A Study of Representative Adults

One of the first methods of studying the curriculum is that of investigating the relation between school work and the demands of later life. The following description of a study made as part of a school survey teaches some very impressive lessons on the need of revision in the elementary curriculum:

The most serious defect of the present course of study, including some of the suggested revisions now under consideration, is that it makes thousands of children waste tens of thousands of precious hours in the laborious acquisition of facts for which they will never have any practical use. While the survey was under way the staff attempted to test the practical value of some of the subject matter taught to children in the elementary grades.

For this purpose short examinations were prepared from the material prescribed by the course of study and actually being taught in the upper grades in spelling, arithmetic, history, and geography. Through the coöperation of a woman prominent in social and intellectual circles of the city, 11 of the leading successful citizens were brought together one evening and asked to take these examinations. The object was to find out whether or not the material that the children of the upper grades were being taught was of the sort actually used by able men of affairs in the conduct of their daily business. For carrying out the test the most prominent and successful citizens were purposely chosen and in making up the examinations the most difficult material was purposely selected. The result of these examinations in spelling, geography, arithmetic, and history of the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades was that no one of the men examined made a passing mark in any subject. The reason is that the material on which they were examined, and which the children in the schools are daily learning, is of a sort that is seldom or never met with in the business of even the most successful men engaged in commercial and professional pursuits. The gentlemen who submitted to the examination were the following:

The test in spelling consisted of ten words taken from the spelling
lists of the seventh grade. These words were as follows:

Among the 11 men taking the examination, one spelled six of these words correctly. Three succeeded in spelling four words, two got three words right, one got two, three spelled one word correctly, and one failed on every word. It is not surprising that they failed so completely for no citizen in any ordinary walk of life needs to know how to spell these words. When the rare occasion arises that he needs to write one of them, he looks it up in the dictionary. These words and scores of words like them are studied in the classrooms as well as found in the spelling book.

The test described above was suggested by the experience of the director of the survey who went into a sixth grade room where an examination in spelling was being given. He took the test with the children. It consisted of 20 words, and he failed on six of them. These six words are included in the ten-word list used in the examination of the business and professional men. Some of the children in the schools can spell these words correctly but while they are laboriously learning to do it, many of them are still unable to spell short and common words as “which,” “separate,” and “receive.”[64]