fail. I am 
perfectly clear in my mind that the secondary school isn’t now doing what 
in the future it has to do for young people. 

Mr. Williams has said to me very frequently: You are more acquainted 
with the schools than I am, and I know some of you are more familiar 
with the NYA—I went on the Advisory Committee of the NYA after it 
was first organized and I was skeptical as a school man about the possi- 
bility, the dangers of another organization stepping into the field that I 
felt belonged to the secondary schools, and before I accepted the position 
on the Advisory Committee I went down and had conference with Mr. 
Williams. Mr. Williams has always been, and I have heard him repeatedly 
make the statement, that he supports the President in saying that this 
work that is being done for young people by the Federal Government must 
be based upon that fundamental principle—that the American people have 
in regard to the care of young people that age. Now if this organization 
will take very seriously what Mr. Williams said, and he did come from 
Washington for the specific purpose of getting this contact with school 
people at a point where they are influential—if you people will accept 
that challenge and begin to codperate with him I think there are very 
large possibilities of elaborating new schemes that are not contemplated 
in any official dictum that has been given up to this time, but can be cre- 
ated, and I can add the further testimony that the reason why Congress 
was persuaded on this particular occasion to raise the amount of money 
was that the high-school department program is one of the most popular 
features among legislators on this program. 

Let’s get busy about this business. I don’t think that there is the 
slightest possibility of either the NYA or the high schools solving this 
problem unless somebody does something about it, and if the high schools 
think they are going to solve this problem by sitting tight and doing ex- 
actly what they have done during the years that are past, I as an observer 
of the school system, say to you: you are headed for wreckage. 

The secondary school has got to do something in this field. The Fed- 
eral Government is not going to do it permanently and in a form that is 
without recognition of the secondary schools. Now can we get ourselves 
aroused to the place where we will do this thing in codperation? If we can 








34. Nationa Association oF SeconpAry-ScHoot Principats — {October 


do it in codperation we can do a great job for the nation and for the 


young people. 

We have sat here during these three or four days and talked about 
young people, and certainly the problems are numerous enough. I think 
it has been one of the most illuminating experiences that I have had as a 
school man to see this group which has come during these various sessions 
and listened to these discussions of the problems of the youth. If you could 
get them as vividly in your mind as one gets them by visiting some of 
these centers, believe me, you would make up your mind that the time 
will come when secondary education and the educational system in gen- 
eral has got to get busy about this business of solving the problem of 
young people. 

Take that remark of Mr. Williams just as seriously as you can pos- 
sibly take it. I am perfectly certain it was made for the purpose of stimu- 
lating you to action in the matter. (Applause) 

CuarrMan Bownay: I don’t know that we could possibly have stopped 
on a better note than that. I know that if the schools and the NYA coép- 
erate in solving this problem it is going to take the codperation of business, 
labor, the unions, the schools, government, and all agencies, if we are going 
to really solve this problem. 

It is going to mean that we have to get a new conception of business. 
I do not believe that it is possible to make all those extra jobs unless we 
have a different concept of business. It is going to be a big job, but it is a 
big challenge and I am going to try to pass on to the people who will be 
here to-morrow the idea that you people have asked to have some prob- 
lems solved that we have not solved, and see if we cannot have that 
meeting to-morrow where Mr. Dewey Anderson will be and Mr. Arthur 
Gould of Los Angeles to help us solve some more of these problems, but 
we will try to keep that in mind and people going back to different parts 
of the United States keep in mind the idea of codperation between the 
NYA and the schools, if we wish to be a success. 


Adjournment. 





JUNIOR HIGH-SCHOOL SECTION 


Wednesday, July 5, 1939 
The Junior High-School Section met in the East Room of Hotel Em- 
pire. Principal M. E. Herriott of Central Junior High School, Los An- 
geles, California, presided and opened the meeting at 2:00 p. mM. as follows: 


Young adolescents do look forward most earnestly to taking their 
place as citizens in the world of adults. “When I am a man .. .,” “When 
I have children . . .,” and similar expressions are common among boys 
and girls of the early teens. We adults need not try very hard to remem- 
ber when such thoughts ran riot through our minds as we met the tricks 
and frustrations of these vital childhood years. 

It is but natural, therefore, that young adolescents in our junior high 
schools should be making test flights into the realm of adulthood—succeed- 
ing in achieving status sometimes, frequently meeting with rebuffs because 
of the clumsiness of these first efforts. 

It was after deliberate thought that we chose this topic for the junior- 
high-school section of this series of meetings on the problems of youth and 
citizenship. Likewise, we deliberately chose Dr. Quillen as one of the best 
qualified persons to discuss the subject thoughtfully and_penetratingly. 
It is a great pleasure to present him. 


YOUNG ADOLESCENTS LOOK TOWARD CITIZENSHIP 


I. James QuILLEN 


Assistant Professor of Education 
Stanford University, Stanford University, California 

The world of the adolescent is not bounded by experiences within the 
narrow circle of his close associates. He lives in a complex of relationships 
that stretch beyond the face-to-face contacts of his family and small group 
to make up the society of his local community, the state, the region, the 
nation, the world. As he grows older and approaches nearer the time when 
he must take up adult responsibilities in a democratic society, those wider 
fields have increasing significance for him. He must learn how to partici- 
pate in those activities in which the individual associates himself with or- 
ganized groups in the effort to solve such common problems as unem- 
ployment, poverty, crime, public health, recreation, and the care of the 
aged. He must learn to participate to the full of his ability in the scope 
of democratic life. It is with those wider relationships, which may be 
called social-civic, that I will deal. 

It should be said, at the outset, that no distinction can be sharply and 
clearly drawn between the area of these social-civic relationships and that 


35 














36 Nationa AssociATION OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PrincipaLs [October 


of immediate personal relationships. The two overlap. Basically, perhaps, 
the difference between them is one of scope rather than of kind. Hence, 
though social-civic relationships in America to-day are generally imper- 
sonal, the attitude of the individual toward, and the participation of the 
individual in, them quite often rests upon his feeling of attraction to (or 
revulsion from) the personalities of leaders in the social-civic sphere as well 
as upon the ideas, ideals, and symbols involved. To a certain extent, too, 
social-civic activities must involve face-to-face contacts. The two areas are 
thus interlocked, and it is essential that the social studies teacher should 
never be oblivious of that interlocking. The richness of satisfaction for the 
needs in each of the areas largely depends, in a democratic society, upon 
fulfillment of needs in the other. 


The significance of social-civic relationships for the teacher of the social 
studies can hardly be overemphasized. It is essential for the adolescent 
that he gain some idea of his own place and significance in the whole of 
the community. And it is likewise essential for a democracy that each 
member of the society gain some knowledge of the whole community and 
of his place in it. It then is the task of the social studies teacher to promote 
learning commensurate with the abilities of each individual. 


The achievement of social-civic understandings and attitudes is diffi- 
cult to-day. All adolescents are concerned with immediate personal-social 
relationships, for these have been an integral part of their direct experience 
from birth. Most individuals by the time of adolescence have a well- 
developed pattern of tension and response in such relationships. But for 
the adolescent it is not so with social-civic relationships, which have a large 
degree of impersonality. Though sensitivity and insight are necessary for 
the preservation of democracy and are, consequently, a matter of great 
concern for social education, their attainment has been in the course of the 
years increasingly difficult for the adolescent. The achievement of this 
understanding has become ever less easy and more necessary. The teacher’s 
problem has, therefore, grown harder to solve. 


Almost from its inception, social education in the United States has 
stressed civic training. The public high school became an established insti- 
tution during the Jacksonian period, when the political victory of frontier 
democracy, the extension of suffrage, and the prevalence of mass action 
emphasized the need for effective political education as a sine qua non of 
democracy, Educational leaders seized upon this argument for tax- 
supported universal secondary education. Their success was phenomenal 
and the task of developing citizenship became an accepted function of 
secondary education. 

The task at that time did not seem complex, for social-civic relations in 
the community of the early nineteenth century still had a considerable 















sat 





1939] ProckEepiIncs oF SAN Francisco CoNVENTION 37 











degree of intimacy. American culture was still largely agrarian and handi- 
craft in character. Transportation and communication were relatively 
slow, and large-scale industry was just becoming established in American 
economy. The family, the farm, and the rural community set the pattern 
and tempo of American life. Political questions were freely discussed at 
home, on visits from one farm to another, and around the stove in the 
general store. Avenues of opportunity were many in the expanding 
economy of a growing country; there was little feeling of economic or civic 
frustration. The transition from the life of a child to that of a socially 
responsible adult began early and was relatively smooth. New England 
boys became ship’s officers in their teens; a fourteen-year-old boy on the 
Western frontier could ride and shoot like a man and do almost a man’s 
share in the work about the farm. Young people generally grew up into 
their work, married early, and quickly established themselves as respon- 
sible members of the community. 


The social conditions of that era tended to encourage the rather nar- 
row conception of civic education which prevailed from the outset. The 
abundance of economic and social opportunities and the limitation of 
artistic and “cultural” activities by the pressure of economic life fostered 
a view of civic education in terms of political democracy—the training of a 
citizen to understand the basic documents and traditions and to master the 
rudiments of institutional processes in the American state and nation. The 
prevailing theory of government was that of “natural rights” individual- 
ism, with the function of the state largely protective, and with a sharp 
cleavage in conception between economic life and political life. Thus envis- 
aged, civic education was simple and presented no great challenge to the 
school. Americans generally believed that if the individual could read and 
write and had some understanding of American political and military his- 
tory and of the American political structure he would automatically become 
an effective citizen. 

As the individual’s life was enriched by the contributions of a closely 
organized economic world which brought him comforts from all the ends 
of the earth and luxuries created by industrial science, his appreciation of 
the complex organization grew poorer and more vague. As his smau 
tasks and his actions affected more and more people and gained signifi- 
cance across the world, he felt more and more circumscribed and less 
responsible. For the increasing scale and greater specialization made his 
own part smaller and less rounded; he found it harder to realize his per- 
sonal importance as the effects became more remote. He found it increas- 
ingly difficult to take pride in his position. The intricate organization with 
its accent on the impersonal and the institutional made the meaning of 
life more difficult to grasp and gave the individual a sense of helplessness 
in a vast world. To understand his own part, he needed an understanding 



























































38 Nationa AssociaTION oF SECONDARY-ScHOOL Principats _ | October 


of the whole impersonal, integrated, specialized, and institutional society. 
This required ¢xtended conceptualization, and for its development his 
experiential opportunities were constantly becoming more limited. 

This situation inevitably created a great challenge for social education. 
Not only have political and economic problems become more critical, but 
the growing inco-ordination between the technological nature of our cul- 
ture and the corresponding institutional controls actually seems to threaten 
the continued existence of our democratic ideals. Full realization of indi- 
vidual potentialities, effective social participation, and the utilization of 
intelligence become difficult in a culture characterized by widespread unem- 
ployment, individual insecurity, and group conflict. 

The task of civic education to-day cannot, then be conceived in the 
simple terms of a century ago. The seeming chasm between the adolescent 
and the social whole, the complex nature of society, the maladjustments 
which produce misunderstanding of, or a cynical indifference to, the char- 
acteristics of our culture constitute a grave problem for social studies teach- 
ers. The duty of meeting the needs of adolescents in the area of social-civic 
relations is both complex and essential. In the days ahead the maintenance 
and fulfillment of democratic ideals in social-civic, as in other basic rela- 
tionships, depend more than ever before upon the ability of American 
teachers to guide the youth in our schools in meeting their needs so as to 
develop the desirable characteristics of behavior required for effective par- 
ticipation in our evolving culture. 

The problem of adolescent needs in the social-civic area is, then, no 
less important than difficult. The facts that the adolescent frequently lacks 
sensitivity and insight into these relationships, that his apparent separation 
as an individual from the wider social complex, that the satisfaction of his 
needs here are of great general significance—these make the detection and 
satisfaction of social-civic needs a challenging task. 

Certain general needs are, however, readily discovered. These are: 

1. The need for responsible participation in socially significant ac- 

tivities, and 

2. The need for social recognition. 

The satisfaction of these two needs is greatly hampered in our culture 
to-day by the apparent hiatus between the individual and the impersonal, 
institutional social-civic activities. Cultural development has made the way 
of the adolescent steadily more difficult. 

To-day specialization and the urbanization of American life has 
greatly limited youth’s opportunities for early and wholesome participation 
in responsible community activities. As Dr. Caroline Zachry has said: 
“Current social and economic stress not only keeps adolescents from get- 
ting jobs, marrying when they are in love, and participating purposefully 












‘iety. 
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39 






ProcEEDINGs OF SAN Francisco CoNVENTION 





1939] 


in social undertakings. More profoundly, it keeps them from achieving 
the symbols of the adulthood toward which they strive.” Adolescents are 
thus frustrated, in their drive for participation and recognition, by the 
very nature of our culture. They seek to marry and are told to wait until 
they can get jobs; they seek to get jobs and they are told that society has 
none for them; they seek to attack the complex problems of such a society 
and they are told to wait until they are mature. Without status in the 
eyes of the adult world they are immediately subject to feelings of uncer- 
tainty and frustration. 

This frustration and failure may produce sullen acceptance or despair. 
It is essential to our democracy that it should not. Somehow these needs 
of adolescents must be adequately satisfied. As Dr. Zachry says: 

“If these young people are to learn to participate in a democratic 
society, a recognized place must be found for them—a status on the basis 
of which they will be able to find themselves as adolescents and grow into 
adults competent to deal with the problems of social reconstruction. Adjust- 
ment on the basis of conformity will not suffice. Through participation as 
adolescents, with a rightful place in the scheme of dynamic society, they 
must learn to deal with social change and to direct it toward the realiza- 
tion of their own now thwarted aspirations.” 

In our culture the secondary school is the agency to which the task of 
meeting the needs of adolescents has been delegated by the family and the 
state. Within the school, the main responsibility for social-civic educa- 
tion has, in turn, been delegated to the social studies teacher. Hence, it 
becomes a particular task of the social studies teacher to guide youth in 
securing responsible participant experiences in significant social activities 
and in gaining social recognition thereby. 

The conception of civic education to-day, as has already been indicated, 
places a heavy responsibility upon social studies teachers. As our culture 
increases its reliance on specialization and technology, changes more rap- 
idly, and becomes a more heterogeneous, complex, and impersonal, the 
difficulty of establishing social participation through face-to-face relation- 
ships becomes ever greater. More reliance necessarily must be placed upon 
information indirectly obtained from newspapers, magazines, and the 
radio; upon action through mass organizations; and upon control by means 

of institutional processes. If the individual is to retain his identity, he 
must be able to test that information, to influence that action, and to share 
in that control. To guide adolescents in meeting their needs in social-civic 









































relationships is a many-sided task. 
In the accomplishment of that task, nothing less than democracy itself 


is at stake. The social studies teacher should realize, therefore, that cer- 
tain ends must be attained and that the social studies offer resources for 








attaining them. 








40 Nationa Association oF SEcoNDARY-ScHOOL Principats — [ October 


Social studies teachers should, therefore, in order to guide adolescents 
effectively in meeting their needs for social participation and social recogni- 
tion, help those adolescents to develop: (1) a pattern of social-civic loyal- 
ties; (2) an understanding of social continuity, social change, and the social 
implications of modern science, as well as of propaganda symbolism, and 
mass organization as agencies of social control; and (3) the ability to select 
effective leaders and to evaluate competence in leadership and also the 
ability to act as effective leaders themselves whenever by so doing they may 
further social-civic welfare. 

