THE PLACE OF THE HIGH SCHOOL IN THE STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM

I

PREPARATORY OR FINISHING?

CHARLES C. VAN LIEW

T does not always follow that a given part of our state educational system is out of joint with the times or in need of repairs because it frequently becomes a subject of controversy. Such controversies are becoming more and more an expression of the general spirit of progress among social institutions. But there is no institutional progress which does not preserve a healthful balance between conservative and radical forces, insuring at once stability and vitality amid shifting scenes and conditions. This is preëminently true of an educational institution which is supposed to reflect both the persistent type-features and the progressiveness of society; and every controversial discussion touching such an institution may arise, indeed, should arise, just as readily from the conservative as from the radical attitude of mind. The discussion of the present theme, "The Place of the High School in the State School System," involves just such a coöperation of mental attitudes. Any part of an educational system must give some guarantee of its highest efficiency in both stability and progressive vitality; for these qualities are vital to the society of which it is a characteristic expression as well as means of self-preservation. In the highest sense, then, our theme becomes "The Place of the High School, not in the State School System," but rather "In the Social Order of the State," and the true purpose and function of secondary education become our most immediate concern.

Some unanimity of opinion as to the real purpose of secondary education must lie back of all well-directed efforts to readjust secondary school work in a state school system. Indeed, all our present differing views as to the right or wrong of practice are probably traceable to lack of harmony among us on this vital point. Let our first inquiry, then, be that of the proper function of the high school.

This function may be discussed from the view-point (1) of youth itself, i. e,, of the subjective conditions vital and peculiar to secondary work, (2) of the social whole, whose nature and needs help to create and maintain this part of the educational system as every other, and (3) of higher education and the university, which represents peculiarly the culminating intellectual force and, today, the center of creative energy in society. It is evident that each of these three determinants of secondary education will have its special contribution to make to the final constitution of the high school. But it is equally evident that all of them can so contribute only when they are made to harmonize.

From the standpoint of adolescence it should be one of the functions of secondary education to call into activity as much of the promise of this age as possible. Until in very recent years the dogma of so-called "formal discipline," the theory that any one

peculiarly endowed branch of instruction, intensively pursued, could cultivate a general mental power comprehending the entire gamut of intellectual capacities has stood obstinately in the way of making the secondary curriculum a sympathetic approach to the real life of youth. But the theory of general mental discipline is pure assumption, and, as defended in the past, rests upon no foundation of facts whatever; while, on the other hand, a great many facts, systematically treated, disprove it. It will suffice our present purpose to note that such a theory is always self-sufficient. It relieves the educator at once of a great many burdensome problems, among them those of the real cultural and practical value of his materials, of the response to inherent capacities, of the matter of vitalizing and disciplining special powers, and finally of the social fitness of his products. Its reaction upon the curriculum of secondary education, therefore, is inevitably narrowing and in the direction of forced and unsympathetic training; its virtue is that rather negative one of securing thoro drill in a few lines without any regard for the usefulness of those lines whatever. The theory has never been quite logically applied, however; it could not be. Yet it has served admirably in the past as a defense for a narrow curricuTum and the very great over emphasis of some branches. We have already broken in part with the hold of this dogma upon practice; and what we now need is complete freedom from a view which tends to obscure at once both those peculiar and vital forces of youth upon which efficient educational work must rely, and the highest utility of culture. There is one thing which can save to the adolescent the value of the many special promises which his nature makes for an expansive and many-sided character, and that is more or less special attention to each promise.

Secondary education deals with a period of development and character-building in which heart culture, thru the exercise, control, and refinement of native impulses, becomes more vital than at any other time of life. As we shall see later, it is, furthermore, the period most responsive to the demands of the social whole. In its physical reinforcement or rebirth, in its heightened sensibilities and the consequent sensitiveness to esthetic effects, in its strong tendencies to creative and productive activity, the capacity for sweeping and lofty idealization, and the storm and stress of emotional life, measuring often the gamut from the most enthusiastic and exalted to the most depressed and despondent tones, in the manifest practical interest in moral, social, religious, and philosophic principles and conceptions, which mark the first real bloom of the higher intellectual life and the first strong effort at self-conscious expression of personality, we find the powers for growth peculiar to youth. Such is the stuff, such the forces which make for human character. If any reconstruction of the work of secondary education be ever imperative, let us pray that it be undertaken with a new consecration to the problems of human character which youth presents in its own nature; for no age presents so great force, variety, and plasticity of material. Here, in secondary education, if anywhere, is the golden opportunity of education.

More specific suggestions as to what culture materials will best meet the capacities of youth for character development we leave to the discussion of the high school from the view-point of the social whole. But there is one other subjective factor which must influence our conception of the function of the secondary school; it is the tendency to individual variation, which in adolescence becomes prominent enough to be vital to education and to demand some recognition of the principles of specialization and election.

