Suburbia's Scarsdale High School Offers Top Academic Challenge

Besides golf courses and women's clubs, today's Suburbia has some of the nation's most advanced public schools. The great migration from the cities to commuter-land, bringing hordes of new students in its van, has subjected suburban education to great strains. Many schools have responded to and grown with this challenge, however, and today a good number of suburban high schools are rated among the best in the country.

Scarsdale High School, about twenty-five miles north of New York City in Westchester County, is certainly not typical, but many of its problems and methods are representative of the suburban high school in general. Along with others, such as Newton, New Trier, and Shaker Heights, Scarsdale is considered by many educators as one of the nation's finest public secondary schools. Like most of these communities, Scarsdale has one main advantage in the effort to secure good educational facilities--it is a very wealthy village.

Educated Community

The ability to pay for the steep expenses of good education is, however, certainly not the sole reason the village maintains a fine high school. Most residents of this town of about 14,000 have had college educations themselves and are highly concerned with providing a good education for their children. With a large proportion of educationally minded and well-to-do residents, Scarsdale thus has the will and the means to provide top schooling.

The high school itself includes the four pre-college classes with an enrollment of about 1300. Its system of grouping classes represents a departure from usual junior and senior high divisions. Until last September, the school also handled the seventh and eighth grades, but enrollment reached over 1700 in a building which should not have held more than 1400. Scarsdale voted to erect a junior high school which was completed for use this year. The new multi-million dollar building includes sixth, as well as seventh and eighth graders, thus also easing the squeeze in the elementary. The four-year high school has today approximately the same enrollment as did the six-year school five years ago, an indication that enrollment has jumped by about 50 per cent since 195. At no time, however, did the typical academic class include more than about 24 pupils.

Scarsdale High Principal, Oliver W. Melchior, welcomes the new four-year arrangement. The more volatile seventh and eighth graders no longer race around the halls, and Melchior says, "given our circumstances the four year organization is more desirable in that it groups the college preparatory work after eighth grade under the same roof and in the same departments."

For Scarsdale is practically a college preparatory school. Of the class of 1956, 97 percent of the students went on to continue their education in college or junior college in specialized training. The following year saw about 90 per cent of the graduates go on to further study--in both cases a very high proportion for a public high school.

Competition Strong

As a preparatory institution, Scarsdale is highly competitive for both "honor-roll" and average students. There is an intensive scramble among bright pupils to "make" a good college, and one of the hardest tasks of the deans is advising students to look colleges other than the traditional ones in the East. Of 194 graduates in 1956 who went on to further schooling, forty-six ended up at Ivy League institutions or one of the "big-name" schools for girls.

The prestige element assumes much significance in college choice motivations, especially when parents steer their children towards schools with which mom and dad are familiar. In Scarsdale the important question is not whether you go, but where you go to college. The records for 1956 and 1957 do reveal, though, some trend toward a wider distribution of colleges attended by the school's graduates. More students have been directed toward two year schools: only six per cent of 1956's graduates went to junior colleges, while in 1957 13 per cent continued their education at a two-year school. The increasing competition to get into college will probably widen further the distribution of schools chosen by seniors and also weaken some of the prestige criteria held by pupils and their parents. In this sense the growing competition may be healthy.

But for the average student Scarsdale presents an already fiercely competitive system. From the ninth grade on, pupils are constantly spurred by reminders of the admission hurdles which lie ahead. Teachers not infrequently employ the threat to mark infractions on a student's "college record" as a disciplinary persuader. Gradually through a student's four years the pressure of getting into a choice school builds up until it reaches a peak of tension in the winter and spring of his senior year. There seems to be, in general, too much of a stress laid on achieving college admission as the "be-all and end-all." Although the rivalry to enter a good school necessitates some atmosphere of competition, the tendency on both the part of some students and teachers is to see college admission, and not intellectual growth, as the goal of secondary education.

On the other hand, Scarsdale's function as essentially a preparatory institution is one of the factors which contributes to its high standards when compared with most public high schools. Opportunities for honors work are offered to the brighter students from the ninth grade on. The school curriculum has included "honors" sections for more than twenty years, and the able student has the chance to do more concentrated work in English, Mathematics, American and World History, and foreign languages. In addition, a full program of Advanced Placement courses is available for qualified senior. These courses cover material equivalent to what an introductory college treatment of the field would include, and successful completion of an Advanced Placement course counts for credit at some colleges. These courses probably provide the most rewarding academic high school experiences for the pupils who take them. English, American history, and French used to form the original nucleus of the Advanced Placement program at Scarsdale, but Mathematics was added in 1956 and physics and Chemistry will also soon be available.

The honors program, for all four years, is highly flexible. Since students enroll for honors only in individual courses, no early commitment to an overall program is needed to take advantage of the advanced course efferings. Mathematics is an exception, because the pupil who wants to study calculus as a senior must accelerate all along the line.