For developing these things the social studies provide rich resources, 
and through the use of those resources social studies teachers may contrib- 
ute to the social-civic effectiveness of adolescents and to democracy itself. 


Loyalty represents an emotional attachment to a person, group, insti- 
tution, or ideal. It contains elements of rationality which can be consciously 
increased; in its essence, however, it is highly charged with emotion, In 
this respect and in others as well it is closely related to identification. As a 
matter of fact, loyalty and identification are often inseparable; they may 
simply represent different ways of looking at the same thing. An indi- 
vidual tends to be loyal to the person, group, or ideal with which he feels 
identified; at the same time loyal feelings of attachment often lead to iden- 
tification. 

Insecurity and conflict in modern life make the question of developing 
loyalties crucial. Our culture to-day has no generally accepted pattern of 
loyalty to which everyone naturally adheres. The loyalties to the values 
of the past have been weakened by the advances of science, by the rapidity 
of change, and by the stresses and strains of modern life. The heterogeneity 
of our culture fail to develop a pattern of loyalty, but the family itself has 
an uncertain role in this regard. Adolescents find their parents troubled 
by the same loyalty conflicts that confuse them. This lack of definite loy- 
alty patterns produces greater insecurity, and, yet, if intelligently handled, 
it has the possibility of producing the flexibility and relativity of attitudes 
and standards demanded for wholesome living in a rapidly changing 
culture. 

The adolescent has normally already developed a rather definite pat- 
tern of loyalties, for such development begins in immediate-personal social 
relationships. In the home, the school, and the community loyalties to 
members of the family, teachers, and friends have been fashioned. Such 
patterns are more or less positively set when adolescence begins. The 
adolescent is ready to expand and refine these loyalties through increasing 
identification with the efforts, failures, and accomplishments of other hu- 
man beings. He wants to break his dependence on family ties and satisfy 
his need for responsible participation in socially significant activities and 





41 


1939] ProcEEeDINGs OF SAN FRANcIsco CONVENTION 


his need for social recognition. He is ready to broaden his loyalties into 
the wider relationships of social-civic and economic life. 

It is the task of the social studies teacher to aid adolescents in meeting 
this problem of broadening their loyalties. He must constantly recognize 
the fact that loyalties grow out of personal experiences and should work 
with adolescents in their relationships in the school and the community. 
For the welfare of the individual and of democracy, those loyalties should 
be broadened in the area of social-civic relationships in harmony with 
democratic ideals. 

There is, to be sure, no particular problem of getting the adolescent 
to be loyal to someone or something. His association in the gang and 
clique, his crushes on older people, his idealism and interest in value stand- 
ards all contribute to his feeling of loyalty for individuals and small groups. 
As he broadens this feeling to include wider groups, he should come to 
understand, however, that loyalty does not mean complete self-abnegation, 
but, on the contrary, implies the maintenance and assertion of wholesome 
individuality in group relationships. This wholesome individuality should 
be expressed through a critically constructive attitude toward the develop- 
ment of loyalties. The adolescent should ask himself, “Will my loyalty to 
this individual, this group, or this idea best enable me to further the demo- 
cratic values of life?” 

No narrow term can be set to this dynamic expansion. The extension 
of loyalties into the institutional area of social-civic life requires a large 
degree of conceptualization. For example in extending into the national 
area the personal loyalties which bind the adolescent to home, school, and 
community the adolescent must depend largely upon abstract ideas, con- 
cepts, and symbols. It is relatively easy to bridge this gap by relying 
heavily upon slogans, heroes, and such emotional symbols as the flag, but it 
is more difficult to direct the adolescent’s experience so that he comes to 
see “the nation,” “his nation,” in a way that leads to an appreciation of 
“other nations.” Nevertheless, a national loyalty which does not lead to 
international loyalties is hardly in harmony with the democratic ideal. A 
democratic nationalism should free the individual for more effective activi- 
ties within the nation and for richer friendships and relationships with 
people in other nations. A sound nationalism will be consistent with—will, 
indeed, stimulate the growth of—broader loyalties. 

International loyalties are, indeed, constantly increasing in importance 
because of the growing interdependence of the world. The various na- 
tions have steadily become more economically, politically, and culturally 
intertwined. Specialization and improvements in transportation and com- 
munication have woven about the world an intricate web of interlocking 
contacts and dependencies. Activities in England, France, Japan, Russia, 
Germany, Italy, and other nations have profound effects upon people in 











42 Nationat AssociaTion oF SEconpARY-ScHoot Principats [October 


the United States. Our standard of living and our personal security are 
dependent to a large degree upon the maintenance of satisfactory interna- 
tional relations. We must perforce be interested in events and policies in 
foreign nations; we must reach tentative judgments as to the ultimate 
effects of movements in those nations. Hence, narrow localism, provincial- 
ism, and nationalism should be broken down and an identification with 
all humanity established. This does not mean that loyalty to home, com- 
munity, state, and nation should be contravened, but it does mean that 
loyalty to human beings everywhere should be added thereto. 

The establishment of loyalty to, and identification with, humanity 
demands even greater conceptualization than the establishment of na- 
tional loyalty. Increasing understanding and appreciation of the cultures 
of other peoples is necessary. This understanding and appreciation may be 
based not only upon a recognition of the contribution of other cultures to 
world civilization, but also upon an understanding of the ways in which 
those cultures hang together internally and so form a pattern. Adolescents 
should understand that ways of living are functions of a complex of forces 
including the geographic environment, the cultural heritage, and the bio- 
logical vitality of man. Thus, ways of living of other peoples that may 
seem strange or even distasteful to us are logical and perfectly under- 
standable when the total pattern of their culture is considered. A com- 


parison of cultures, as wholes, also brings out the common elements and 
so contributes to a sense of common humanity. 


Because loyalty to one’s own race often seems to conflict with loyalty 
to all humanity, social studies teachers should seek to clarify the concepts 
related to race. Ethnologists have exploded the concept of the pure race. 
All racial groups in the world at the present time are mixed by inter- 
marriage over thousands of years. Investiyations have demonstrated that, 
whatever differences there may be between contemporary racial groups, the 
effects of racial difference upon cultural life are illusory. As Franz 
Boas has said, “It does not matter from which point of view we con- 
sider culture, its forms are not dependent upon race.” And again, “The 
idea of the great blond Aryan, the leader of mankind, is the result 
of self-admiration that emotional thinkers have tried to sustain by imagi- 
native reasoning. It has no foundation in observed fact.” 

Since the development of a loyalty to humanity is essential to the 
democratic ideal, it follows that activities related to establishing identifica- 
tion and loyalties with all peoples in the world should be continued and 
broadened. In this area teachers of social studies, science, foreign language, 
English and other subjects can coéperate effectively. The reading of out- 
standing biographies, novels, plays, and poems; the investigation of current 
national and international issues; and the constant contacts between indi- 
viduals in broader social-civic relationships in the school and community 





1939] ProcEEDINGs OF SAN Francisco CoNVENTION 43 


offer many opportunities for furthering a wholesome feeling of loyalty. 


This loyalty should be based not only upon the common problems 
and common aspirations of the various peoples of the world, but also 
upon their necessary differences. Just as in a single democracy the poten- 
tialities of the individual are essentially unique, so in the world the con- 
tributions of a people should be unique. Social studies teachers should 
guide adolescents in recognizing that this heterogeneity is a necessary and 
desirable condition of American and world culture in the years to come. 
Heterogeneity based on different national backgrounds in America, sec- 
tionalism, multisectarianism, racial differences, increasing population mo- 
bility, and improvements in transportation and communication may be 
regarded as an advantage rather than a liability. Not only can the various 
cultures of the world become instruments in the orchestration of an emer- 
gent world civilization but also contacts with them offer individuals op- 
portunities for fuller and richer living through varied experiences in a 
varied world. The fact that this opportunity is not being utilized to any 
large extent is a problem of concern for all thinking people and especially 
for social studies teachers. 


In the United States, loyalty to wider social groups should rest upon 
the foundation of democratic values. These values give meaning to the 
aspirations and struggles of mankind and offer guidance and hope for the 


future. Edmund Day says: 


“The youth of the nation should be made familiar with the heroic 
efforts through which individual freedom, after centuries of struggle, was 
finally achieved. They should be made to appreciate the incalculable values 
which individual freedom brings to human aspirations and achievement. 
They should be made to see that resort to force as a mode of social adjust- 
ment is a negation of the principles on which American ways of life are 
based. . . . They should be led to work for it, to devote themselves to it.” 


Loyalty is always based on some pattern of values. The acceptance 
of these values has a negative as well as a positive side. In the United 
States rejection of loyalties contrary to the fundamental principles of de- 
mocracy should be encouraged. The adolescent should not base his loyalty 
to his nation on such a slogan as, “My country, right or wrong!” On the 
contrary he should appreciate the responsibility of the individual to oppose 
vigorously and courageously ideas, ideals, or actions which seem contrary 
to his personal philosophy—a philosophy which, the Committee hopes, will 
be based on the democratic way of life. This rejection of hostile values 
should operate also in international loyalties. The adolescent may come to 
appreciate the accomplishments of the Germans, the Japanese, and other 
peoples; at the same time he must, if he is to maintain his personal integ 
rity and contribute to democratic ideals, reserve the right to criticize and 








44 Nationa Association oF SeconpARy-ScHoot Principats — [October 


oppose the acts of these and other peoples, past and present, when those 
acts seem to conflict with the ideals he holds dear. 

In his narrower loyalties the adolescent must also learn to criticize 
and to reject some principles and affiliations. His loyalties are often in con- 
flict: loyalties to his gang may clash with loyalty to his school as a whole; 
loyalty to his local community, intensified perhaps by competitive athletics, 
may threaten the formation of wider loyalties; loyalty to his social-eco- 
nomic group may not be consonant with his democratic ideals; loyalty to a 
hero, crush, or the girl he loves may not jibe with strongly held social-civic 
opinions. Such conflict often causes serious maladjustments. Sometimes 
rejection of older loyalties in more immediate personal-social relations is 
necessary for the formation of new loyalties in social-civic relationships. 
Choice among loyalties is inescapable. 

The social studies teacher should therefore aid the adolescent, not only 
in understanding and assuming loyalties to groups, the nation, and hu- 
manity, but also in setting up criteria for choice among his loyalties. The 
adolescent in his choice should develop critical opposition that is construc- 
tive rather than destructive. Since criticism operates in the social studies 
classroom, the teacher can help adolescents to distinguish betyveen criti- 
cism that leads to improvement and the sort that is solely condemnatory. 
The teacher can guide adolescents to resolve their conflicting loyalties by 
the development of criteria which will establish consistency and integrity 
in the personal life of the individual adolescent and will aid in the building 
of a satisfying personal philosophy in harmony with democratic ideals. 
In terms of that philosophy all loyalties can be expanded and refined. 

A large part of the research of social scientists has been in the area of 
social-civic relations. Historians, political scientists, sociologists, social-psy- 
chologists, anthropologists, economists, and others have in recent years 
added greatly to our understanding of this area. The best results achieved 
by these social scientists should be utilized by social studies teachers in 
aiding adolescents to develop basic understandings essential for meeting 
their social-civic needs. 

1. Understanding Social Continuity and Social Change. 

In a complex, dynamic society change is frequent and its effects wide- 
spread. There is a consequent tendency to increase the use of social con- 
trols. If these controls are to be wisely chosen and wisely employed in 
social planning, and if the individual is not to be reduced to a mere cog 
in the machine, an extended understanding of social organization and 
social development is necessary. This understanding of the principles of 
social organization and social change involves the discovery of information 
concerning such questions as: What causes social change? Why is social 
change more rapid in certain periods of history than in others? Why do 
some parts of a culture change more rapidly than others? What produces 





1939] Proceepincs oF SAN Francisco ConvENTION 45 


social maladjustment? What are the possibilities for intelligently contol- 
ling social change through the utilization of social planning? 

The various social scientists have as their task the collection and in- 
terpretation of data related to these and other equally significant questions. 
Some of their currently accepted conclusions are: 

(1) Social change is continuous. Each social change has both causes 
and effects. This principle, often called the law of historical 
continuity, may be illustrated by the spread of printing in West- 
ern Europe. The “revival of learning” and the religious contro- 
versy of the Reformation encouraged the rapidity with which 
printing presses, after Gutenberg’s invention, multiplied in Ger- 
many, France, Italy, and Great Britain. The spread of printing, 
in turn, made possible the expansion of education to the lower 
classes and loosed a whole series of forces that profoundly altered 
social living. 

Social changes normally result from invention within the cul- 
ture and borrowing from other cultures. 

Rapidity of social change is determined by the nature and ex- 
tent of inventions already made and by the opportunities for 
contacts with other cultures. Each invention, while resulting 
from the creative activity of an individual or groups of indi- 
viduals, rests upon previous inventions already extant in the 
culture. Thus it was impossible to invent the airplane until a 
powerful light-weight .engine was available; modern radio 
broadcasting and receiving were impossible before the vacuum 
tube was devised. Furthermore, once the internal combustion 
engine and the vacuum tube were invented, they became the 
basis for whole clusters of inventions besides the airplane and 
radio. Thus the rate of cultural change increases in tempo as 
inventions accumulate. Increasing contact between cultures en- 
courages the borrowing of old inventions and stimulates the pro- 
duction of new inventions. The more widespread the contacts 
between cultures, the more volatile cultural change is likely to be. 
Some parts of an otherwise rapidly changing culture and some 
entire cultures change slowly because of survivals, isolation, cul- 
tural differences, vested interests, the power of tradition, habits, 
social pressures for conformity, the tendency to ignore the worse 
and glorify the better aspects of the past, and the heterogeneity 
of cultural needs and interests. Thus fire-hazardous and flimsy 
thatched roofs, common in England because wood was lacking, 
appeared and persisted long in New England, where a better 
material, wood was plentiful. Long after the usefulness of the 
medieval guild in protecting craftsmen and merchants and in 





46 Nationa Association oF SECONDARY-ScHOOL PrincipaLs [October 


maintaining the quality standards for goods had passed into 
limbo, the guild continued and acted as a check on new inven- 
tions. Similarly, the ideals of “rugged individualism” hold over 
into a specialized and interdependent American culture long 
after the agricultural frontier has disappeared. 

Culture persists because it has utility. Some aspects of culture 
continue by transference of value (bows and arrows become toys 
and archery a sport) and some aspects survive because of mul- 
tiple values (the family). 

Social strains, tensions, and maladjustments are produced when 
different parts of a culture change at disproportionate rates of 
speed. These maladjustments become more critical in periods 
of rapid change. 

Problems develop at points of strain caused by social lags. A 
social lag covers the period of time elapsing between the emerg- 
ence of a social need and the widespread establishment of pro- 
visions for its satisfaction. Thus the general use of the truck as a 
means of transporting freight causes a social need to emerge in 
the area of railroad transportation; a lag exists until provisions 
to meet that need are made by the managers of the railroads, 
the Interstate Commerce Commission, Congress, and other re- 





sponsible agents. Social lags produce strains; these strains pro- 
duce problems; e. g., losses to bond- and stockholders, inefh- 
ciency in railway transportation, and depression in heavy indus- 
tries manufacturing railroad equipment. ; 

Cultural lags are caused by scarcity of compensating invention 
in social arrangements, conflicting interests, lack of accurate 
social information, the power of social inertia, and the failure of 


education. 