There are certain individuals among youth who do not come readily or early to any self-knowledge either sufficiently emphatic or definite to furnish a basis of judgment as to their own special bent in life, and who, at the same time, therefore, cannot be recognized by their teachers as peculiarly endowed for a special vocation. On the contrary, there are among them many who evince a decided propensity to experiment with a variety of interests, changing, either at home or in school, now to this, now to that fad. I believe that this propensity is not an altogether undesirable one. If education would give it some conscious and guided opportunity for exercise, I am inclined to the belief that the self-knowledge which is so needful in the exercise of the higher social being and which secondary education should make for, would result. The student would run no

danger of incurring either vacillation or superficiality of character, if the opportunity to specialize and the method by which it should be carried out were both limited and controlled by the organization of the school. There would still be certain fundamental and persistent features, each course representing, first and above all, a field of sufficient breadth and universality of interest to introduce the youth to the typical spirit and some of the characteristic culture of his age, race, people, and community. And such culture should aim broadly at the common stock in trade. But as secondary to this fundamentally social cast, the secondary curriculum should make specialization for the above end an incidental aim.

Again, some students have just that self-knowledge as to decided bent and life interests which we find lacking in others. The wants of this class should be met freely thru such limited semi-vocational specialization as a possible large variety of courses could offer, each course preserving its touch with the common cultural aim of all secondary education.

Limited opportunity to elect, therefore, would cover both of the above needs, i. e., tentative and experimental specialization and persistent and semi-vocational specialization, and still prevent superficiality and vacillation in the one case and narrowness thru too early specialization in the other; for the required work in any course would maintain substance, stability, and balance. In any event there should be some limited recognition of the principles of specialization and election.

Our discussion of the real end of secondary training has already of necessity implied somewhat of the view-point of the social whole in shaping secondary education. In spite of the emphasis which has been given thus far to the idea that one aim of secondary training is implicit in the nature of youth itself, I believe that the social aim of the high school must rank beside it. We should not be unmindful of that which President Jordan has so often and so well emphasized: the great desideratum in all education whatsoever is the teacher; as a living educative force, the course or the subject elected can never rank with the teacher. Still there is no such thing as proceeding with the formulation of a curriculum, except in the impersonal sense; and no recognition of the worth of personality in education can wholly obliterate the fact that, given a number of personally forcible and inspiring teachers, the problem of choice among branches still remains, and that that choice in the future must be determined by the power of the subject for rendering the individual socially fit. After all has been said as to the common and fundamental traits of youth, we must remember that its most striking trait is a plasticity to accessory and adaptive training unsurpassed by any other time of life. It is an eminently fitting principle of human growth, one abundantly illustrated, furthermore, in the history of education, that the age preceding and devoted to maturity of manhood and womanhood should also be most amenable to needful adaptation to that social order in which men and women must live. I do not believe, therefore, that the high school can be regarded as primarily either strictly preparatory or strictly finishing, as implied in the statement of our theme. It is, rather, broadly adaptive, and in the direction of the social whole; the place of the high school should be so regarded in the state school system. This conception, however does not exclude, on the contrary it includes, the operation of this socially adaptive function in the direction of higher education, and the university becomes one, but only one of the social forces directly shaping secondary education.

The greatest impetus to secondary training is to come in the future from the more immediate demands of society, citizenship, and life in a high and rapidly shifting civilization. These are all complex conditions touching the very life of the high school directly, phases of the immediate and, to a very great extent, the personal environment of the youth during his high school career; and they demand a general intelligence on matters of citizenship, a breadth of information on the mechanical and physical features of environment, a skill and a character which elementary education will soon be unable to meet for the average man. The educational institution which is coming to stand closest to the people, at least so far as combined breadth of contact, adaptive power, and intimate touch with the ambitious spirit and ideals of this democracy and civilization are

concerned, is the American high school, the so-called People's College. The moment we grasp the full meaning of this closeness and vitality of the relationship which the high school seeks to establish between youth and society, that moment we become easily prophetic of the educational future. Is it not apparent that, except so far as a limited control over the old time facilities is concerned, elementary education cannot cope in any vital sense with the great educational problem of social adaptation; that, furthermore, the high school of each community must become for such community its best expression of a refined and expanded civic, social, industrial, and cultural consciousness? A part of its forces in this regard will be due to the fact of its more immediate physical presence, and, hence, of its more local and democratic administration.

In the light of what has already been said, then, the interests of society and the interests of youth (sometimes the former, sometimes the latter, usually both) call for an emphasis in secondary education of vigorous and systematic physical training for the sake of its moral, esthetic, and physical effects; of art, including music and the graphic arts, for the sake of the refining and controlling reaction upon the religious, sexual, and emotional life, and of the higher social fitness they involve; of manual training for the adaptation of the creative and productive thirst of youth to the prominent mechanical consciousness of modern society (we have overlooked in our high school almost entirely the tremenduous training value of mechanical occupations); of literature for its esthetic and ethical culture, its response to the emotional and idealizing life, its revelation of the best heart and philosophy aud religion of the race; of historic studies for their sympathetic response to the social interests and activities of the adolescent and for their civic, economic, and sociological interpretations; of natural science for its sympathetic touch with the intellectual interests of youth, its superior discipline, its place in all modern thought, and its tremendous vitality in all modern human activity; of mathematics and language for their high disciplinary value and great utility.

