The Thirty Schools have learned that thorough preparation for revision requires honest belief in exploration and experimentation as a method of educational progress. This means that principals and teachers must have an abiding faith in the possibilities of youth. They should be able to see in each boy or girl the potential self-supporting, well adjusted man or woman of individual dignity and worth. It means, also, that the school believes sincerely in the possibility of continuous improvement of its own work---that nothing is so well done that it cannot be done better. No teacher is ready to contribute to educational progress unless he is willing and able to reconsider and call in question whatever has been taken for granted. Open-minded analysis of assumptions is a strong stimulant to vigorous, constructive thinking.

Constructive thinking requires the capacity to break tip one's customary patterns of thought and to create new ones. This is especially necessary in those who would see education afresh. Usually education is thought of in patterns of school buildings, classrooms, classes, textbooks, courses, grades, credits, diplomas. It is only when these paraphernalia of education can be pushed into the background of one's mind that realistic thinking becomes possible. Only then is the teacher able to see the student as a young human being growing up in a very complex and difficult. world. And only then can the teacher begin to see clearly and constructively what the school should be and do.

Experience has taught the participating schools that no school is ready to advance until teachers have a sure sense of security in adventure. They are safe in following tradition; they must be sure that they will be equally secure in departing from tradition. Only then can they maintain their personal and professional integrity and grow into the fullness of their stature as teachers and personalities.

Pleasant surroundings and favorable working conditions facilitate preparation for secondary school reconstruction. A modern, commodious, well-equipped building, spacious grounds, freedom from traffic noises, adequate libraries, laboratories, studios and shops, small classes, a homogeneous student body—these are all much to be desired. But it has been learned that they are not essential. Some of the most significant contributions coming from the Eight-Year Study have been made by schools where few of these advantageous circumstances exist. Without strong conviction on the part of teachers that youth must be better served, no important changes will be made. With that conviction, with leadership, co-operation, imagination, initiative, and courage teachers will move forward no matter how unfavorable the physical environment and working conditions may be.

Out of their experience the Thirty Schools counsel others about to revise their work to take time to see where they are going, to "look before they leap." The high school which co-operatively re-examines, in an open-minded and realistic spirit, its service to its students and community always reaches the conclusion that many important needs of boys and girls are not being met satisfactorily and that something should be done. Then these questions always arise: What part of our work should we surely retain? What part should be discontinued? What new work is needed? Shall we adopt this proposal or another? In what direction shall we move?

Asking these questions, a school faculty might choose an easy solution by copying what some other school had done. They might turn, for instance, to this Report and adopt a revised curriculum which had been developed in one of the schools. Such a procedure -would be a serious mistake and the results would certainly be unsatisfactory. Genuine re-construction does not come that way. All teachers, all faculties must go through the bard experience of thinking their own problems through. The experiences of other teachers; and schools can be useful in pointing the way, but no teacher or school can travel for others the hard road of reconstruction. Schools must find their own answers to their most puzzling questions.

These questions cannot be answered intelligently until objectives are determined and clearly stated. Therefore, this difficult task must be attempted. Statements of objectives often have little meaning. Sometimes they are couched in such general terms that they provide no guidance. Oil the other hand, so many detailed, specific objectives are often listed that no sense of direction is indicated. The member schools encountered both of these difficulties early in the Study. Later when they were asked to restate their objectives in terms of desirable changes in pupils-changes which could be observed or discovered objectively-meaningless generalization and multiplicity of pin-pose were much less in evidence in the revisions. But this searching question remained largely unanswered: What changes ill pupils are desirable? Thus the problem of purpose continued to thrust itself into the forefront of the thinking of the schools. They have learned that it cannot be escaped and that sure progress in reconstruction cannot take place in any school until unity and clarity of purpose are achieved.

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