The elimination of social lags is complicated in a specialized in- 
terdependent culture by the need for planning and centralized 
responsibility. If such planning and responsibility are lacking, 
the relief of a specific lag or a whole pattern of lags may be 
delayed because that relief may not be the responsibility of any 
individual or group with a sensitivity to the public interest. In an 
effort to remedy this situation many nations have developed 
large-scale plans of social control designed to direct social change 
intelligently and in coérdination with technological changes. Yet 
this centralized planning immediately raises the problem of the 
relation of the individual to the state, a problem fundamental in 
a democracy. While many nations—Russia, Germany, Japan, 
and Italy—seem to have achieved success in reducing unemploy- 
ment and increasing production by large-scale plans, there has 





1939] ProcEEDINGs OF SAN FrANcisco CONVENTION 47 


been an accompanying loss of civil liberties. Furthermore, in 
Germany, Italy, and Japan, unemployment has been reduced 
through the production of armaments used to destroy the peace 
of the world; these nations have glorified war as an instrument 
of social policy and national aggrandizement. While it seems 
inevitable that the people of the United States must accept in- 
creased public planning and social control, eternal vigilance must 
be exercised if civil liberties are to be maintained and peace 
preserved. e 


The opportunities for planning in contemporary culture can be 
properly appraised only on the basis of insight into the role of 
science and invention in our culture and the anticipation of prob- 
able future trends. 


The intelligent control of change depends, in the final analysis, 
on forces which operate not in the abstract culture itself but 
rather as creative and active agents in individuals. This fact 
constitutes a challenge to social studies teachers. To meet that 
challenge, the needs of adolescents in social-civic relationships 
must be satisfied in ways that will enable them to become more 
sensitive, creative, and responsible citizens. 


These generalizations are based on contributions from all the social 
sciences: anthropology, history, geography, sociology, and economics all 
offer data relating to an understanding of social change. The social studies 
teacher should guide adolescents into the uses of this material. But the 
task is not ended there, for these data should be supplemented by an in- 
vestigation of social change and attempts at social control in the school, the 
local community, and state. Reports of local, state, and national research 
and planning agencies should be utilized. Such private research groups 
as the Brookings Institution, the American Academy of Political and Social 
Science, and many others also have many excellent reports on this problem. 
Attempts at social planning and control in England, Italy, Russia, Ger- 
many, Mexico, etc., should also be examined. The whole orbit of activi- 
ties should contribute to this understanding. 

2. Understanding the Effects of Scientific Progress on Social Trends 

in Western Culture. 

This understanding involves the application of the principles of social 
continuity and social change just discussed to the evolution of our own 
culture. This application follows the same general pattern just used in 
discussing these principles but is directed specifically toward developing 
understandings related to Western European culture. It involves answers 
to such questions as: What are the motivating forces of change in Western 
culture? Why,is Western culture changing so rapidly? What maladjust- 








| October 





48 NationaL AssocIATION OF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PRINCIPALS 






ments have appeared in Western culture? How can these maladjustments 





be corrected? 

The following statements represent answers which are merely tenta- 
tive and suggestive. Each adolescent should carefully examine the evolu- 
tion of our culture under the guidance of the social studies teacher and 
attempt to reach his own conclusions concerning these basic issues. The 
desire of the adolescent to identify himself with broad social movements 
will be a strong motivating factor in such an investigation. 

(1) Abbut four hundred years ago a powerful force began to oper- 
ate in Western culture. This force was the scientific method of 
thinking which was produced by a belief in man’s ability to solve 
his own problems. It relied upon both inductive and deductive 
thought processes and stressed the importance of open-minded- 
ness, delayed judgment, careful research, and controlled experi- 



















mentation. 

(2) The scientific method of thinking has greatly changed man’s 
conceptions of the universe, of the earth, of social institutions, 
and of his own worth and importance. 

(3) As a result of its use, many additions have been made to the 
material base of Western culture. So great were these additions, 
indeed, that the commercial, agricultural, and industrial revo- 
lutions were produced. Some historians now speak of second 
and third industrial revolutions and of the power, age. 

(4) Changes in the material culture were followed by changes in 
social arrangements and ideologies. Through the centuries, the 
local economy of the Middle Ages, the manorial village and the 
guild, disappeared; the modern city and modern culture ap- 
peared with the factory, the corporation, and the labor union; 
banks, stock markets, and other credit agencies achieved enor- 
mous importance; feudalism slowly gave way to the national 
state, monarchy, and democracy; the doctrines of the church 
concerning economic life were drastically altered; extreme gov- 
ernment regulation gave way to free competition and /aissez- 



























faire, etc. 
(5) But as the material base became larger, the tempo of change 
increased so rapidly that great incodrdination tended to develop 
between the relative rates of change in various phases of our 
culture. Since the scientific method of thought was most readily 
applied to physical problems, the tools and techniques of eco- 
nomic life changed most rapidly. The dominance of the self- 
sufficient farm and rural community with their large dependence 
on hand and muscle, and their need for rugged individuals with 
varied work abilities, was successfully challenged by the special- 


























49 





1939] ProcEEDINGs oF SAN Francisco CoNvENTION 








ized, mechanized, interdependent factory system operating 
within an urban environment and demanding more associational 
activities and centralized planning. The phases of our culture 
more removed from physical problems, those in such areas as the 
government, the family, the school, and the church tended, on 
the one hand, to make adaptions more slowly, and in some 
areas the power of social inertia resisted all change. 

(6) This unequal rate of change between various phases of our cul- 
ture has produced areas of lag, at which have developed points 
of stress and strain intensifying social maladjustments and criti- 
ca! problems; e. g., unemployment, crime, insecurity, divorce, etc. 
While some of these problems have persisted in human history, 
their prevalence and cruciality are characteristics of our era. 

(7) Efforts to solve these problems have brought conflicts; e. g., the 
struggles between individual ownership and the large corpora- 
tion, between home-owned and chain stores, between trade and 
industrial unions, the conflict of freedom and control in agricul- 
ture and business, of localization and centralization in govern- 
ment, of fundamentalism and liberalism in religion, and the 
like. 

(8) The insecurity and conflicts which result from the strains and 
stresses produced by social maladjustments have a disintegrating 
effect upon individual personalities and produce widespread 
neuroses, psychoses, suicide, and war. 

(9) Many social scientists have pointed out that insecurity and con- 
flict have created a great need in our culture to-day. Our culture 
urgently requires creative thinking and codperative activity 
directed toward the efficient utilization of science and technology 
in meeting individual and group needs. Only thus can we 
achieve the values inherent in the American concept of the 
democratic way of life within the framework produced by the 
basic trends in our evolving culture. Creative intelligence must 
be applied to the solution of the critical problems and the re- 
solving of the basic conflicts in our society. This intelligence, 
in a democracy, should not spring from a single individual or 
an elite group; rather, it should be the product of the great mass 
of American citizens aided and guided by the insights and 
abilities developed by public education. 

Americans have long been proud of their increasing control over the 
natural environment. They have pointed with satisfaction to their large 
cities with towering skyscrapers, to their great dams and irrigation proj- 
ects, to their thousands of miles of railways and highways, and to their 
bridges which span great rivers. The whole progress of Western man from 














50 Nationa Association oF Seconpary-ScHoot Principats — | October 













savagery to civilization in Europe and America has been in terms of 
greater control of the food supply, of the temperature, of distance, and of 
disease. Man no longer pleads with recalcitrant magical powers that he 


may live at all; he is now able to plan for his future. 








The next great task is to prevent the tremendous social wastes of 
present-day society. The achievement of that task requires a better codr- 
dination between science and the controlling social arrangements and in- 
stitutions. Such coérdination can come only with the use of the ability 
to think and to choose in the social field. As long as man followed rather 
automatically the path laid down by a homogeneous culture, his contribu- 










tion was largely anonymous and, as far as he was concerned, accidental. 
With heterogeneity and the mastery of scientific techniques of thought, it 
is possible to place one social form and one social solution beside another, 
to develop discrimination, and at last to have the dignity of choice in the 
social field. This opportunity for choice is the very essence of democracy. 
Social studies teachers should aid adolescents in gaining insight both into 
the contributions of science to our material well-being and into the need 
of applying the techniques of science to the solution of our social problems. 

















Adolescents may gain insight into the effects of scientific progress 
on social trends in our culture through an examination of social processes 
and problems in the school and community. It is important that they 
come to see such processes and problems as part of a whole, complex 
cultural pattern which is widely extended in both time and _ space. 
This will require the use of data from history and the other social 
sciences and an emphasis upon the importance of underlying principles 
and processes. The consideration of data and principles, however, can- 
not be effectively separated. Hence, understanding of the nature of 
social change in general and understanding of social change in our culture 
in particular should go together. Through attention to the life of their 
own schools and communities, as well as through an investigation of social 
change in our culture, adolescents will be able to gain insights into the 
general nature of social continuity and social change and thereby attain 
a group of general operating principles. Yet in order that adolescents may 
exercise intelligent choice in relation to social-civic participation rather 
than be at the mercy of the forces of controlled opinion in our culture, 


























it is necessary that social studies teachers should guide youth in under- 
standing such potential enemies of reason as propaganda, symbolism, and 







mass organization as agencies of social control. 
3. Understanding Propaganda, Symbolism, and Mass Organization 
as Agencies of Social Control and as Potential Enemies of Reason. 
Propaganda is the use of emotional symbols to achieve unthinking 
reactions in social situations. It may be intentional or unintentional, and 
its intentional use is to be deplored because of its encouragement of irra- 














1939] ProcEEDINGs OF SAN FRANcIsco CoNVENTION 51 


tionality. It may be true or untrue, but it is always biased in that it seeks 
to channel action in a predetermined direction. It may have good or bad 
consequences, but its use is dangerous, for propagandists often, consciously 
or unconsciously, achieve their ends through distorting, falsifying, and 
suppressing data. 

Propaganda has increased in extent and effectiveness because of: the 
increase in social maladjustments, problems, and conflicts; the increase in 
scientific knowledge concerning the human organism and its reactions; 
improvements in such technical processes as printing, photo-engraving, and 
the like; the development of such mass agencies of communication as the 
modern newspaper and periodical, the cinema, and the radio; and increas- 
ing specialization in education which causes even the most intelligent indi- 
viduals to be unable to evaluate data and ideas in many areas. 

Adolescents should be brought to understand these factors causing 
the growth of propaganda and to analyze the means and methods propa- 
gandists use. As propaganda becomes more widely used as an agency of 
social manipulation and control it is essential, for intelligent social-civic 
relationships, that adolescents be immunized against it through being 
helped to understand its nature and techniques. 

Some pedagogues have recommended the deliberate use of propaganda 
techniques in the schools as a basis for establishing essential values and 
loyalties. This is a most dangerous expedient, for loyalties established by 
propaganda can easily be distorted and changed by propaganda. While 
propaganda rests primarily upon emotion, education should stress reliance 
upon intelligence. We should therefore unequivocally oppose the adoption 
of propaganda methods in the schools. This does not mean, however, that 
education should neglect the emotional aspect of the personality. Obviously 
such education is impossible, because every reaction has an emotional 
tone. It does mean, however, that adolescents should learn to satisfy their 
emotionally felt needs through a rational process. It means that, whenever 
possible, emotion should be a force under the direction of insight and in- 
telligence rather than a stimulus to behavior consequent upon the impact 
of unreasoned symbols and attitudes. 

Emotionalized symbols are the basis of propaganda. Powerful indi- 
viduals and pressure groups increasingly use these in controlling mass 
action. Such actions, signs, words, and phrases as the clenched fist, the 
raised arm, the hammer and sickle, “J/ Duce,” “Der Fuehrer,” “hundred 
per cent Americanism,” “the New Deal,” and even the Church, the Home, 
and the Constitution are used in an effort to develop positive or negative 
reactions to individuals, groups, or nations. Even a cursory examination of 
political and economic addresses, newspaper and magazine articles, adver- 
tisements, and posters will demonstrate how widely emotionalized symbols 
are used as substitutes for fact and reason. By parade, mass meeting, radio, 








52 NationaL Association oF SECcONDARY-ScHOOL Principats [October 









picture, and poster, by speech, color, rhythm and form, pressures are 
brought to bear constantly upon the individual in an effort to achieve auto- 
matic, emotional responses to social issues and situations. Thus symbols 
are used to drive us to hate, to love, and even to die. 


These symbols are usually employed in such way as to discourage 
reason and to provoke unthinking action. Therefore, it is important that 
adolescents learn to recognize and to appraise these catalytic agents of 
modern society. The use of verbal symbols, however, is essential to logic 
and reason. There is to-day no more important phase of social-civic educa- 
tion than that related to the understanding of emotionalized symbols and 
the ability to react to them intelligently rather than unthinkingly. 

Mass Organizations. As insecurity and conflict increase in our culture, 
there is an increased reliance on mass organizations as a means of achiev- 
ing social-civic aims. In recent years Europe has witnessed the rise of the 
communist, the fascist, and the Nazi movements. In our country business, 
labor, the farmer, the veterans, and many other groups have organized 
on a mass basis. Especially during the depression of 1929-1933 was this 
trend pronounced. In a short period of time Huey Long, Father Coughlin 
and Doctor Townsend were able to attract thousands of followers held 
together largely through propaganda techniques utilizing emotionalized 
symbols. Increasingly, mass organizations are used in the effort to achieve 
economic, political, and cultural aims. Powerful lobbies exert great influ- 
ence on local, state, and national governments; national business and labor 
organizations often wage bitter warfare; patriotic pressure groups seek to 
control civic education; and movements are organized to dominate, if 
possible, almost every phase of social-civic life. It is important that ado- 
lescents should understand and should be able to evaluate intelligently 
these mass organizations which seek to wield such tremendous power in 
social-civic relationships. 

The evaluation of mass organizations is of crucial importance to social- 
civic participation because of the interdependent, centralized, and imper- 
sonal nature of our culture, which, as a matter of fact, requires mass or- 
ganization for effective social action. Hence, adolescents should analyze 
various types of organizations and should participate directly in those 
which are furthering through the employment of proper methods, purposes 
that are deemed desirable. 

C. Resources for Developing Ability to Select, Evaluate, and Serve 

as Social-Civic Leaders. 

The importance of social organization and the needs of the adolescent 
together focus major attention upon the problem of leadership. The suc- 
cess of social organization is determined by the creative and codperative 
ability of the members of the group and by the democracy, unselfishness, 
and effectiveness of those chosen to assume leadership and to act as repre- 

































































1939) ProcEEDINGsS OF SAN Francisco CoNvENTION 53 


sentatives. The needs of the adolescent for social participation and for rec- 
ognition of his own worth stimulate intense interest in leadership: in his 
relationships with his own and the opposite sex he desires to prove his 
worth by the ability to lead in various situations and to choose others who 
will prove effective leaders. But in our rapidly changing, interdependent, 
and specialized culture, the development of the ability to lead and the wise 
choice of leaders become increasingly difficult. As social life becomes more 
complex, the area appropriate for direct decision narrows and greater reli- 
ance must be placed on trained experts. Hence there is an increasing neces- 
sity for training in the use of intelligence in the selection of leaders. 

The development of ability to lead should have more flexibie results 
than is common at present, and that flexibility can be attained only through 
the training of adolescents in direct participation in leadership. 