The control of this material by any high school implies, of course, a reasonable but limited variety of courses. If the argument thus far advanced has any validity, the right of every high school must be conceded to establish, side by side with the courses already commonly existing, additional courses in manual training, art, and science, and, in a liberal sense, even commercial courses (not business courses, for this term is too vaguely expansive to serve our present needs). All courses should be rendered still further flexible by the privilege of guided election.

In the constitution of a course of work for any one student some work, i. e., certain constants, should be required in all lines fundamental to the nature of youth and to society, and much should be required in a few lines. Hence, its aim becomes, first, broadly adaptive; second. also preparatory for higher specialization and vocational training. If the differentiation of courses is limited by local financial conditions or the youth and immaturity of the school, an intelligent liberal conception of local needs should be given first place in determining the curriculum. (As a matter of fact, tradition determines the first cast of a vast majority of the curricula arranged for newly established high schools, e. g., classics take precedence, while more vital branches, from the adaptive view-point, limp along in disguise, as pseudo-science, pseudo-history, etc.) The slow growth of many high schools is, I believe, attributable to their aloofness from Tocal interests and life, even tho such interests and life be most highly and intelligently conceived. Such is the more likely to be the result whenever the establishment and organization of a high school is dominated by the idea that its reputation depends upon being accredited. We are brought now to the consideration of the third force shaping the function of secondary education, higher education, and the university.

Our discussion thus far has already implied that an important secondary function of the high school is to prepare for the university. What we are called upon to seek agreement in, is (1) whether this should be the chief and dominant function, (2) under what conditions entrance from the high school to the university should obtain. The position which a university takes upon either of these questions must effect vitally the constitution of secondary education, especially wherever the university career has been tradition

career.

ally, tho erroneously, regarded as almost the sole and logical outcome of the high school One might expect from university sources the most liberal and intelligent view of the real function of secondary training; yet I fear that either a certain narrowness or excessive conservatism in university views upon secondary education has, at times, been accountable for the inability of the high school to reach locally, with highly adaptive and cultural opportunities, many who should be so reached. It ought not to be necessary for any high school in this state to suffer for support; it would not suffer for lack of support if the sustaining community could become conscious of their own needs; they might realize these needs, i. e., their own more liberal demands for a secondary school, if its function had been interpreted to them with less exclusiveness and conservatism.

At this point in our discussion we should register another protest against the right of any one subject represented in the university curriculum to dominate secondary curricula. The right of all subjects which are essential to secondary education in aiding the development of youth into its greatest social fitness to a place in the high school cannot be contested. But the right of any one subject or group of subjects, as classic languages, to furnish the conditio sine qua non of all or nearly all courses and to make heavy draughts upon the energy and time of the student, regardless of its fitness to either his present or future purposes, should, with the possible exception of English, be contested. Even formal instruction in English should be no exception to the challenge, where reasonably practical facility and skill in the use of the mother tongue have been acquired. As the medium of exchange in all subjects, however, the mother tongue must be regarded as a vital element in all courses. In general, then, there should be no one subject or, at least, group of subjects regarded as of greater worth in secondary training than another, except as it represents some line of election or specialization as already discussed. As already stated, there should be something in many lines, and much, both as to quality and quantity, in a few lines; but the choice in the latter regard should be free from the claim, or the tendency to a claim, of any branch to universal recognition.

Here again the exclusive conception of the high school as a preparatory school seems still to dominate the situation. The strongest influence in this regard is exercised by the university; university influence, as expressed in an accredited system, seems to have been shaped almost wholly by the possible fitness of the student for a comparatively few lines of university work. It is very hard to understand why the university, which has become so perfect a reflection of the higher practical and social, as well as intellectual, interests of human life, which is today, as never before, securing a practical touch with society thru the coalescence of the highest utilitarian and intellectual interests, should continue to maintain an attitude of exclusiveness in the ideals it sets for secondary schools, and to demand as conditions for entrance to most, if not all, university courses looking to a degree, certain proficiency in subjects which never have, and never can be, shown to bear any fundamental relation whatever to the needs of higher specialization..

There is always danger in unnecessarily supplanting natural by artificial selection, even among human forces. A process of inbreeding which accompanied the early development of colleges in this country has made it possible for a class of university representatives, one either by virtue of early training or of later professional practice, to force into general practice a narrow and artificial standard of what should constitute a secondary training fit for entrance to the university. That this standard is not final is demonstrated by a few successful instances in which leading universities have boldly broken with tradition. The reaction of a false standard, which was based upon assumptions as yet unproven, has been alike harmful to all concerned. The assumption that all fit minds will seek higher education thru the same forced channel in secondary education is entirely gratis and closed to proof under the present prevailing system. Set the forces free and test it. The force of a tradition does go far toward forcing an intellectual aristocracy to do a great many things which it would not otherwise do; but it by no