The Reorganized School System
The scheme of school organization which is in keeping with the foregoing study of mental development is as follows: Three primary years are to be devoted to the rudiments of the social arts. Three intermediate years following the primary are to be devoted to gaining an outlook on the world. Three years covering the period now covered by grades seven, eight, and nine are to be devoted to social studies and a systematization of knowledge of the world. The three years from fifteen to eighteen are to be devoted to a completion of general training and to the beginning of specialization. After this will come complete specialization.
Not all students can go through the full training thus outlined. More and more, however, communities will provide for, and require the completion of, the whole cycle. If a student’s training must be curtailed, there will doubtless be an increasing tendency to bring the higher stages down rather than to terminate education before preparation for life has been carried far enough to give specialized individual training.
EXERCISES AND READINGS
Considering the kindergarten and the first grade in the light of the discussions of this chapter, what are the characteristics of pupils which justify placing them in the one or the other? What is the present rule with regard to this placing? Should there be any systematic education of children in the home? If so, along what lines?
Make a detailed catalogue of the kinds of ability, both physical and mental, exhibited by a group of pupils in the first grade, and then attempt, by contrasting a third-grade group, to determine what pupils acquire in the primary years. Which of the new characteristics noted are consciously sought by the school?
What kind of reading matter should be offered to pupils in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades? What grade of experience is required of teachers in the middle grades?
What readjustments is the student called on to make as he passes from elementary school to high school? From high school to college? Do the institutions concerned put forth any effort to help the student in making these transitions?
When should formal education stop? Should pupils be given a course in the methods of educating themselves? If so, at what school period?
Show in terms of earlier chapters what are the forces making for reorganization of the school system and the forces opposing this reorganization.
Ames, E. S. Psychology of Religious Experience. Houghton Mifflin Company. Like other books on the psychology of religion, this calls attention to the great importance of the changes that come with adolescence.
Hall, G. S. Adolescence. D. Appleton and Company. This is a somewhat erratic and often purely hypothetical description of the development of pupils at the beginning of the high-school age. It called attention, however, to the importance of the period and marked an epoch in the development of educational theory.
Hall, G. S. Youth. D. Appleton and Company. A brief summary based on the foregoing.
Kirkpatrick, E. A. Fundamentals of Child Study. The Macmillan Company. This is the best summary of the child-study movement. It offers a treatment of the different periods of a child’s life somewhat different from that in the text.