Leaders should be selected in relation to qualities required for suc- 
cess in carrying out the enterprise for which leadership is needed. After 
broad policies and forms of organization are determined, criteria should 
be set up for successful leadership in carrying them out. Adolescents in 
social studies classes should, therefore, have opportunities for both selecting 
and being leaders in various types of social-civic enterprises.. There has 
been in the school too great a tendency for the same individual to assume 
leadership in all situations. This is a dangerous policy for a democracy, 
for democracy requires the development of a pattern of leadership. The 
same individual should be a leader at one time and a follower at another 
as determined by his unique potentialities for contributions to group wel- 
fare. Social studies classes should be set up in such a way as to promote 
practice in such a pattern of leadership. Each individual should be en- 
couraged to use his talents in group leadership when the situation is such 
as to require his special contribution. 

Effective social-civic participation also requires individuals in our cul- 
ture to have adequate techniques for evaluating the success of leadership. 
Democracy requires a periodic accounting by leaders of progress made. 
Adolescents should, therefore, have opportunities for practice in evaluat- 
ing the success of leaders in group enterprises. This practice can be pro- 
vided in social studies classes by a critical and sympathetic appraisal of 
leaders within the school. Moreover, direct attention can be given to the 
appraisal of the success of historical and contemporary leaders in the 
community, state, nation, and world. Appraisals of local leadership in 
small communities may also be made with, of course, care and tact. Always 
it must be remembered also that evaluating of all leaders should not be on 
the basis of emotional reaction to charm or eloquence but rather on analy- 
sis of their individual capabilities and their value for the attainment of 
democratic ideals. 

The need of adolescents for responsible participation and social recog- 








54 Nationat Association oF Seconpary-ScHoot Principats — | October 


nition of their success in such activities can be best satisfied only through 
social participation itself. A framework of loyalties, and values, a large 
degree of conceptualization related to our evolving culture, and many basic 
social abilities and techniques are required, but all these may be most 
effectively developed through social participation. Hence responsible shar- 
ing in socially significant activities in the crux of social-civic education. 
Educative individual and group activities can well be centered around 
problems which are socially significant and which at the same time have 
direct concern for the adolescent. Such activities meet the basic needs of 
adolescents in this area and contribute to developing the desirable charac- 
teristics of behavior necessary to the achievement of democratic values. 


The problem of the social studies teacher in the area of social-civic 
relationships is to provide opportunities for maximum participation in 
socially significant activities and to see that proper recognition for such 
activity is given and received. Social participation in the area of social- 
civic relationships should be in terms of common interests and purposes; 
it should be directed toward achievements of concern to the adolescents 
who are involved. 

A. Utilizing Community Resources 

The adolescent’s need for socially significant participation is greatly 
hampered by conditions in our culture. Youth no longer gradually shares 
more and more in the activities of the wider community as a normal part 
of his growth in maturity. It is imperative in our culture, therefore, that 
educational statesmanship should devise techniques for student participa- 
tion in socially significant activities. Adolescents need socially significant 
participation and social recognition; democratic communities need the 
creative thought and coéperative activities of youth in overcoming current 
social-civic maladjustments. As Paul Hanna says: “To coérdinate these 
two mighty resources—to harness the energy of youth to the task of pro- 
gressively improving conditions of community life—that is the supreme 
challenge to educational and social statesmanship.” 

One of the most fertile areas of social participation of the student is 
the local community, whether it is a small rural village or a great metropo- 
lis. The family, the school, and the adolescent are all inevitably involved 
in the social-civic relations of that community. Any concerns and tensions 
which adolescents have concerning broader social-civic relations usually 
take their frame of reference from social-civic conditions in the local com- 
munity. Hence, the community offers one of the most fruitful means of 
developing social-civic competence through the meeting of adolescent 
needs. The concerns of adolescents in relation to the social conditions in 
their community may be used as a point of departure from which to ex- 
pand, deepen, and enrich social-civic concerns related to the major problems 
of the state, nation, and world, Most social-civic inquiries can, indeed, 





1939] ProcEEeDINcs OF SAN Francisco CoNVENTION 55 


begin with a consideration of the situation in the local community, then 
broaden to a consideration of the problem in the expanding community, 
state, nation, and world, and, finally, return to apply the results of the 
inquiry to conditions in the local community with an eye toward improving 
those conditions. 

The study of the community also offers excellent opportunities for 
that conceptualization of social-civic processes which is so essential to ef- 
fective social participation in the larger culture. Such phenomena as unem- 
ployment, banking, taxation, exchange, sanitation, and the like can best be 
comprehended through direct experience. The best point of departure for 
the understanding of both historical and contemporary social, economic, 
political, and cultural life is through observation of, and participation in, 
community activities. In these activities the adolescent is already deeply 
involved; he sees mirrored in them all his greatest concerns regarding 
work, marriage, achievement, and recognition; and they offer him an op- 
portunity to try his hand and to prove his worth to parents, friends, and 
rivals. Through these involvements and concerns, the adolescent can be 
guided to his social-civic needs in ways which will promote the growth 
of desirable characteristics of behavior. 

B. Bridging the Gap Between Soctal-Civic Relationships in Local 

Community, and in State, Region, Nation, and World. 

The experience of the adolescent in social-civic relationships should 
not be confined to the community alone. Our culture is so inextricably 
interdependent that the social life of the community itself can be un- 
derstood only in relationship to its involvements in a cultural web 
whose strands encompass a world complex. Besides the connection of 
the local community, there is another good reason for avoiding atten- 
tion to the geographical locality to the exclusion of the wider society. 
With increasing mobility of population and consequently enhanced cul- 
tural contacts, the chances are that the majority of adolescents in any com- 
munity will make their way as adults to places far removed from the 
locale of their youth. The adolescent of to-day will in the future make deci- 
sions which will inevitably affect people in all parts of the world; the 
decisions of people in other parts of the world will have tremendous 
effects upon the lives of adolescents; hence, youth should have insights 
into nature of the world culture which is emerging as a result of the 
expansion of the industrial revolution from its original centers in Europe 
and America to far-flung peripheries in all corners of the globe. 

Nor should the insights of the adolescent be confined to the con- 
temporary scene. Culture is never static, even during periods of slowest 
change; culture is always dynamic, in a process of continuous change 
through the interaction of human beings with their environment. The 
present is the most transitory factor in the process of living. Individuals 
























56 Nationat AssociATION OF SECONDARY-ScHOOL Principats — [October 


bring to any present situation not only their own life history, but also 
the life history of their culture insofar as they are a part of it. All indi- 
viduals also act to some extent in relation to a future which they strive 
to anticipate and to influence. Hence, both human beings and the cul- 
ture of which they are a part are in a process of continuous change 
flowing from a partially known past to a largely unknown future. In 
meeting the problems of the present and endeavoring to improve the 
living conditions of the present and the future, the intelligent individual 
must utilize, as much as he can, the past experiences of mankind. As has 
been said: “History is to the race what memory is to the individual.” 
Hence in guiding adolescents to meet their needs in social-civic relation- 
ships, the social studies teacher should provide opportunities for them to 
utilize the richest experiences of mankind as they relate to the problems 
of the present and future. Adolescents should gain insights into the 
nature of our evolving culture—its past, its present, and its probable future 
trends. These insights must, however, have direct application to activi- 
ties which adolescents themselves deem important, for in no other way 
can data and ideas have true meaning for the adolescent. 

In guiding the adolescent to gain experiences related to the expanding 
community, state, region, and nation both direct and vicarious materials 
should be used. Such problems may be investigated as: How is my 
community related to other communities? How has the interdependence 
of my community with other communities increased in recent years? 
What have been the factors contributing to increased interdependence? 
What advantages have emerged from increased interdependence? What 
disadvantages? What does my community contribute to the state, na- 
tion, and world in social-civic relationships? What do other parts of 
the state, nation, and world contribute to the well-being of the people in 
my community? How do my social-civic activities affect state, national, 
and world conditions? How do the social-civic activities of people in 
other places affect my well-being? 

In investigating the expanding community, state, nation, and world, 
all types of materials should be utilized, including: people; excursions; 
the radio; cinema; periodicals; newspapers; reports of social-civic inves- 
tigations; data from economics, political science, scoiology, anthropology, 
geography, history, and the like; pamphlets; books of all types; atlases; 
statistical abstracts; etc. In order to meet needs in social-civic relation- 
ships, however, it is advisable always to begin with conditions in the 
local community or area with which the group are familiar and to expand 
from those as points of departure. Furthermore, while broader im- 
plications and backgrounds are being explored, it is important that con- 
tinuous consideration be given to the meaning of the wider insight gained 
for the on-going life of the adolescent in his immediate environment. 








1939] ProceEeDINcs OF SAN Francisco CoNVENTION 57 


I now wish to indicate how social studies teachers can guide the 
experiences of adolescents in meeting their social-civic needs so that an 
appreciation and understanding of democracy as it has traditionally oper- 
ated and is now operating in American culture is likely to emerge. This 
appreciation and understanding applies of course to all areas of basic 
relationships, but it is particularly pertinent to the social-civic area because 
democracy first emerged in America as a socio-political conception and 
has more recently been formulated as an ideal in more personal relations 
and in economic life. The study of it as a concept is naturally a part of 
the social-civic area, and that area has rich resources related to understand- 
ing and appreciating democracy both as a framework of values and as a 
method of group action. Though the basic democratic documents of the 
world are largely political and the finest expressions of democratic prin- 
ciples have usually been enunciated for political purposes, it is apparent 
that, as political activity becomes more closely interwoven with economic 
and social activity and as the American people struggle to extend the 
democratic conception to all areas of life, there is an increasing necessity 
for adolescents to form all their social-civic loyalties and relationships in 


harmony with democratic values. 


Democratic values can be developed best through direct participation 
in experiences in the school and community where real problems may be 


met and democratically solved. Nevertheless, in furthering the develop- 
ment of concepts which will lead to understanding broader applications 
of democratic values, data from American and world history will be 
helpful. The use of these data, to be effective, must be directly focused 
upon the development and application of democratic values and ideals in 
the United States and other nations of the world. Adolescents should 
develop a reasoned conviction of the desirability of democracy and should 
master techniques for making democracy function effectively under the 
conditions of contemporary cultural realities. 

As has been indicated earlier democracy involves these irreducible 

elements: 

(1) A respect for the individual as of unique worth and as possess- 
ing potentialities to which no absolute limits can be assigned: 
as Thomas Mann has said, “We must define democracy as 
that form of government and of society which is inspired above 
every other with the feeling and conciousness of the dignity 
of man.” 

Acceptance of the fact that we are all inescapably related to 
and aflected by other individuals; that man is a social animal; 
and 

A belief in reasonable procedures as the only proper and 























58 Nationa Association or SeconpAry-ScHoot Principats — [October 


workable way of getting along together, of resolving internal 
difficulties, and for promoting the general welfare. 

These elements imply a rich congeries of values which have signi- 
ficance for social-civic relations. Every adolescent should have oppor- 
tunities to define these values through direct participation in democratic 
living and through a careful investigation of the historical development 
of the democratic ideal. 

Democratic values should aid the adolescent in developing a con- 
ception of his function and purpose in relation to the social-civic activities 
in America. One of the most pressing challenges to American education 
is the necessity of guiding adolescents in developing a philosophy under 
which they can feel that they are needed; that they have a part to play. 
European nations are able to present to their post-war generations pictures 
of national honor and a fatherland threatened from without. To offer 
our youth the narrow nationalism of these European nations would be 
incompatible with democratic ideals. Our youth, however, can be offered 
the much greater opportunity of sharing in the on-going effort to work 
out despite contemporary difficulties, the experiment of democratic living 
which was begun with the colonization of America. 

The present generation must cope with the problems resulting from 
the speed, the lack of planning, and the extraordinary contradictions and 
contrasts of our development. Our generation has the opportunity to 
shape our future history, to decide whether America with her unique 
geographical position and wealth of resources and with her common lan- 
guage and a beginning of common understandings is to become a society 
which masters technological change instead of being mastered by it. 

The very continuance of any measure of progress rests upon the ability 
of generations living and to come. This situation is especially challeng- 
ing in America at the present time when, as Charles A. Beard says, “The 
people of this country are engaged in no mere political experiment, as 

often imagined, but are attempting to build a civilization in a new 
natural setting, along original lines, with science and machinery as their 


great instrumentalities of work.” 


A. The Organization of an Inquiry Directed Toward An Under- 
standing and Appreciation of the Role of Democracy in Social- 
Civic Relations. 


The techniques involved in developing an understanding and appre- 
ciation of American democracy may be illustrated by an investigation of 
the question, “What is the nature of American democracy?” 

This investigation might be carried forward by a group of adoles- 
cents in a course in American history, civics, or problems of American 





























59 


1939] Procerpincs oF SAN Francisco ConvENTION 





democracy. The problem might be raised in the class with reference to 
problems in class relationships, student government in the school, a strike 
in the local community, some problem in national government, e.g., the 
attempt to change the structure of the Supreme Court or to reorganize 
the executive branch of the government, or it might arise from some situa- 
tion in Europe such as the Munich conference or the war in Spain. 

When the class group feels the need for investigating such a problem, 
the first step is to discuss evidences of the problem in the immediate situa- 
tion. In the case of the investigation of democracy, one might begin by 
analyzing evidences of the presence or absence of democracy in the school 
and local community. As the group begins to get a conception of the 
nature of the problem some analysis should be made of the salient aspects 
of the larger problem which are important for the group to consider. 
For example, in investigating the nature of democracy it might be decided 
by the group to pursue such questions as: 

(1) What #s democracy? Why is an understanding of its meaning 

important? 

(2) What are some evidences of democratic processes and living 
in the school? Community? State? Nation? World? 

(3) How did democracy become established in the modern world? 
How did science contribute to the development of democracy? 
How did capitalism contribute to the development of demo- 
cracy? What is the concept of natural law? The social con- 
tract? The rights of man? 

(4) What contributions did the revolutions in England, America, 
France and other countries in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and 
nineteenth centuries contribute to the development of democ- 
racy? 

(5) What outstanding statesmen and political theorists have con- 
tributed to the development of the democratic conception of 
life? How did they do so? 

(6) What have been the crucial documents contributing to the 
development of democracy? How did they do so? 

(7) What artists, poets, architects, musicians, essayists, novelists, 
philosophers, and others have contributed to the development 
of democracy? How? 

(8) How has the conception of democracy changed during the 
past two hundred years? To what factors may these changes 
be attributed? 

(9) What attacks have been made on democracy in recent years? 
What competing conceptions of democracy are there in America 
and in the world to-day. Compare the conceptions of the 
democracy of the Republican Party, the Communist Party, the 




















60 Nationat Association oF Seconpary-ScHoot Principars [October 


(10) 
(11) 


(12) 


Socialist Party, the Democratic Party, the United States Cham- 
ber of Commerce, and the labor unions. How have such 
individuals as George W. Norris, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin 
D. Roosevelt, Alfred M. Landon, Glenn Frank, Huey Long, 
Walter Lippmann, Father Coughlin, and Dr. Francis E. Towns- 
end interpreted democracy? 

What are the essential ideals of democracy as a process of 
government? As a way of life? 

How does democracy differ from Oligarchy? Monarchy? 
Theocracy? Despotism? Fascism? Communism? 

What can one do in order to live more democratically? How 
can democratic living be achieved in our school? Community? 
State? Nation? How can democracy best compete with the 
alternative systems of values with which it is struggling for 


dominance in the modern world? 