New Summer School

Responding to the national cry for more science education, Scarsdale has instituted a modified summer school session for those who want to take advance biology, physics, or chemistry. Because there is not enough time to take a full Advanced Placement course in any of these subjects in one year, students take the elemntary portions over the summer to qualify for the higher-level courses during the regular term.

The Advanced Placement courses approximate college-level work with varying success. Because of expenses of buying books (a public school does not require students to purchase their books), the Advanced Placement History section is confined too closely to a text for its readings. The English class, however, gives conscientious students a workout which matches that of lower level Harvard Humanities course. In 1955-56, one third of the year was spent on drama and the work centered around a theme once known to freshmen here as "Ideas of Good and Evil in Western Literature." During the winter, poetry, essays, and a series of about seven novels were read, including such works as The Brothers Karamazov, Buddenbrooks, and The Last Puritan. Two papers of about 3000 words length, involving a sizable amount of outside reading were required, plus numerous shorter compositions.

Developing the ability to write good exposition is a problem at all levels of the school, a difficulty which seems to be prevalent through out the country. Even the Advanced Placement English class finds trouble fitting in enough time to work on writing. The school administration has moved this year, however, to place more stress on English composition work. English teachers have been limited to four classes a day, in contrast with the normal load of five for other teachers. The extra time, according to the principal, will enable pupils and teachers "to work more industriously in developing quality in writing.

Senior 'Source Theme'

Scarsdale, furthermore, acquaints all seniors with the necessary techniques for writing a comparatively long research paper, from 1500 to 5000 words. The "source theme" is the big academic adventure (or bane, depending upon one's out look) of the senior year. In this six-week project, students leaf through a couple of dozen books and scribble a gross of note cards in an involved process which a Harvard student goes through only with his honors thesis. Unfortunately complication and not critical analysis of a subject is stressed, but the practise does provide a valuable preview of research methods. With his source theme behind him, the Scarsdale student is better able to attack the usual college paper than is the high-school graduate who has never written more than a 500-word essay.

Of course, many non-academic courses are also available. Because of the great proportion of students planning on college, no formal vocational program is offered, although courses in typing, shop, business law, and similar subjects are provided. Many students weave these courses into the normal college preparatory program, and almost all take some sort of non-academic elective. The curriculum includes art, speech, mechanical drawing, cooking, singing, dramatics, health, driver education, etc., and most of the traditional garnishings of American public education.

Since students elect no coordinated program, vocational or honors or any other, there is a minimum of academic segregation within the school. Probably one of Scarsdale's healthiest features lies in the fact that the honors sections system offers the necessary advanced work for the more qualified yet causes no formal division between the bright and average students in any grade. The whole class is divided into heterogeneous "home room" sections which meet daily for attendance and to discuss student council business.

Extra-Curricular Activities

In its extracurricular program Scarsdale is typical of most high schools. The General Organization or student council is the central extracurricular activity and provides a coordinating body for organizations and a playground for the machinations of school politicos. The limits of its power have usually remained, wisely untested, although a few years ago, when the General Organization voted to establish new regulations for parking, which limited teachers as well as pupils, the teachers complied, albeit with mixed reactions. A couple of dozen clubs and activities carry on regularly, including a yearbook, literary magazine, and biweekly paper, and enthusiastic students often belong to six or more.

Scarsdale High thus provides almost a self-contained community environment for its students. A well-organized athletic program, a complete range of extracurricular activities, and a series of social functions, as well as the academic schedule, all fall under the high school's aegis. Social life too usually revolves around high school friends, and cafeteria, corridors, and auditorium provide popular, if not private, sites for rendezvous.

This communal totality which the school offers does, however, possess some drawbacks. For the student body is in many respects a very homogeneous group. Almost all pupils come from "comfortable" if not wealthy homes and thus only a small segment of the economic spectrum is represented. There are hardly any Negro students (less than a half-dozen per class) in the group, although there is a high proportion of Jewish and Catholic pupils; but in a tolerant and religiously easy-going village like Scarsdale, religious friction within the school is negligible. Politically too, the range of allegiances is fairly middle-of-the roadish.

The academic side of this school school community is growing in importance for the students, if only because of college pressure. School records indicate that more pupils are choosing heavier electives in math and science and are deciding to work at the rate of five major subjects a year instead of four. The percentage achieving "honor role" standing has increased from 25-30 per cent about 15 years ago to 40-45 percent today.

"There is no question," Principal Melchior believes, "but that students are showing an increased realization of the importance of their high school work, are endeavoring to achieve higher standards, and are seeking more conscientiously to capitalize on their potential."

Academic Side

This increased importance of the academic aspect of education is an encouraging sign. As well as teaching growing numbers of pupils the suburban school must provide a high-quality education--not merely to start pupils learning the techniques needed to shoot up heavier missles, but also to provide enlightened individuals trained in the humanities and social sciences as well. The suburban school must, in reality, be many different schools for the community's children. The experiments in advanced education in which Scarsdale and other schools have participated help point the way towards achieveing true scholastic challenge in the public school environment