Chapter 4 - The Schools Study Their Pupils

Open-mindedness

8 Year Home
8 Year Web Project
Introduction
I Study Launched
II Schools Choose
III Curriculum-Needs
IV-Schools-Study-Pupils
How-They-Evaluated
Evaluation-Staff
200-Tests
Other-Evidence
On-the-Record?
Recording-Purposes
Record-Objectives
Openmindedness
Footnotes
V In College?
VI We Learned
Appendix
Index
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indentThe forms that have been developed are known as "Behavior Description ... .. Reports to Parents," "Transfer from School to College," and "Development of Pupils in Subject Fields." The first, Behavior Description, should receive sonic comment here. This form provides for description of the student under these headings: Responsibility-Dependability, Creativeness and Imagination, Influence, Inquiring Mind, Open-mindedness, Power and Habit of Analysis, Social Concern, Emotional Responsiveness, Serious Purpose, Social Adjustability, Work Habits. Because words have varying meanings, the form indicates the meaning of each heading and provides for a report upon the degree or extent to which the term is descriptive of the student. Here is an illustration.

(The student is)

DISCRIMINATING: Welcomes new ideas but habitually suspends judgment until all the available evidence is obtained.

TOLERANT: Does not readily appreciate or respond to opposing viewpoints and new ideas, although he is tolerant of them and consciously tries to suspend judgment regarding them.

PASSIVE: Tolerance of the new or different is passive, arising f rom lack of interest or conviction. Welcomes, or is indifferent to change, because of lack of understanding or appreciation of the new or of that which it replaces.

RIGID: Preconceived ideas and prejudices so govern his thinking that he usually ends a discussion or an investigation without change of opinion.

INTOLERANT: Is actively intolerant; resents any interference with his habitual beliefs, ideas and procedures.

indentThe Behavior Description record-form is the product of the long-time labor of many able school and college representatives who served on the Committee with unselfish devotion. They attempted to provide a way of presenting a word sketch, a profile of the student. They did not consider the words they used for captions as designations of disparate traits. With great care the committee members chose words that indicate characteristics, qualities of mind or character that schools generally try to develop in their students. With equal thoughtfulness, hundreds of teachers and administrators from schools and colleges have contributed to the work of the many special sub-committees which have devised these various means of reporting the growth of young human beings.

indentThe Chairman and all members of the Committee on Records and Reports and of all special committees emphasize the tentative structure of the record-forms as they now stand. Although many have been used in thousands of cases, it is expected that further experience with them will reveal ways in which they can be improved. Those who have served in this phase of the Commission's work stress, also, the need of study and investigation looking to the development of records for use in helping, especially, those boy's and girls who leave school directly for employment. Such records and reports are essential for intelligent vocational guidance and placement.

indentWhile the Committee believes that the forms developed will prove suitable for many institutions, particularly In view of the flexibility of the forms, it realizes that for o1her institutions they may need modification, while for still others they may prove suggestive only, in details or principles. Some of the individual co-operating schools, recognizing particular conditions or needs of their own, prepared recordforms that seemed suitable for their particular purposes. These schools may be able to help other schools having conditions much like their own.

indentThe work reported in this section is an integral and essential part of the whole Eight-Year Study. Better relations between schools and colleges, vitalized curriculums, more skillful and inspiring teaching, more significant and comprehensive evaluation-these and all other developments of the Study are intimately related to the records the schools keep and to the reports they make.

National Middle School Association University of Maine at Farmington MAMLE - Our Maine Concern McMel - Maine Center for Meaningful and Engaged Learning Mike Muir
Casey J. Brooks
Erica Haywood
Page Updated Tuesday, March 28, 2000