Chapter 5 - What Happened In College?

Concerning Different Conditions

8 Year Home
8 Year Web Project
Introduction
I Study Launched
II Schools Choose
III Curriculum-Needs
IV-Schools-Study-Pupils
V In College?
Asked-Questions
Investigation-Planned
The-Criteria
The-Colleges
Study-the-Students
Graduates-Succeed
College-Findings
College-Facts
Different-Conditions
Footnotes
VI We Learned
Appendix
Index
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indent Concerning the different conditions prevailing in these two schools, the College Staff has this to say:

The products of these two schools are indistinguishable from each other in terms of college success. Good teaching obviously was characteristic of both these schools. But good teaching alone was not responsible for the superiority of the product----good teaching, after all, was characteristic of most of the Thirty Schools, as well as most of the schools from which the comparison group was drawn. The other important characteristics of both schools were: their willingness to undertake a search for valid objectives; organizing curricula and techniques and setting them in motion in order to attain the objectives; and, finally, measuring the effectiveness of curricula and techniques by appropriate evaluation devices. These are basic processes; their utility in any type of school is proved. 8

The Directing Committee asked a group of distinguished college officials to examine the findings of this investigation and to draw any conclusion which in their judgment the data warrant. This committee prepared a report which was presented by the chairman to various regional meetings of the Association of American Colleges early in 1940. Their report concludes with these two paragraphs: 9

The results of this Study seem to indicate that the pattern of preparatory school program which concentrates on a preparation for a fixed set of entrance examinations is not the only satisfactory means of fitting a boy or girl for making the most out of the college experience. It looks as if the stimulus and the initiative which the less conventional approach to secondary school education affords sends on to college better human material than we have obtained in the past.

I may add that this report to you has been approved by a Committee of the Commission on School and College Relations consisting of the following membership: President Barrows of Lawrence College, President Park of Bryn Mawr, Dr. Gumere of Harvard, Dean Speight of Swarthmore, Dean Brumbaugh of Chicago, and myself.

HERBERT E. HAWKES, Chairman

The major findings of the investigation of the success of students in college were presented to the colleges in a series of regional, round-table conferences in the spring of 1940. The results of the Study, as presented, were not seriously questioned by anyone. What changes in school and college relations these conclusive findings will produce remains to be seen. Many colleges are now giving serious consideration to their relations with the schools from which their students come. There is reason to expect that the schools and colleges of the country will soon draw more closely together in a mutually satisfying relationship.

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 Saturday, April 01, 2000