Report Sees Need for Stress On Common Values in High Schools

Probing the heart of the American educational dilemma, the University Committee, in its Report published yesterday, sees in the development of the high school a basic problem of democratic society.

From 1870 to 1940, while the general population was increasing three-fold, the enrollment of high schools was being multiplied by about ninety times as a result of the movement toward universal education begun in a few states before the middle of the last century by Horace Mann and Henry Barnard and culminating at the end of the century in free public education in every state and free secondary education in most.

This increase in the population of high schools was marked by a "gradual change . . . in the whole character of the high school and its function toward American society." Where the early high school trained men who would go on to college, trained them in the staples of composition and mathematics, Virgil and Xenophon, the modern high school's function and scope are broader.

". . . Instead of looking forward to college, three fourths of (high school) students now look forward directly to work. Except for a small minority, the high school has therefore ceased to be a preparatory school in the old sense of the word. In so far as it is preparatory, it prepares not for college but for life."

"This mighty and far-reaching fact in itself," says the Report, "gives rise to one of the main themes of this report . . .: how, given this new character and role of the high school, can the interests of the three fourths who go on to active life be reconciled with the equally just interests of the one fourth who go on to further education? And, more important still, how can these two groups, despite their different interests, achieve from their education some common and binding understanding of the society which they will possess in common?

Diversity of Intelligence, Alms

Today's high schools, says the Committee, have "the incomparably difficult task of meeting, in ways which they severally respect and will respond to, masses of students of every conceivable shade of intelligence, background, means, interest, and expectation.

"Unlike the old high school in which no one was compelled to stay if he could not or did not wish to do the work, the modern high school must find place for every kind of student whatever his hopes and talents. It cannot justly fail to adapt itself, within reason, to any."

". . . In an industrial age, no alternative exists to the widespread employment of minors (or, much more likely, their widespread unemployment) except some concept of schooling which recognizes and meets the vast actual difference among students."

"The ideal is a system which shall be as fair to the fast as to the slow, the hand-minded as to the book-minded, but which, while meeting the separate needs of each, shall yet foster that follow feeling between human being and human being which is the deepest root of democracy."

Ineseapable differences among students, the Report continues, "have brought about a huge increase in the number and kind of subjects taught in high school."

". . . This growth of the curriculum raises . . . the main problem of this report, which has to do, not with the thousand influences dividing man from man, but with the necessary bonds and common ground between them. Democracy, however much by ensuring the right to differ it may foster difference--particularly in a technological age which further encourages division of function and hence difference of outlook--yet depends equally on the binding ties of common standards."

". . . Democracy is not only opportunity for the able. It is equally betterment for the average, both the immediate betterment which can be gained in a single generation and the slower groundswell of betterment which works through generations. hence the task of the high school is not merely to speed the bright boy to the top. it is at least as much (so far as numbers are concerned, far more) so to widen the horizons of ordinary students that they and, still more, their children will encounter fewer of the obstacles that cramp achievement."

". . . To the degree that high schools try to prepare the majority for early entrance into active life by giving them all sorts of practical, immediately effective training, to that degree something like a chasm opens between them and the others whose education is longer. And in this chasm are the possibilities of misunderstanding and class distinction."

In the increasingly large curricula and in the so-called course unit system prevalent in U.S. high schools, the Committee discovers "alienation of students from each other in mind and outlook because their courses of study . . . are so distinct, and the disjointedness of any given student's work . . ." as salient dangers.

Still More Diverse Curriculum Favored

But the Committee, in the case of high schools, does not view a tightening in the curriculum as the shield against these dangers. It suggests, indeed, "even a greater diversity than exists at present in the still largely bookish curriculum, since nothing else will match the actual range of intelligence and background among students."

In addition, however, it suggests a need for some principle of unity, since without it the curriculum flies into pieces and even the studies of any one student are atomic or unbalanced or both.

The force of the high school is not well defined, the Committee remarks. "The standard of our education is a strongly middle-class standard, which must disappoint and may embitter those (perhaps half of all the students in the high school) who find themselves cast for another role. Their good is still almost wholly to be discovered." And, failing to serve properly those not bookishly inclined, the secondary school "largely fails to find and force the able young person," the Report laments.

But the Committee is not in doubt as to what is needed: "The hope of the American school system, indeed of our society, is precisely that it can pursue two goals simultaneously: give scope to ability and raise the average. Nor are these two goals so far apart, if human beings are capable of common sympathies."

The Committee's recommendations for American high schools are of a general nature, though in Chapter Four of its Report it examines specific aspects. The secondary school, it concludes, must be concerned with the physical and mental health of its pupils. ". . . The educational process has somewhat failed of its purpose," says the Report, "if it has produced the merely bookish youth who lacks spirit and is all light without warmth."

Mental health, according to the Committee, involves social adjustment, an understanding of other people and a responsiveness to their needs with its counterpart of good manners, and personal adjustment, the individual's understanding of himself, his poise and adequacy in coping with real situations.

". . . Living is a cooperative process. Social adjustment is not something that just happens in the individual with the passing of years. One must learn to get along with other people just as one learns to use complex sentences. But the task of learning to get along with people is infinitely more difficult." Assistance in this task, as well as formal instruction, is the duty of the high school the Report states.