During the progress of the inquiry such activities as the following 


might be utilized: 
Investigating Activities: 


(1) 


(2) 


(3) 
(4) 


(5) 


(6) 


(7) 


(8) 


(9) 


An analysis might be made of democratic living in the school, 
as it applies to: relations between students and teachers; relations 
between individual students; and student participation in school 
activities, such as government, social activities, sports, and the 
like. 

An analysis might be made of democratic activities in the com- 
munity, in the state, and in the nation, as related to: social or- 
ganizations; making a living; recreation; justice; interracial 
relations; government; and the like. 

Excursions might be made to the city council, the jail, the 
courtroom, the polls, political meetings, and the like. 

Interviews might be obtained with public officials, laborers, 
people of different races, politicians, and the like. 

Political leaders, club leaders, business leaders, labor leaders, 
and the like might be brought into the classroom for speeches 
and discussion. 

Political platforms, speeches, court records, public documents, 
etc., might be analyzed. 

The radio might be used for listening to speeches of political 
leaders, certain Congressional activities, speeches of business and 
labor leaders, and to such programs as the Town Meeting of 
the Air, the University of Chicago Round Table, etc. 
Newspaper reports of various types of activities might be 
utilized. Magazine articles may often prove helpful. 
Statistics related to voting, distribution of purchasing power, 





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61 


1939] ProcEEDINGS OF SAN FRANcIsco CONVENTION 


racial groups, and the like might be analyzed to check politi- 
cal participation, economic opportunity, etc. 

(10) Books of all types, encyclopedia articles, and pamphlets should 
be read and analyzed. 


Culminating Activities: 
(1) Conclusions related to the meaning of democracy might be 


creatively expressed in pictures, cartoons, poems, essays, short 
stories, plays, music, etc. 

Panel and round table discussions, debates, and oral reports 
might be held in the classroom and in school assembly. 
Speakers might go before young people’s groups, women’s 
clubs, service clubs, and the like and present their conclusions. 
Articles might be written for the school paper, local papers, and 
periodicals. 

Letters might be written to public officials. 

Interviews might be held with community leaders for purpose 
of discussing conclusions. 

Students might participate with citizens’ groups, in community 


forums, etc. 
Recommendations related to school improvements might be 


presented to other classes, to the whole school in assembly, to 


the principal, or to the superintendent. 

(9) Committees might be appointed to make applications to school 

or community practices or to continue further study. 

When the group feels that it has arrived at an adequate conception 
of democratic values and processes, the members should re-examine the 
immediate school and community situations in order to apply their 
conclusions, to make recommendations, and to carry forward activities 
which are designed to improve democratic living in their immediate en- 
vironment. 

In meeting adolescent needs for effective social participation and social 
recognition in social-civic relationships, care should be taken that the 
adolescent develops the desirable characteristics of behavior necessary in 
the achievement of democratic values. He should be guided in meeting 
his needs in social-civic relationships in such ways as to develop social 
sensitivity, tolerance, codperativeness, self-direction, esthetic appreciation, 
creativeness, and reflective thinking. 

One of the major tasks of social studies teachers in the social-civic 
area is to guide the adolescent in increasing his social sensitivity so that he 
will be: aware of and concerned about the social-civic problems of our cul- 
ture; sensitive to the effects of his own social-civic actions on others; 
willing to act — against his own immediate interests if need be — for 
the welfare of others in social-civic relationships; convinced that social- 




















62 Nationat AssociaATION OF SECONDARY-ScHOOL Principats [October 


civic problems can be solved through the use of intelligence; and possessed 
of the tendency and ability to consider all the human values involved in 
social-civic activities. 

Social sensitivity can be developed only by active participation in 
social-civic activities. There is, in our culture, too great a tendency to 
put the responsibility for thought and action on others. The apathy of 
citizens in the face of political corruption and civic responsibilities has 
been one of the banes of democracy. It is not enough to be sensitive to 
evils; one must have — and yield to—the impulse to do something intel- 
ligent to remedy them. Unwillingness to assume social-civic responsibility 
leads toward authoritarian forms of government. Adolescents, who are 
prone to accept high ideals and to desire group activity can readily be 
guided into seizing opportunities for social participation if the opportunity 
is provided. Such opportunities can be provided through a consideration 
of the problems of social living in the home, school, and local community. 
Informal social relationships in the school provide excellent opportunities 
for developing social sensitivity and for taking intelligent social action. 
In the study of civilizations and broader social problems the extended 
effects of individual activity can be traced. 

Experiences in social-civic relationships should also be guided in ways 
that will promote political, economic, racial, and religious tolerance. The 
study of the local community, of social-civic problems, and of the cultures 
of other peoples will enable adolescents to enter sympathetically into the 
lives of others and to appreciate their beliefs, activities, and points of view. 
Intolerance is based upon ignorance, bigotry, and selfishness; it can be 
changed into tolerance through understanding and the development of 
social sensitivity. It should be recognized, however, that tolerance of the 
ways and beliefs of others does not imply lack of effective convictions with 
respect to the behavior and beliefs suitable to one’s self in one’s own situa- 
tion. 

Team work should be stressed in the social-civic as in other areas so as 
to promote codperativeness. Codperativeness develops when people have 
opportunities to participate successfully with others in the carrying out of 
common projects and in the achievement of common purposes and values. 
Of course, activities should be so guided as to promote the maximum self- 
direction on the part of individuals and groups. In the pursuit of in- 
quiries related to social-civic relationships, adolescents should have oppor- 
tunities self-dependently to locate information, execute activities, and take 
responsibility for results. 

The use of reflective thinking is a desirable characteristic of behavior 
that should be particularly stressed in the social-civic area. The use of re- 
flective thinking has been emphasized in progressive mathematics and 
science instruction. This is commendable; there is, however, an even 











1939) ProcEEDINGs OF SAN FRANcIsco CoNVENTION 63 


greater need for the use of reflective thinking with regard to social-civic 
relationships. We are becoming habituated to the application of reflective 
thought to the problems of our physical environment while still relying 
upon traditional, prejudiced, and unreasoned emotional responses in social 
relationships. This has been one of the main reasons for the increases in 
social lag and for the consequent intensification of social maladjustment. 
Hence, it is vital that adolescents learn to learn reflective thinking in 
attacking social-civic problems. 

Reflective thinking can be applied to social-civic problems. The tech- 
niques of the historian, the sociologist, the economist, and the geographer 
offer clues to the social studies teacher. Reflective thinking in the social- 
civic as in other areas requires the recognition, analysis, and definition of 
the problem; the collection, evaluation, and organization of relevant data; 
and the formulation, verification, and application of conclusions. Social 
studies instruction should be so directed as to provide for maximum ex- 
perience in these thought processes. 

The place of the arts in expressing and achieving social-civic ideals 
should also be stressed. The use of the arts, however, should not remain 
entirely on the level of esthetic appreciation, but should include opportu- 
nities for creative expression in drawing, painting, writing, speaking, and 
the like as well. 

Growth in effectiveness in social-civic relationships, as in all life ac- 
tivities, depends upon continuous experience. As adolescents are offered 
opportunities in the social studies classroom to meet their need for respon- 
sible participation in socially significant activities and to achieve social 
recognition, they will be aided in developing the desirable characteristics of 
behavior required for the maximum growth of personality, the fullest 
sharing of purposes and values, and the widest application of intelligence 
to the problems of social-civic life. 


The address by Professor Quillen was followed by Carl A. Anderson, 
Principal of Presidio Junior High School, San ‘Francisco, California: 

We who work with junior-high-school girls and boys know that they 
are primarily interested in themselves as individuals at that age. The 
world of government and politics is remote to them. As a general rule 
courses in the social studies are not especially interesting to them. How- 
ever, in our school these courses in government and citizenship took on 
a new meaning due to the fact that a number of Jewish refugee children 
recently enrolled in our school. To these refugee children, government 
had been something vital and probably terrible. The point of view and 
the experiences of these recent arrivals from Europe made government 
and citizenship seem important to our pupils. Our Constitution and the 
Bill of Rights became something vital and precious. The social studies 
became infused with new life and meaning. 











64 Nationat AssociaTION oF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PrincipaLs _ | October 


Nevertheless, our girls and boys of twelve to fifteen years of age 
probably learn citizenship best by living and practising it. The modern 
junior high school is a small democracy in which individual competence 
is developed. The students not only learn to live together in a democratic 
way but they learn to solve their problems co6peratively and democratically. 


Not only is there greater democracy in the classroom but the students also 
have a chance to participate in school government through the various 
student organizations, councils, etc. It is this idea of group responsibility 
for matters of group concern which is the essence of democracy, and the 
schools of to-day are furnishing the opportunity for the pupils to solve 
many of their own problems in this way. 

By combining the theoretical study of government and democracy 
with the actual practice of it in the schools we shall probably make prog- 
ress toward the desired goal. 

Our most important responsibility as educators is to “sell” the idea 
of democracy to the young people of to-day so that they will be filled with 
a zeal and fervor for it—so that they will not allow this precious heritage 


to slip away from them or be lost through negligence or ignorance. 





GENERAL SESSION 
Thursday, July 6, 1939 
2:00 P. M. 


Principal C. W. White of the High School of Commerce, San Fran- 
cisco, California, and the General Chairman of the Summer Convention of 
the National Association of Secondary-School Principals, introduced Dr. 
Milton Chernin, Director of Research of the State Relief Administration of 
California, who, in the absence of Dr. H. Dewey Anderson, Director of 
California State Relief, read Dr. Anderson’s paper on Youth and Unem- 


ployment. 


YOUTH AND UNEMPLOYMENT 


H. Dewey ANDERSON 
Director of California State Relief 


In this talk you are going to hear the word “youth” many times. It 
is a word connoting hope, energy, and the sparkling freshness of new 
vitality. Yet under the economic impact of the last nine years the tradi- 
tionally shining qualities of youth are becoming dulled, the word itself 
has come to represent a problem rather than a period of eager strength. 


The resiliency, the force, the zest are still present in youth, though dammed 
up by economic conditions. It is up to the citizens of this nation and this 
state to break the dams before these vital qualities are dried up and lost. 
As educators you will be in the forefront of this endeavor. 

In California to-day, as well as in the rest of the nation, youth is a 
surplus commodity. We hear much about surplus oranges being dumped 
in rivers, about surplus eggs, milk, flour, cotton, and canned goods. The 
triple A, the Surplus Commodities Corporation and other governmental 
agencies devote millions of dollars to solving these problems. 

But we don’t hear so much about the young people disgorged in 
waves from homes and schools to plunge into a depression world that 
offers to many of them nothing but the old-fashioned cold shoulder. The 
National Youth Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps have 
been set up to help these young boys and girls a little in getting over the 
roughest spots but there is no agency that can assure them permanent jobs 
or even the place in life that American education has led them to expect. 

Youth, that energetic and eager portion of our populatién, is left to 
burn up in its own flame. This is waste of a precious commodity, a com- 
modity that cannot be curtailed or increased at will—a social resource of 
a value impossible to figure in dollars and cents. For in this army of 
young people is the future of our country. Their brains and hands will 
determine the shape of this future. What this shape is to be—whether a 

65 




















66 Nationat AssoctaTION oF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats [October 


newer and brighter civilization, or a back-slide into the stagnant past—de- 
pends on the fate of the youth of to-day. We can mold it as we wish. 

Undoubtedly all of you representing the vast system of public educa- 
tion in the United States have been putting thought to the problem of 
what is happening to all of the youngsters who graduated from high schools 
and colleges this year, wondering how they are getting along in the world 
we have for them to-day. Perhaps you wonder how many of the high- 
school graduates are able to go on to college and continue their education; 
how many of them are finding jobs; or perhaps how many are trudging 
from door to door, leaving applications to be put “on file.” 

In California for the past few months the State Relief Administration 
and the State Department of Education have been making a study to find 
out just what the picture is to-day, and what the future holds for these 
young people who must carry on the burden of our commonwealth. 

We realize that our efforts at this time cannot solve the youth problem, 
cannot deal exhaustively with the vital questions of a group so large, so 
widely distributed, and so heterogeneous. But we do feel that the prac- 
tical study we are making may be of great assistance in the inovement to 
help youth, that it may be the thin end of a wedge in bringing about some 
improvement in conditions. The youth survey we are making is not 
based on theories or ivory tower contemplation. We are endeavoring to 
arrive at a sound and concrete estimate of the situation, based on actual 
conditions, and gathered through thousands of personal interviews and 
questionnaires to business men, community leaders, school officials, leaders 
of organized labor, and young people themselves. We don’t think this 
common sense research is destined for remote library shelves, but for prac- 
tical use in attempting some solution to the problems of youth. 

The California Youth Survey was originally conceived by Dr. Walter 
Dexter, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Dr. Aubry A. Douglass, 
Chief of the Division of Secondary Education, and Dr. H. Dewey Ander- 
son, State Relief Administrator. The survey is being carried on jointly by 
the State Department of Education, Division of Adult and Continuation 
Education, under the direction of Dr. George C. Mann, and by the State 
Relief Administration, Division of Planning and Research. 

The survey is divided into two parts, although the final report will be 
an integrated one, for which both departments will be responsible. Since 
it was felt that a study and evaluation of the educational facilities available 
to California youth and the extent to which they utilize these facilities 
formed in itself a major part of any such study it was agreed that this 
phase should be carried on under the direct supervision of the Department 
of Education. 

The Department of Education has secured the codperation of a large 
number of school departments throughout the state in carrying on a series 












1939) ProcrebDincs oF SAN Francisco ConvENTION 67 


of questionnaire studies, including a follow-up study of graduates of high 
schools and colleges and a study of the activities of high schools, junior 
colleges, colleges, and special schools in California, in the fields of guidance, 
placement and vocational training. 

The State Relief Administration has undertaken the task of gathering 
together all available data on the problem of youth and of intensively 
studying the problem of youth and unemployment. A greater portion 
of this study deals with the two major factors with which youth must 
reckon in its search for employment; mainly, employers and labor organi- 
zations. A carefully designed questionnaire has been sent to approximately 
eight thousand employers in the State and to fifteen hundred labor unions. 

In the field of education representative high-school districts are chosen 
for distribution of the questionnaires, districts that form a complete cross 
section of the make-up of youth. The main divisions are metropolitan 
or big city regions; districts made up of small cities and suburban towns; 
farm and agricultural regions; and areas where two or more of these ele- 
ments are combined. In this way typical sections of California youth are 


reached. 

In order to insure thorough coverage and complete cross-section treat- 
ment questionnaires were distributed to fifth grade pupils in many dis- 
tricts to take home to elder brothers and sisters who fall within the fifteen 
to twenty-four age classification. In other cases hundreds of question- 
naires were sent to night-school groups, although with the realization that 
this section represented perhaps a smaller percentage of youth, not en- 
tirely typical of the youth group as a whole. 

The questionnaires are mailed out with enclosed envelopes for replies. 
Response has been very good, particularly from educational institutions. 
The high percentage of answers from individual young people showed 
the active interest they are taking in their own predicament. 

These questionnaire sheets contain whole series of questions relating 
to youth problems, but in the main are directed toward finding the re- 
lationship between education and work experience. Specific questions 
are on the special education in commercial and vocational fields, the ex- 
periences of youth in seeking employment, and the incomes they receive if 
employment has been found. __ 

First of all we need to specify just who are these youth, what kind ot 
people the term includes. They are young boys and girls aged fifteen to 
twenty-four, preparing themselves to take part in life or already trying to 
take part. This group forms one-sixth of California population—one out 
of six persons is one of these boys or girls I am talking about. This meant 
that on an average every time you walk along the sidewalk and pass six 
people, one of them is a member of this group. Perhaps his face doesn’t 
show the problems he is facing, but they are there, nonetheless. Maybe 














68 Nationat Association oF SECcONDARY-ScHOOL Principats [October 






the next one you see on the street was lucky enough to get a job, or to go 
to college, but he is probably the exception. 

