3. GREATER FLEXIBILITY AND DIFFERENTIATION REQUIRED
The recognition of individual differences urged in [section 1] necessitates a differentiation and a flexibility of the high school curriculum that is limited only by the social and individual needs to be served, the size of the school, and the availability of means. The rigid inflexibility of the inherited course of study has contributed perhaps more than its full share to the waste product of the educational machinery. The importance of this change from compulsion and rigidity toward greater flexibility has already received attention and commendation. One authority[57] states that "one main cause of (H.S.) elimination is incapacity for and lack of interest in the sort of intellectual work demanded by the present courses of study," and further that "specialization of instruction for different pupils within one class is needed as well as specialization of the curriculum for different classes." There must be less of the assumption that the pupils are made for the schools, whose regime they must fit or else fail repeatedly where they do not fit. Theoretically considerable progress has already been made in the differentiation of curricula, but in practice the opportunity that is offered to the pupils to profit thereby is curtailed, because of the rigid organization of courses and the uniform requirements that are dictated by administrative convenience or by the college entrance needs of the minority. The only permissible limitations to the variables of the curriculum should be such as aim to secure a reasonable continuity and sequence of subjects in one or more of the fields selected. One of the chief barriers to a more general flexibility has been the notion of inequality between the classical and all other types of education. This assumption has had its foundations heavily shaken of late. The quality of response which it elicits has come to receive precedence over the name by which a subject happens to be classified. "France has come out boldly and recognized at least officially the exact parity between the scientific education and the classical education."[58] Indeed one may doubt whether this parity will ever again be seriously questioned, because of the elevation of scientific training and accomplishment in the great world wars as well as in its adaptation for the direct and purposeful dealing with the problems of modern life. Especially for the early classes in the high school does the situation demand a relatively flexible curriculum, else the only choice will be to drop out to escape drudgery or failure. Inglis maintains that the selective function of the high school may operate by a process of differentiation rather than by a wholesale elimination.[59] The pupil surely cannot know in advance what he is best fitted for, but the school must help him find that out, if it is to render a very valuable service, and one at all comparable to the success of the industrial expert in utilizing his material and in minimizing waste. The junior high school especially aims to perform this function that is so slighted in the senior high school. Yet neither the organization nor the purpose of the two are so far apart as to excuse the helplessness of the latter in this important duty.
There is apparently no constitutional impediment to a still further extension of the principle of flexibility and to the minimizing of loss by what has been a costly trial and error method of fitting the pupils and the subjects to each other. Short unit courses are not unfamiliar in certain educational fields, and they lend themselves very readily to definite and specific needs. Their usefulness may be regarded as a warrant of a wider adoption of them. Although they are as yet employed mainly for an intensive form of training or instruction to meet specific needs of a particular group in a limited time,[60] the principle of their use is no longer novel. A unit course of an extensive nature is also conceivable, for instance, a semester of any subject entitled to two credits might allow a division into two approximately equal portions. If then both teacher and pupil feel, when one unit is completed, that the pupil is in the wrong subject or that his work is hopeless in that subject, he might be permitted to withdraw and be charged with a failure of only one point, that is, just one-half the failure of a semester's work in the subject—or one-fourth that for a whole year with no semester divisions. Even if this scheme would not work equally well in all subjects, it implies no extensive reorganization to employ it in the ones adapted. It is not incredible that, as the people more generally understand that physics, chemistry, and biology have become vital to national self-preservation and social well-being, their emphasis as subjects required or as subjects sought by most of the pupils may lead to a high percentage of failures, such as is found for Latin and mathematics usually, or for science as reported in St. Louis, where it was required of all and yielded the highest percentage of failures. Now the teaching of most sciences by the unit plan will comprise no greater difficulty than is involved in overcoming text-book methods and the conservatism of convention. The project device, as employed in vocational education, will also lend itself in many instances to the unit division of work. The first consequence of this plan will be a reduction of failures for the pupil in those subjects whose continued pursuit would mean increased failure. The second consequence may be to relieve teachers of hopeless cases of misfit in any subject, for if the pupils no longer have intolerable subjects imposed on them the teachers will come to demand only tolerable work in the subjects of their choice. The third consequence will probably be to encourage pupils to find themselves by trying out subjects at less risk of such cumulative failures as are disclosed in [section 3] of the preceding chapter.