8 Year Home
 8 Year Web Project
 Introduction
 I Study Launched
 II Schools Choose
 III Curriculum-Needs
 IV-Schools-Study-Pupils
 V In College?
 VI We Learned
 Appendix
  Co-operation-Plan
  Student-Selection
  Underlying-Ideas
  Report-by-Hawkes
 Index
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The educational emphasis in this Plan is based upon a conviction that the secondary schools must become more effective in helping young people to develop the insight, the powers and the self-direction necessary for resourceful and constructive living. We wish to work toward a type of secondary education which will be flexible, responsive to changing needs, and clearly based upon an understanding of young people as well as all understanding of the qualities needed in adult life.
We are trying to develop students who regard education as an enduring quest for meanings rather than credit accumulation; who desire to investigate, to follow the leadings of a subject, to explore new fields of thought; knowing how to budget time, to read well, to use sources of knowledge effectively and who are experienced in fulfilling obligations which come with membership in the school or college community.
To this end we should like to provide, more fully than the present organization of secondary education permits, for changes such as are indicated tinder the following headings:
A. Greater mastery in learning:
acquisition of such techniques as reading with speed and comprehension, observing accurately, organizing and summarizing information; ability to work with many kinds of materials; capacity to see facts in their relationships; ability to state ideas clearly; techniques essential as a foundation for later advanced study.
B. More continuity of learning:
the elimination, wherever advisable, of limited, brief assignments and courses; a more coherent development of fields of study; provision for more consecutive pursuit of a particular subject through several years; encouragement (including the devising of ways and means and the allowance of sufficient time in the school schedule) of the desire to investigate; development of the power and impetus to pursue a subject beyond tile school requirement, and stimulation of the desire to put ideas to use.
There should be less emphasis on subjects and more oil continuous, unified sequence of subject matter, planned on a four-year or six-year basis. English is the only course that at present even approximates
this aim. Continuous courses in the sciences and social sciences would take the place of such fragments of subject matter as chemistry or modern European history. Chemistry has its biological, geological, or astronomical implications that should not be overlooked if the whole of science is to have significance. Similarly, such cultures as those of South America and Asia should have a place in history courses, for comparative study, as well as those of Europe and the United States. Mathematics and foreign languages also, would be reorganized in a manner to enable the pupil to get a "long" view of these fields of subject matter.
C. Release of creative energies:
through experience and training in various arts, including both practice and appreciation (ex: painting, modeling, writing, drama, music); through the encouragement, in all work, of independent, individual thinking and of fresh combining of thought; through providing opportunities, with guidance, for young people to exercise their desire to do something "on their own,' (ex: tinkering, inventing, constructing, special pursuits in reading, instrumental music).
D. Clearer understanding of the problems of our civilization, and the development of a sense of social responsibility:
through including, in the curriculum, studies bearing upon specific problems of American civilization and that of the modem world, and the outstanding individual and collective efforts to solve these problems; through using every opportunity to help students to realize tile interdependence and inter-relationships of human lives; through helping students to develop social responsibility, in feeling and in practice as well as in appreciation of the issues involved, by means of such activities as participation in school community life with concern for the general welfare, discussion groups on social and economic problems, field trips to study industrial processes, housing conditions, or the machinery of government; a model league of nations, or assembly programs which require, as do all tile foregoing activities, much reading and investigation in the broad fields of social relationships.
E. Revision of curriculum materials and their organization:
besides tile changes fit curriculum materials to be inferred from the above-mentioned changes in practice, such other experiments as: reorganizing the sequence of material in different fields of knowledge, for secondary education (ex; mathematics, science, history, language);
unifying the subjects of study and removing some of the boundaries now existing between closely related fields (ex: history in its relation to the facts of economics, geography, literature and fine arts); addition of new materials from fields of knowledge not hitherto included in typical secondary school curricula (ex: certain materials from the fields of economics, anthropology, geology).
F. Guidance of students:
The function of guidance in education needs much greater study and emphasis. While it is important that the student should have as much independence and responsibility as lie can use wisely, counsel of the best sort should be available when lie needs it. Some one should know him well and be able and ready to examine his problems with him and to help him solve them. Ile should be helped to see his career through school and college as a developing experience, with each phase in a definite relationship toward the whole.
Under the Directing Committee, plans will be worked out to achieve this purpose. The program will include: more thorough study of the needs of individuals, with corresponding adjustment of the school program to their needs; record-keeping for later analysis; more intelligent preparation of the student for the use of the opportunities provided by the colleges.
G. Teaching:
It is evident that the changes in secondary education suggested in this memorandum cannot occur without teaching of a very high quality. This would be true of any experimental work. We full), recognize the scarcity of teachers who are qualified in background, in training and in personality for this type of work. There are, however, some teachers now at work who could successfully carry through the suggested program. Some of these are already studying its possibilities. Others will be discovered as the work is begun.
Schools, colleges, and universities that are undertaking the training of teachers will be interested in helping select the most promising candidates and in training them in the best possible ways for this work. We fully realize that the discovery and training of better teachers must go hand in hand with wise experimentation, and that experiments must move slowly enough to keep within the limits of available good teaching.
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