One-sixth of the population means there are 1,110,000 boys and girls 
in this state to-day between the ages of fifteen to twenty-four. No tem- 
porary measures can expunge them from the slate of our business and 








political world. 

A large portion of these 1,110,000 young men and women live in the 
big cities of California—forty-three per cent altogether. Twenty-one per 
cent live in smaller cities. The rest, a significantly large section of thirty- 
six per cent, over one-third, live in small towns and rural sections of the 
state. They all have the common problems of trying to get educations 
and jobs, but the circumstances may be somewhat different between rural 











areas and big cities. 

An overwhelming majority of the youth group is made up of Ameri- 
can citizens. Four-fifths of the number are native born white, and most 
of the members of the negro and other races, a little over twelve per cent 
of the total, were born in this country. A large number of these people 
have already attained the voting age; over one hundred thousand are 
reaching it every year. These general figures are for the state of Cali- 
fornia. Just about the same ratios hold good for the rest of the nation, 
so that California is not alone in its youth problem. I am concentrating 
this talk on the situation in California, as I said, because our studies are 
being carried on here. But all of you here are interested in the problem as 
it affects you, and these remarks, I believe, have a broad and general 




















application to the whole country. 
I can sum up the main problem of youth in a few simple words; they 


can’t get decent jobs. By decent jobs I mean work that pays enough for 
American standards of living, work with some hope of future advancement, 
and some small measure of security. This kind of work is extremely hard 


to find for the average young person. 
Others have summed up the problem in more detail. The National 


Youth Administration said: 

“The development of employment opportunities for youth and the 
development of employability on the part of youth are recognized ... . 
as the most vital part of any program enabling young people to assume 
the responsibilities of adult citizenship. 

“The feeling of insecurity which has oppressed us for the past nine 
years has pressed most heavily upon the youth so that to-day we have 
“lost generations,” young men and women who have had the misfortune to 
come out of school during depression years to go into months and years 
of joblessness and who now have less chance for employment than later 
waves who have come out of school in the past year or two. The older 
generations of workers are hanging on to their jobs. Youth is being ex- 
























1939} ProcEEDINGs OF SAN Francisco CoNVENTION 69 


ploited, played off against age, induced to start at the bottom, and the 
bottom has lowered alarmingly since 1920.” 


One of the major aspects of the youth problem in this state is the 
difficulty young people find in availing themselves of existing means of 
education. High schools, it would seem, concentrate on preparing people 
for universities, and the average young person cannot afford to go to col- 
lege. Less than twenty per cent of those entering high school ever enter 
colleges in California. The great majority are faced with the necessity of 
finding work as soon as their high-school training is completed—some- 
times even before this. As you so well know, high schools in general do 
not train their students for specialized vocations and skilled types of work. 
The young people graduate and set out in the world with some knowledge 
of algebra, geometry, Shakespeare, history, general science, and perhaps 
a rather thorough knowledge of football. 

They join a waiting array of others with just about the same qualifi- 
cations. As one businessman phrased it, “Why, they are a dime a dozen 
around here, Why should I pick only high-school graduates for any of 
my jobs when I can get all the college men I want at my own terms.” 


The gap between leaving school and finding work is the difficult 
period, the no-mans-land, the time of discouragement and bitter dis- 
appointment. Pounding the pavement day after day, or hitch-hiking 
around the country only to meet with slammed doors and curt “Nothing 
doings” doesn’t-do much to raise the morale of young people. It is in 
this period of enforced idleness that serious problems of maladjustment 
and delinquency take root. Of new inmates entering San Quentin Prison 
in California in 1937-1938, nearly one-third were under twenty-five. The 
expense of caring for young people after they have become delinquents 
and criminals is a costly item to the taxpayers of the state. These are of 


course the extreme cases. 

The majority of young boys and girls won’t become criminals or 
delinquents but they may often develop an apathy, a “don’t give a hoot” 
feeling that can cost the community far more than hold-ups and robbery, 
both in dollars and cents and in the intangible costs to general welfare. 

Young people in rural communities and on the farms are just as hard 
hit; sometimes much harder. One likes to picture them as being able to 
lend a helping hand around the farm, getting up at dawn to plow the 
fragrant earth, carrying pails of frothy milk, then sitting down to sub 
stantial meals of ham and eggs, hot cakes, potatoes, roasts, and two kinds 
of pie. These were the good old days. The situation of the small farmer 
to-day is rapidly changing. He is running a nip-and-tuck race between the 
mortgage on one hand and the relief rolls on the other. When he takes 
his crops to the open market and finds the offered price less than his 

















_ 
70 Nationat Association oF SEcONDARY-ScHOOL Principats _ [ October 


growing costs, he has no way of, taking care of a couple of lusty sons and 
daughters. They must get out and rustle for themselves. 

They too join the growing army of wandering youth. Often they 
head for the cities where there are factories, offices, industries, in hopes 
of work there. Once in the cities they find the problem just as bad as 
in the country. They find that employers have few openings to fill and 
that they pick the cream of the crop, the exceptional among the youth. 

Research into the youth problem, backed by the opinions of a large 
body of practical economists, presents the inevitable conclusions that this 
is not a temporary situation, that it will not solve itself as time rolls on. 
Under an economy no longer expanding there is now and undoubtedly will 
continue to be a permanent reservoir of surplus labor—a more or less con- 
stant percentage of which will be youth. 

We can agree that there is nothing wrong with the American demo- 
cratic system. Under its framework permanent solutions are possible, and 
will surely come about. In the meantime immediate action on the youth 
problem will have two objectives: immediate moral and physical assistance 
for these youths who are in the least favorable positions environmentally 
and economically, and long term planning in which the youth problem is 
approached as a whole. Thorough study is necessary on the part of public 
leaders in general and educators in particular. In any approach to the 
youth problem the educational system necessarily plays a leading role. 

People generally are sympathetic toward youth. Everyone was young 
once himself and a great many have childen in the age group I am talking 
about. The individual would like to do something about the ;suth prob- 
lem if he knew what to do, and the parent particularly holds high hope: 
for the future of his son or daughter in high school. Parents, teachers, 
businessmen, politicians, are all concerned to a greater or lesser degree. 
Most of them, however, see the situation from their own point of view. 
You are closest in touch with the youth problem and a major responsibility 
in this field lies with you. Parents and the public must look to you for 
leadership. 

In carrying on our research into the youth problem we have talked 
to a great many business leaders. Nearly all showed a great deal of sym- 
pathy but didn’t see much they could do about it as single individuals. 
Some of them recognized the need for aid to youth and a long term plan. 

One man, the general manager of a large wholesale mercantile firm, 
said, “I certainly feel that youngsters should have help from the state when 
they need it. Suppose you had a kid, and he tried and tried and couldn’t 
get a job. Wouldn't you support him until he could take care of himself, 
and give him all the help and encouragement you could? They need 
guidance, especially when they’re up against it. If we tried to run our 
business with as little knowledge of what the demand for our products is 









eag 
cou. 





1939] ProcEEDINGs OF SAN FrANcisco CoNVENTION 71 


as the employment offices do, we’d have been broke a long time ago. We 
know just what the demand is, and we figure it out ahead so that we can 
meet it. Isn’t it even more important to do this in the employment field, 
when you're dealing with human beings, instead of with profits?” 

Certainly a convincing argument, but a glance at the facts of em- 
ployment will show how little our youth of to-day is being helped. 

The nation-wide check of unemployment conducted by the United 
States Bureau of the Census in 1937 showed that approximately one-quarter 
of the unemployed of California are young people. One hundred and ten 
thousand people who had already left school, who wanted to work, were 
unable to find work of any kind. This does not take into account the 
thousands who were working only part time or at any kind of a job they 
could get—ditch digging, soda jerking, gas pumping—instead of at the 
vocations in which they were interested. These thousands are merely 
marking time, doing what they can to get by until things ease up and 
again open up the market for eager youth. But the 110,000 who are 
totally unemployed must taste the bitter drugs of not being wanted. 
Many of them must undergo the humiliating stigma of getting on relief. 
Well over half of all the people on the SRA rolls in California to-day are 
under twenty-five. Others get WPA jobs, go to CCC camps, receive a 
little aid from the National Youth Administration. Countless others must 
sit at home, or go the weary rounds of the employment bureaus with a 
series of frustrating defeats every day. 

In a survey in San Francisco it was found that occasionally they 
broke under the strain. The mother of one nineteen-year-old former high- 
school athlete would not talk about her son at first. Finally she broke 
into tears and revealed that he was in a hospital with a nervous break- 
down. He had hunted for work for a year and then his finely tuned set 
ot nerves went to pieces under the strain. 

In spite of its advantages of freshness and enthusiasm youth faces a 
special problem in unemployment, distinct and more acute than that of the 
other age groups thrown out of joint by conditions. While workers in the 
older age groups have work experience and occupational resources to offer 
in the laber market, youths in many cases have never worked at all or only 
at unskilled or temporary jobs. It is only since widespread unemployment 
has created intense competition for jobs that lack of experience has become 
a serious handicap to new workers, who formerly were in great demand. 
Trade unions often cannot take them in because they already have more 
members than there are jobs. 

The world turns a brassy front of indifference to youth, greets its 
eager advances with a cold stare. This sort of thing cannot go on in a 
country as highly civilized as the United States. Public realization of the 
problem will do much to solve it, for once the facts are known and under- 

















72 Nationat AssociaTION oF SECONDARY-SCHOOL PrincipaLs [October 





stood half the battle toward aid and planning is won. It is certain that 
youth has great need of training and guidance so that it can take its 
rightful place in productive society, but it is also clear that the basic 
necessity of providing employment for all those who desire work is a 
problem which must be faced as a whole. 

Already various state and Federal agencies have taken as great a share 
of the burden as possible, but they are able to handle only a small part of 
the problem and even then on a temporary emergency basis. Limitations 
of funds are narrowing their field still more, so that instead of standing 
still the problem from this point of view is growing worse. 

The National Youth Administration is able to accommodate on its 
rolls only a fraction of the youth who are eligible or who make application. 
At the end of March of this year, the NYA load in California consisted 
of 6,263 youths on work projects, who received an average of twenty 
dollars a month, and about five hundred youths on resident projects. 
During March more than twenty-two thousand high school, college, and 
graduate students were able to stay in school only with the aid of the NYA 
student program. High-school girls and boys received average monthly 
benefits of $4.68, college students averaged $12.49 a month. 

Other agencies giving assistance to California youth fifteen to twenty- 
four years old are the Works Progress Administration with fifty-five hun- 
dred on its rolls as family heads, the State Relief Administration with an 
estimated fifty-two thousand youths receiving a meager dole, and the 
CCC with eight thousand California boys in camps. 

This gives a total of about seventy thousand out-of-school youths 
receiving some kind of emergency aid, but the small earnings or benefits 
received by them on these programs cannot possibly be a substitute for 
private employment at standard wages. These are temporary stop-gaps. 
They help for the time being but do not solve the problem. 

These are some of the facts which the Youth Survey has already 
gathered. The State Relief Administration and the State Department of 
Education, the two agencies which are codperating in this study, feel that 
they can render a valuable service to the people of California and their 
government by doing that job—getting the facts. Without facts, we can’t 
do anything. When we have them, we can place the complete picture 
before the public and before those state and Federal agencies which are 
concerned. We know that this picture will be a sufficiently vital and chal- 
lenging one to point out the necessity of continuing and extending those 
services which are now being offered to youth, as well as bringing about 
changes and improvements in the direction of working out a long range 
program which will look toward the ultimate solution of the youth prob- 
lem. We feel, on the basis of our preliminary findings, that the heart of 
such a program must be to find decent jobs for unemployed youth. With 











1939] ProcrEepincs oF SAN Francisco ConvENTION 73 


a short range program, we must work in each community toward eliminat- 
ing the special difficulties which young people face in adjusting to the 
occupational world so that they will not suffer from greater, more over- 
whelming handicaps that beset the rest of the population in achieving a 
measure of economic security. 

Here in this state the governor has appointed a Commission on Re- 
employment to devise practical methods of solving the problems of un- 
employment. Their report will be turned over to the governor sometime 
in the near future. It will, we know, contain sound and common sense 
recommendations, and a special session of our state legislature will prob- 
ably be called to consider the suggestions that the governor’s Commission 
will bring in. 

In your own community you who are closest to the difficulties of 
young people, are doing and must do a great deal to interpret their problem 
to your many neighbors and community leaders who, through mutual co- 
dperation, may be able to take the first steps toward better adjustment of 
young people to the world of to-day. 


The Chairman, following Dr. Anderson’s paper, introduced Arthur 
Gould, Deputy Superintendent of Schools of Los Angeles, who spoke as 
follows: 

Artur Goutn: In view of the fact that no other agencies have found 
it possible to do much for the great groups of unemployed youth, the 
responsibility for doing something in the situation evidently falls back 
upon the schools. It is possible that by the term schools we may not mean 
an expansion of the types of schools now in existence but rather new 
types of schools or a wider adoption of types of schools that now exist in 
only a few places. It is a fact, however, that beginning with the year 
1933-34 colleges and universities have shown a rather large and consistent 
growth in enrollment. The total enrollment for all colleges and universities 
of all sorts during the year 1933-34 was 712,349. That total steadily in- 
creased so that the year 1937-38 showed a total enrollment of 870,356, 
which is an increase of twenty-two per cent for the five-year period. The 
institutions classified as universities have shown an important growth dur- 
ing the same five-year period. They have grown from a low in 1933-34 
of 469,720, to a high in 1937-38 of 547,542, an increase of almost seventeen 
per cent. From this last fact it is evident that young people are seeking 
those institutions which have opportunities for training for specific vo- 
cations. 

The experience of the liberal arts colleges has been even more out- 
standing, with enrollments increasing in the same five-year period from 
129,863 to 172,406—an increase of almost thirty-three per cent. Other col- 
legiate institutions such as teachers colleges, junior colleges, and profes- 














74 Nationat Association or Seconpary-ScHoot Principats [October 








sional and technical schools have had almost similar experiences during 
the same period. It would seem, therefore, that even though youth cannot 
find employment they are preparing themselves very definitely for the 
business of living. 

It is probable that important growth in institutions that can care for 
young people of college age will take place in schools of the sort now 
called junior colleges, and trade schools. Schools of this type could easily 
be built in much larger numbers if the units of administration in state 
school systems could be very much enlarged or if it were possible for 
school districts as we now know them to combine for the purpose of build- 
ing trade schools and junior colleges. This has been done in some states 
such as New Jersey and Wisconsin. There is no serious obstacle to the de- 
velopment and expansion of this program in other states, provided there 
is enough earnest attention given to it by those who are charged with the 
responsibility for the educational program in each of those states. 

