In 1933, shortly after the participating schools were chosen, the principals met with the Directing Committee to plan together for eight years of difficult work. Everyone had a strong sense of sharing in a great adventure; few anticipated fully the hard work, the problems, the discouragements, and the eventual satisfactions which were to come. No one present at that first conference will ever forget the honest confession of one principal when she said, "My teachers and I do not know what to do with this freedom. It challenges and frightens us. I fear that we have come to love our chains." Most of its were just beginning to realize that we were facing the severest possible test of our initiative, imagination, courage, and wisdom. No one of the group could possibly foresee all the developments ahead, nor were all of one mind as to what should be done.

Members of the Commission and representatives of the Thirty Schools continued to meet annually to think and plan together. Although each school would decide for itself what to do with this new freedom, everyone was cager to have the benefit of the thinking and experience of all others. The reader should keep in mind always that the principals and teachers of the Thirty Schools were striving, groping, searching constantly in their attempts to decide what to leach and ]low to teach. The schools did not all start from the same place or go in the same direction. It is difficult, therefore, to report their purposes and plans both briefly and accurately. However, it can be stated that they became convinced, in the course of reconsideration of their own work, that two major principles should guide their efforts at reconstruction.

The first was that the general life of the school and methods of teaching should conform. to what is now known about the ways in which human beings learn and grow. Until recent years learning in school has been thought of as an intellectual process of acquiring certain skills and of mastering prescribed subject matter. It has been assumed that physical and emotional reactions are not involved in the learning process, but if they are, they are not very important. The newer concept of learning holds that a human being develops through doing those things which have meaning to him; that the doing involves the whole person in all aspects of his being; and that growth takes place as each experience leads to greater understanding and more intelligent reaction to new situations.

Holding this view, the participating schools believed that the school should become a place in which young people work together at tasks which are clearly related to their purposes. No longer should teachers, students, or parents think of school simply as a place to do what was laid out to be done. Nor should schooling be just a matter of passing courses, piling tip credits, and, finally, getting a diploma. The school should be a living social organism of which each student is a vital part. It should be a place to which one goes gladly because there he can engage in activities which satisfy his desires work at the solution of problems which he faces in everyday living, and have opened to him new interests and wider horizons. The whole boy goes to school; therefore school should stimulate his whole being. It should provide opportunities for the fill exercise of his physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual powers as he strives to achieve recognition and a place of usefulness and honor in adult society.

The Thirty Schools realized that many changes in ways of teaching, as well as in organization and curriculum, were necessary if attendance at school was to become the stimulating, meaningful experience it could be for each student. They knew that the classroom should become a place of co-operative activity in which teacher and students would seek together to achieve results which they believed important. Only as society's demands and student concerns Were united in school objectives could education become an experience of vital significance. Only then would eager outreach for knowledge and understanding supplant credit accumulation. Only then would earnest, hard work be done gladly and intelligently. For then the student would be seeking the essence and substance rather than the forms and husks of education.

The second major principle which guided the work of the participating schools was that the high school in the United States should rediscover its chief reason for existence. It is not enough to create better conditions for learning. It is equally necessary to determine what American youth most need to learn. Out of their searching study the Thirty Schools came to realize that the primary purpose of education is to lead our young people to understand, to appreciate, and to live the kind of life for which we as a people have been striving throughout our history. Other things are important but only relatively so. It is necessary to teach the three "11's," science, language, history, mathematics, the arts, safety, vocations, and most of the other subjects that now crowd the curriculums of the schools; but unless our young, people catch the vision which has led us on through all generations, we perish.

Year after year the conviction became clearer and deeper that the school itself should become a demonstration of the kind of life in which this nation believes. The Commission and the schools said that the most important service the school can render youth is to give them understanding and appreciation of the way of life we call democracy, and that the best way to understand and appreciate is to live that kind of life at school every day.

It was soon discovered that application of principles of democracy to the life of the school would cut deep. To develop a sense of worth in each individual, to promote full participation by each one in the affairs of the school, and to lead everyone to think for himself would demand radical change in many aspects of the curriculum and ways of teaching. Nevertheless, the Thirty Schools, holding these ideas, set to work to put them into practice.

They were quite sure that the spirit mid practice of experimentation awl exploration should characterize secondary schools in a democracy. The schools in the Eight-Year Study came. to be called "experimental" schools. Most schools were fearful of such appellation. The term had come to connote foolish, careless, haphazard changes made without serious Study and concluded without painstaking evaluation of results. The Thirty Schools entered the Study to make honest attempts to find better ways of serving their students. Thoughtful investigation and planning preceded each innovation, and careful measurement of results followed. If results Were not satisfactory, further change was made in the light of fuller knowledge. In this sense the Thirty Schools were and are "experimental" and they believe that every school in a democracy should be, also. No aspect of any school's work should be so firmly fixed in practice or tradition as to be immune from honest inquiry and possible improvement. It is only in this way that life and vigor are maintained and progress achieved.

Many in the Study thought that fundamental revision should be undertaken only after thoughtful, co-operative reconsideration of the high school's function in the community it serves. They believed that no change in any part of the curriculum should be made without consideration of its effect upon the whole program of studies. They realized that this would require time, organization, and leadership.

As the schools began their studies preparatory to revision of their work, they were sure that the curriculum of the secondary school should deal with the present concerns of young people as well as with the knowledge, skills, understandings, and appreciations which, constitute our cultural heritage. There was no disposition to undervalue or climate from the curriculum the accumulated, well-organized experience of civilization. But there was widespread recognition of the fact that much of the conventional high school curriculum had become inert and of little value and that many vital needs of youth were not being met effectively. Many of the schools thought that the problems common to young people growing up in the United States should constitute the heart and center of the curriculum for all, whether they are going to college or not.

Every school in the Study sought from the start to develop greater unity and continuity in the curriculum. They realized that artificial barriers, which separated subject from subject and teacher from teacher, had been erected in Schools generally. In all the proposals for change submitted by the schools in 1933, there were devices for bringing subjects together and for teachers to plan and work co-operatively. It was thought that these changes would enable students to see the relationship of one subject to another; teachers and students would begin to glimpse the underlying unity of all knowledge.

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