Cuartes J. Lamp (Principal of Evening High School of Commerce): 
A prominent educator recently stated as a corrective to the complaints 
of the youth of to-day, that our young people to-day expect too much. 
In his early days things were different. He mentioned his receiving only 
$720.00 for his first year of service as a school teacher. Undoubtedly this 
was forty or fifty years ago. My initial salary upon entering the San Fran- 
cisco high schools as a teacher in 1915 was $1,500 a year. It is true that 
the present salary schedule is 33 1/3 per cent higher; i. e., $2,000 a year, 
but this advanced salary has not the purchasing power equal to that of 
what I started with. The relative costs of such basic necessities as food and 
clothing have advanced more than one-third. For example, in 1915 I 
bought many a leg of lamb for sixty or sixty-five cents, The standard price 
at that time for the highest grade Walk-over or Regal shoes was $3.50. 
By comparison with present-day costs of these and numerous other articles, 
it is obvious that from the standpoint of purchasing power the youth of 
to-day is receiving less than he did twenty-five years ago. 

I do not believe, furthermore, that the trade school should be exploited. 
In this connection I might mention my serving in an official capacity with 
a local organization largely concerned with fostering the education and 
welfare of our youth. At a recent meeting of this organization, data were 
presented showing that from ten thousand to twenty thousand San Fran- 
cisco boys between the ages of fifteen to twenty-five are out of employ- 
ment. As a means of remedying this situation, all local unions were 
acquainted with these facts and asked to open up their apprenticeship 
lists. As an example of the lack of opportunity for finding employment 
for apprentices, the following reply from one of the unions is typical of 
the whole situation: Union membership, 756. Apprentices now on its list, 
seventy-five. As steady employment for only forty of the seventy-five ap- 



















































~~ i eee oe 





1939] ProcEEDINGs OF SAN Francisco ConvENTION 75 


prentices is now available, the union felt it would be guilty of misrepre- 
sentation to admit more apprentices, as it could find employment for about 
half of its apprenticeship list. They feel that the admission of more ap- 
prentices would be misleading the youth into believing that employment 
was in store, where factual data show that such is not the case. 


This prominent educator suggested that a “back-to-the-farm” move- 
ment be inaugurated. I may be pardoned for presenting some experiences 
with which I have become personally acquainted in the last several years 
by reason of falling part-heir to a ranch in one of the most desirable parts 
of our state. A concrete highway runs past the land, which affords ideal 
transportation facilities to Napa, the county seat, three miles south, and to 
San Francisco or Oakland, the two largest cities in the northern part of 
the state, not more than fifty-four miles distant. Plenty of water is cheaply 
procurable as the Napa River forms the rear boundary of the ranch. The 
land is highest grade river bottom soil easily workable as it is practically 
level. With all of these natural advantages for both growing and trans- 
porting crops produced, it has not produced sufficient returns to cover 
labor costs at from thirty to thirty-five cents an hour, plus taxes and in- 
terest on the investment during the past seven years. The decrease of net 
returns from the land has occasioned a decrease in its estimated value. 
In an effort to “get out from under” the property was listed for sale. The 
many advantages of this property have prompted several offers but none 
of them exceed more than twenty-five per cent of an offer made in 1925 
for the same property. The problem of interesting young folks to return 
to the farm lies in the realm of economic readjustment rather than the 
field of education. There are thousands of youth who will return to the 
farm just as soon as farm labor pays a fair return for the investment. 


Since the preceding statements are negative, one might ponder as to 
what the educator can do in a positive way to help in the employment of 
youth. In conclusion, I suggest that it is my belief that the educator’s prov- 
ince in the problems of youth employment lie in ferreting out new occu- 
pations that develop through modern invention or modern improvement 
in business or professional procedures. As an example of the latter I might 
mention the recently created course for medical assistants, et al., now being 
offered at the school of which I am principal. 


G. M. Hoyr (Director of Attendance and Employment, Los Angeles 
City Schools): I believe in selling. Perhaps America can be sold out of its 
economic woes. Has it ever occurred to you that the public school is the 
only large manufacturing organization without a sales department? In Los 
Angeles we have at least the beginning of a sales staff, that is, a junior 
placement service which, by the way, is affiliated with the California State 
Employment Seryice. Our seventeen years of experience with junior place- 

















76 Nationat Association oF SEconDARY-ScHooL Principats [October 


ment has convinced us that competent young workers can be sold to 
employers if we utilize the basic principles of salesmanship. 

When these young people prove their worth they add to the sum 
total of goods and services, become consumers, expand the market a bit, 
and thereby help to create work for others. Many times an employer asks 
for a young man or woman for a temporary job. A superior applicant is 
sent and very frequently we receive a report on the follow-up something 
like this: “John ——— is doing so well we decided to keep him, although 
we had only a temporary job when he came to us. We will accept another 
young man if you can send us one as good as he.” 


Selling surplus youth one by one appears to be a hopelessly slow 
process. It would be more spectacular to march them from the school- 
house to the doors of the work-a-day world not single spies but in bat- 
talions. Yet the prospect of a sudden demand for young workers is so 
poor, it seems to me, we may as well try to insinuate them one by one 
into the economic structure. The schools must accept the responsibility 
for this task in conjunction with the state employment offices everywhere. 

H. D. Gwinn (Principal, Big Pine Unified Schools, Big Pine, Cali- 
fornia): I do not believe that we, as a professional group, will get any- 
where if we continue to assume that youth unemployment is a separate prob- 
lem unrelated to other national issues and that it can only be solved if and 
when secondary administrators are willing to accept their responsibility in 
providing the ideal curriculum which is supposed to be the final answer 
to the puzzle of youth finding employment. 

Dr. Judd, in discussing Aubrey Williams’ address, gave the impression 
that the secondary-school curriculum was responsible; that we, as admin- 
istrators, would have to revise or accept the consequences if we did not, 
whatever those consequences might be so far as youth and employment 
are concerned. 

To show the relationship of youth unemployment to other important 
factors or problems, let us take the following hypothetical case which is a 
typical example of what youth faces to-day in most communities. 

John, an unemployed youth, applies to employer Smith for employ- 
ment. Smith tells John that they are not employing any additional help 
at the time but to leave his name and address and return later, for if they 
need him, Smith will notify him. If John asks Smith why he cannot ob- 
tain work, Smith will probably tell him that he cannot expand his activi- 
ties to provide more work until he receives assurance that he will not be 
hampered with additional government restrictions or taxes; or perhaps 
Smith’s plant is having difficulty with one or both labor organizations 
fighting for the right to represent the employees of his plant. At any rate, 
John does not find employment. 












1939] ProcEEDINGs OF SAN FrANcisco CoNVENTION 77 


Perhaps John may be rather young or may not possess the necessary 
union qualifications for a position, if there should be one, at that particu- 
lar plant. If John wishes to qualify with the union, he may be told that 
their lists are full and that they are not admitting any more apprentices; 
or perhaps the union prefers to see that married men with families among 
their ranks receive first consideration for employment. For the time being, 
John may be able to secure odd jobs at low wages, or depend upon the 
NYA aid, if possible, return to school, or join the CCC. However, these 
are only stop-gaps. They cannot furnish him with an income sufficient to 
support a family, so John either marks time in school, getting occasional 
odd jobs or he bums around the country looking for work or, becoming dis- 
couraged in seeking employment he loses interest and finds his career on 
the relief rolls. 


The NYA, according to Aubrey Williams, has gone about as far as 
it can toward solving the problem of youth unemployment and now it 
suspects that lack of codperation on the part of the secondary schools may 
be responsible for bringing its efforts to a halt. That, however, is not the 
final answer. Neither the NYA nor a dozen revised secondary curriculums 
will solve the problem of unemployment without the active codperation of 
other interests. To create employment means we must have capital to 
expand business and industry. Neither the NYA nor the secondary schools 
of America, have the capital to go into business and provide jobs for youth 
who wish to leave school and seek employment. Therefore, the only 
thing we can do is attack the problem from another angle. 


Since we find that youth unemployment is related to the whole na- 
tional problem of unemployment and that increased employment depends 
upon a greater circulation of capital to provide increased expansion of 
business and industry, and the will for business and industry to go ahead 
depends upon amicable relations with our national government and labor 
organizations, so we as a professional group, therefore, should be giving 
serious consideration to the whole situation. 


If we could bring the necessary pressure to bear upon our responsible 
leaders of business, government, labor, and education and make them 
realize the vital need for the closest codperation at present, we will have 
taken a long stride toward the ultimate solution; a solution which will 
never be perfect in the strict sense of the word, but one that would be far 


superior to our present situation. 


Up to now, one group has blamed the other. One group refuses to 
act because it may fear what its opponents may do. Business and industry 
refuse to invest capital to expand their activities, because they fear retalia- 
tory actions from the government. Labor expects the government to see 
that capital does; not unduly exploit it. Industry and labor become dead- 























78 Nationa Association oF SECONDARY-ScHOOL Principats [October 


locked over their problems, and labor itself, divided into two great camps 
fighting for supremacy, adds to the general confusion. 


What can we do? Perhaps a hint can be gleaned from an article by 
Walter Lippman on “America’s Future,” which appeared in a recent issue 
of Life. In this article Mr. Lippman reviews America’s problems and 
fears. He presents the picture of America, a country with splendid re- 
sources, population and capital, hesitating at the crossroads, reluctant as 
yet, to accept her full responsibilities as a nation and as a world power. 


We need intestinal fortitude to banish our fears, real and imaginary, 
and accept our responsibilities. How can we expect youth to accept respon- 
sibilities when adults refuse them? We are not going to improve the situa- 
tion by pulling in different directions. Instead of mutual fear and mis- 
understanding of one another, the leaders of industry, government, labor, 
and education should be meeting in a body to compromise unselfishly on 
the important issues of the day relative to the unemployment problem. 
Such action, while not producing a perfect solution, would nevertheless 
pave the way for mutual understanding and the much-needed codperative 
action. 


C. E. Gravy (Classen High School, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma): Dr. 
Anderson’s paper may be a little pessimistic, but my experience leads me to 
say that the paper gives a true statement of condition. Many side issues 
have crept into this discussion. Modern youth demands too much we are 
told. To prove this statement the speaker cites his own experience as a 
beginning teacher. I began teaching in 1901 at a yearly salary of $360.00. 
These citations mean nothing for we are living in a different age. 


We are also told that there is no farm unemployment problem. I can- 
not agree with this statement. I was reared in the hills of Western Ken- 
tucky. I came to California over highway 66. From the time we left Okla- 
homa until we arrived in California, we did not see enough fertile soil 
left to support the population in the rural districts. If all were employed 
the purchasing power of these poor farmers would not be sufficient to 
support them. It is a pitiful condition. These people will sooner or later 
migrate to the fertile valleys of California. Since I left my home state for 
Oklahoma I have kept in close contact with conditions in my home 
county. Except in the narrow valleys or the creeks and rivers this land 
will not support the population. It cannot make a decent living. Years 
ago we boasted of a balanced budget. We were mistaken; we were only 
selling the top soil, and mistook the sale for a profit. Now these people 
are without profitable employment. They have no purchasing power. The 
same problem confronts the man without employment. My travels over 
Ohio, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas convince me 
that the farm labor problem is serious. The farmer may work, but the 













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1939] ProcEEDINGs OF SAN Francisco CoNvENTION 79 


soil is worn out and the farmer cannot have an adequate purchasing power. 
Dr. Anderson has not overestimated the troubles on the farm. 

I cannot see a solution to our problem by building junior colleges. 
Many of our schools are trying this plan but we must not forget that the 
community can hardly support a school system of only twelve grades. It is 
folly in many districts to think of two extra grades. Our buildings are 
crowded now and salaries low. Frequently junior colleges mean lower 
salaries. We must look elsewhere for the solution of the problem. 

Neither can we say to business we will adopt the policy of hands off 
and let the manager have a free hand without heavy taxes. That means 
that we will reinvite our old trouble. Business in the twenties brought us 
where we are. No, we must not return to our old policies, but we must 
find new and untried ways of solving a knotty problem. My own feeling 
is that we will never solve the unemployment problem until we sic down 
around a common table—Democrats, Republicans, and all talk over our 
problem. All known remedies have been tried, something new must be 
undertaken. Yes, Dr. Anderson’s paper is a true statement of conditions 
as they exist to-day. 

Carré E. Gittespiz (Real Estate Broker, Berkeley, California): The 
startling facts concerning unemployment as tabulated by the California 
Relief Administrator are entitled to serious consideration, rather than the 


mere gesture of attention accorded. Thoughtful, intelligent auditors mar- 
veled that so little realization of youth’s problems from the viewpoint of 
unemployment penetrated the nebulous dreams of a group inhabiting a 
cellophaned existence, indulging in “old wives’ tales,” the good old days 


now gone forever. 
Themselves, secure in positions of honor and trust, supplied with gen- 


erous provision for present needs, and reasonable retirement protection; 
certainly a jar is needed, a jolt is due, to arouse educators to a more practi- 
cal leadership. Crime cost America fifteen billion dollars last year—almost 
one-third our national income. The majority of criminals are youthful. 
Idleness is the devil’s workshop; there are not enough jobs. Unfair, 
unjust criticism is begging the question—Mr. Gould’s summary, “Young, 
inefficient service station attendants make me wait for gas; inattentive 
clerks, immersed in their own affairs, or matters not connected with my 
wants, cause me to waste my time. Youth to-day expects to start at the sal- 
ary it took me six years to attain.” There are no jobs, not enough to go 
around. Men and women stand in line, able, willing, anxious to work, 
accepting charity rather than starve. Dewey Anderson’s survey gives the 
figures in California in 1939. United States Senator Sheridan Downey, 
campaigning, said, “The keen brain of man conceived machines to destroy 
drudgery, once men with manual labor earned a pittance, there was work 
waiting, we have arrived at the machine age—even simple household 























80 NationaL AssociaTIoN oF SeconpARY-ScHooL Principats — [October 





tasks are standardized, mechanized. A few short years ago women and 
and girls prepared food for home consumption; now with time-saving 
electrical appliances they were even able to earn pin money, and some 
supported themselves working in canneries; recently in a modern cannery 
in Sacramento, California, one machine was installed which cans one 
hundred sixty thousand cans of peaches an hour. Hand labor cannot com- 
pete with machines. In every line of industry we see improved machinery 
speeding up, cutting the cost. Not only in rural districts, but also in the 
great centers of population employment must be provided for those able 
to work, and subsistence must be furnished our people.” 

Human greed and selfishness is the crime of this generation. Unequal 
distribution of wealth is a crime against humanity. 

Men came to America seeking God, liberty, homes. Each coin pro- 
claims our faith. Courts of justice exalt Him. Stars and stripes wave free 
o’er land and sea. America for a favored few? No. The old Tories who 
fought the colonists thought so. Lincoln said, “God loves the common peo- 
ple, else He would not have made so many of them.” A government of 
the people, for the people, by the people means all the people. With proper 
leadership the majority rules. Our stored power-money is controlled by 
crooks and cowards. 

Big business is afraid to put the money to work—idle money makes 
idle men. Meddling in European affairs we lost a generation. 

Conservatives, who cannot change, are bewildered. It takes young 
men who have never been licked to lead the way out. 

Temporarily we are in the hands of the money changers. Traitors— 
selfish, greedy, vicious, flood God’s America with homeless, heartsick 
families; in rich America where there is plenty for all. 

When Foch and Haig wanted Pershing to merge the Expeditionary 
Forces with their divisions, he said, “We fight as a unit.” They urged: 
“American troops are young, inexperienced, know nothing of trench fight- 
ing; we need them to fill holes in our division.” Our chosen leader—he 
used to be a country school teacher—told the French and English, “’Tis 
true my boys never fought in trenches; they won't hide there four years 
nor four days. Put us in the forefront of the battle; we have never been 
licked.” Argonne told the tale and turned the tide. 

A remnant of some divisions in that conflict came home to San Fran- 
cisco. I saw them at the Ferry and along Market Street for a planned 
parade, that broke into a mob of tumultuous, joyous welcome. I watched 
the worn, tired faces, carved by suffering, recording hardship, sacrifice of 
youth, joy, health. 

Can we forgive Big Business and those they bought for robbing such 
men? I[ think not. 











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1939] PRrocEEDINGS OF SAN FRANcIScO CONVENTION 81 


It’s 1939, with 11,000,000 unemployed. To first voters we pass the 
problem of choosing leaders who can plan wisely and show America 
the way to plenty and prosperity. Trained in schoolroom, drilled on the 
playground, unafraid, shoulder to shoulder, youth is moving forward, 
facing problems that bewilder the aged, who have earned a rest, are afraid 
of insecurity, and are tired. California youth may lead the way. San Fran- 
cisco knows how. 


Frank J. Covert (Roosevelt Junior High School, San Jose, Cali- 
fornia): In the analysis of the problem of youth unemployment we come 
upon the two great tasks facing education to-day. Firstly, education must 
prepare its youth to assume and maintain successfully a place in a society 
that is more complex, exacting, and defiant than ever before in history— 
a society that demands an individual with more and better training to 
fill positions that cannot be filled without the proper preparation. Sec- 
ondly, education must prepare minds capable of dealing with the more 
complex problems of our society. The meteoric rise of technical knowl- 
edge has suddenly made possible an abundance of economic goods. For 
centuries man has battled with the problem of a production sufficient tor 
all, and now that this dream has been realized, we find that it may lead 
to disaster, for we are not prepared to do the advanced thinking that these 


new problems demand. 


This problem of youth unemployment is imbedded in the heart of 
our social structure. Its solution will not be found by a mere scratching 
of the surface. Youth must be better prepared, and all of youth should 
have an equal opportunity to get this training. 


Our complex society demands that its individuals be of a higher 
quality. They must produce more efficiently in shorter periods, and then 
must show resourcefulness in the use of their leisure time. This individual 
must be the product of better training—of better education. He is not 
born with any of this training, and when we do not make the opportu- 
nity for preparation available to all of our youth, we are handicapping 
them at the very start of their fight with a most difficult modern world. 


Our Federal Government must continue and must enhance its good 
work in education. It must make funds available for that specific purpose 
in those localities where funds are lacking. It must bolster education in 
the great task of preparing the children of America for this fast, furious, 
and competitive lite, and if we don’t see to it that these children who lack 
this opportunity for preparation are helped, we will be shirking our duty 
to our democracy, to our forefathers, and to our civilization. Our forefa- 
thers fought that men might have equal opportunity, our democracy was 
created on the maximum of equality for all. Now our civilization stands 
ready to offer us the fruits of the experiences and talents of centuries, if 








82 Nartionat AssociaTION oF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats _ | October 








only we will rise to the occasion and plan our society in a way that will 
make it possible for all of us to enjoy those fruits. 





Insecurity in the midst of plenty is an insult to our intellect. We have 
achieved what has been striven for since the beginning of time—a produc- 
tion sufficient for all, and now that this millennium has been reached, we 
sit aghast at its result, and refusing to think logically and constructively on 
how to manage it, we revert to childish, skin-deep solutions, when it de- 
serves and demands some real thinking. 

We need a greater national income. The increase that has come and 
will continue to come in the activities of the Federal government make a 
larger income both essential and inevitable. Therein may very well lie the 
solution for the improvement of our society. Our present task is to devise 
the best means to increase that income. 

Just as technology has advanced by leaps and bounds since the advent 
of the collaboration of thinking and research on problems of machinery; 
so must we have a collaboration of the thinking of experts on political 
government if it is to keep abreast of our times. 

The simple fact that our age makes available to us more worldly 
pleasures than were ever before enjoyed by man is no justification for our 
sitting back and imagining that things will always be thus. A society never 
remains static. It either progresses or degenerates. It is plebeian to live on 
the laurels of the efforts of our forefathers. We must carry civilization on- 
ward or fall back into inevitable degeneracy. 

Education must face the task of saving our civilization. It must give 
our youth an equality of opportunity to train itself for the more demand- 
ing tasks of to-day. It must prepare critical and forward-looking leaders 
who can shape our society to fit our changing needs, and these leaders 
must bear the spirit of democracy uppermost in mind, for we can well 
afford to forego a few material luxuries for the happiness, the freedom, 
the sense of equality that are the real values of a democratic society. 

The task, then, is to mold our democracy so that it will give us se- 
curity as well as liberty, and it is toward that goal that education must 
set its sails. 

Anca M. Byornson (Radio Chairman, Democratic Women’s Divi- 
sion for Northern California, Piedmont, California): I was interested in 
the remarks of the gentleman from Kentucky, who humorously described 
himself as a hillbilly, who pointed out, after a previous speaker had urged 
the building of more junior colleges, that if more junior colleges were 
built in his section of the country, where economic conditions were so 
deplorable that people were unable to pay the taxes to support these 
schools, and also that the teachers in his locality would have to have their 
salaries reduced in order to build those junior colleges. 






















































1939] ProcEEDINGS OF SAN FRANcIsco CONVENTION 83 


I am also stimulated to reply to Superintendent Gould of Los Angeles, 
who fell back upon the old Chamber of Commerce idea that the trouble 
with young people to-day was that they were not satisfied with small 
salaries; that they expected too much and then he went back to the good 
old days when he had married on $1,200 a year and that he got along 
very nicely on $1,200. We allowed that he did not stay with his $1,200 a 
year job, but he is now one of the highest paid assistant superintendents 
in the United States. 

May I point out that right here in California we teachers are building 
the school buildings for the average city in this state; that practically the 
whole building program, except where the earthquake in Los Angeles and 
Long Beach demolished millions of dollars worth of poorly built schools, 
teachers’ salaries were reduced in order to build buildings everywhere, and 
many of our cities where a salary schedule existed before 1929, those sal- 
aries have been reduced and are “frozen” to make it possible for the cities 
to build schools. We have adequate proof in many of our cities that this 
condition exists. 


In answer to the statement of Mr. Gould, I may say when I requested 
Dr. Chernin, who read Dr. Anderson’s paper, to clarify the situation 
regarding opportunities to get work in California, I prefaced my remarks 
by asking Dr. Chernin if it were not true that our difficulty to-day lies in 


the fact that the investment field had closed in such industries as cotton, 
wool, shoes, and other major businesses? And it is true that the openings 
for youth cannot come until the field is open in building and rural elec- 
trification? To-day we are in need of ten million new homes. Seventy-five 
per cent or more of our farm homes are in need of repair and that the 
same amount are lacking in running water and bathroom and toilet fa- 
cilities. Is it not true, therefore, that if such a building program were 
opened by low-interest lending by the government, then we could produce 
employment for all of our idle population for the next twenty-five years? 
Adjournment. 














PART II 


A STUDY OF THE ADJUSTMENT OF SECONDARY YOUTH 
TO POST-SCHOOL OCCUPATIONAL LIFE 


Implementation Committee, National Association 
of Secondary-School Principals 


As reported in the Bulletin of May (1939), the preliminary work of 
the Implementation Committee showed that a major and pressing concern 
of members of the Association is that body of pupils who, faced with the 
typical high-school program, are neither successful nor happy and hence 
often become school failures, discipline problems, hindrances to learning by 
other youth, and ultimately withdrawals from school. Assuming with the 
Orientation Committee that the program of American secondary schools 
should include offerings appropriate to all youth, the Implementation Com- 
mittee has embarked upon a comprehensive study of the general problems 
of the non-adjustment of the school to the needs of all youth. 

Previous work in this area has shown that there are two centers of 
stress responsible fe. ihis non-adjustment: one within and one without the 
school. Improvement in the situation within the school is largely a matter 
of educational offerings and methods appropriate to the needs of all 
youth. The committee’s proposed handbook on Providing for Education- 
ally Neglected Youth in Our Secondary Schools marks an initial attack by 
the committee upon this school problem, It expects to continue at work in 
this area. Release from the tension outside of the school is largely a matter 
of adjusting the weight of socio-economic pressure upon youth, a matter 
upon which the school can have but little immediate effect. Since this is 
true and since a more appropriate curriculum-situation cannot be achieved 
upon short order, the Implementation Committee holds that a large num- 
ber of youth will continue to leave school to go into occupational situa- 
tions to which, according to the reports of the Youth Commission and 
the Regents Inquiry, they are often as poorly adjusted as they were to the 
school situation. It therefore seemed in point to propose an inquiry into 
the effectiveness of what some secondary schools are doing to increase the 
probability that their youth, when leaving school, are better able to secure 
and hold employment than they otherwise would have been.* 

Accordingly, such a study was proposed to the General Education 
Board with the purpose of obtaining a grant tor aid in carrying it out, and 
a subvention of $25,000 was secured. 

*The committee recognizes that there are other important adjustments to be made by these 
youth and that they are also often poorly made. It selects the area of occupational adjustment for 
initial work largely because there is a probability that indices of adjustment or mal-adjustment are 
here more concrete aad objective than in some other areas. In the meanwhile the committee is study- 
ing the possibilities of launching other inquiries into the adjustment of these youth to post-school social 
and recreational life and to civic and home responsibilities. It also has in mind other studies con- 


cerned with improving the in-school adjustment of youth through improved curricular and guidance 
programs. 


84 











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1939 | ADJUSTMENT OF SECONDARY YOUTH 85 





More specifically, the proposal was to study the adjustment of school- 
leaving youth in particular communities to the occupational opportunities 
open to these youth, and to study the nature of the school experiences ot 
these youth to see whether this adjustment tends to be associated with par- 
ticular types of school experience. We proposed to seek leads as to whether 
and how secondary schools might help to facilitate adjustment to the occu- 
pational life of the community and to develop evaluating instruments of 
service to school faculties who may want to study the adjustment between 
their school-leaving youth and the occupational life of their respective 


communities. 


The scope of the investigation proposed will be broad enough to in- 
clude youth who leave school both before and at graduation from schools 
which represent a wide variety of curriculum organizations and varying 
degrees of emphasis upon guidance and placement. It was also decided that 
the communities would represent a wide range in the number and type 
of occupational opportunities available to these youth. The necessity tor 
making this a study of the secondary schools of a community rather than 
of a certain school in the community was specifically recognized. The im- 
portance of the degree of adjustment obtained during the first two or three 
years immediately following the period of school attendance was consid- 
ered also in defining the scope of this study. 


The following organization has been set up to conduct the study. The 
National Association of ‘Secondary-School Principals is the sponsoring 
bedy. It will work through its Committee on Implementation, which will 
have general oversight and administrative responsibility through an execu: 
tive committee’ of its membership. This committee has appointed a di- 
rector for the study who is responsible for the planning and conduct of it. 
The Implementation Committee and the Director will appoint a small 
group of consultants’ whose individual and collective advice and counsel 
will be available during the study. This group, in so far as possible, will 
represent the fields of general guidance, vocational guidance, occupational 
placement, and secondary education. There will be a full-time central 


stafl appointed by the director. 


1The executive committee consists of Mr. DeWitt S. Morgan, Superintendent of Schools, Indian- 
apolis; Mr. Francis T. Spaulding, Professor of Education, Harvard University; Mr. Howard Dare 
White, Assistant Commissioner of Education, New Jersey; and Mr. Will French, Professor of Educa- 
tion, Columbia University, Chairman. 


°Mr. Edward Landy, Principal of the Abington High School, Abington, Massachusetts, is on a 
year’s leave of absence as Director of the Study. His major field of graduate study has been in voca- 
tional guidance at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He has studied, also, in the field of 
secondary education there. He started work as Director on July 1, 1939. 


*So far, the consultants are Mr. Edwin A. Lee, Professor of Education, Teachers College, Colum- 
bia; Mr. Harry A. Jager, Chief, Occupational Information and Counseling Service, Office of Education, 
Washington, D. C.; Mr. C, L. Shartle, Chief, Worker Analysis Section, U. $. Employment Service, 
Washington, D. C.; Mr. William F. Rasche, Principal, Milwaukee Vocational School, Milwaukee, Wis~ 
consin; Mr. Richard D. Allen, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Providence, R. I.; Mr. Ralph W. 
Tyler, Chairman, Department of Education, University of Chicago. 










86 NationaL AssoctaTION oF SECONDARY-SCHOOL Principats — [October 


As far as can be determined at present, the prosecution of the study 
will involve the following major steps: 
July 1, 1939-January 1, 1940. 





1. The development of evaluative criteria for judging the degree of 

occupational adjustment of a given youth. 

2. The selection of schools to participate in a preliminary study. 
These should be carefully studied and a selection made which 
would give the study the needed scope as mentioned above. The 
schools should not only agree to permit the study to be made, but 
should agree to participate with the intention of undertaking to 
make such modifications and extensions of their programs as they 
consider desirable in the light of the study. 

3. The discovery through a follow-up study of distinct groups of 
well-adjusted and poorly adjusted youth based upon the use of 
the criteria. 

4. Other analyses of the data that seem worth while. 

5. About January fifteenth hold a conference between representatives 
of the General Education Board and of the Implementation Com- 
mittee to discuss the project on the basis of the experience to date. 

February, 1940, to May, 1940. 

6. Director and assistants study and select full complement of schools 
to participate, if results to date warrang. 

7. Director complete preliminary work with tryout schools as far as 
possible. 

a. Assemble and interpret data for benefit of participating schools 

) in preliminary tryout experiment. 

b. Director prepare report on tryout findings for the Implemen- 

tation Committee and for the General Education Board. 

8. About April fifteenth there is to be held a conference of the 
executive committee of the Implementation Committee and repre- 
sentatives of the General Education Board, at which time, on the 
basis of results of experience with the tryout schools, decisions 
will be reached as to the conduct of the work through the re- 
mainder of the first year, and the necessity and desirability of 
extending the work beyond the first year to the full complement 
of schools. It is anticipated that this conference may result either 
in plans being laid to conclude the work within the year or to 
extend it beyond the year, should the probable results merit such 
action, depending largely upon whether the Study promises to 
supply methods and techniques which have general applicability 
and usefulness to secondary schools. If results warrant or require, 

work will begin on the full complement of schools selected and/or 






























































ADJUSTMENT OF SECONDARY YOUTH 87 


the techniques and practices will be tried out on an experimental- 
control basis to further validate the findings with respect to the 
techniques and practices discovered as being worth while. 


Plans are being made, also, so that members of the association may 
be informed fully of progress being made through publication in the 
Butvetin of the association. The extent of the publicity developed will 
depend in large measure upon the worthwhileness of the results. Through- 
out the entire proceedings, it has been recognized by the General Educa- 
tion Board, the Implementation Committee, and the Director that the 
problem is exceedingly difficult and that the outcome of this year’s work 
may be simply a recognition of the present impracticability of going any 
further with the study. 

It is hoped, however, that the following will be the outcomes: 

1. The development of a relatively simple but valid survey plan which 
will be of aid to schools in deciding to what extent their pupils, 
who have not gone on further with formal schooling, make satis- 
factory occupational adjustments. 

The discovery of techniques and practices which can be intro- 
duced to make more effective the occupational adjustment of pu- 
pils whose formal education will cease at graduation, if not before.