DIFFERENTIATION OF COURSES
Courses of training based upon human needs should be diversified where conditions are diversified. Uniform courses of study for all schools within a city were justifiable in a former simpler age, when the schools were caring only for needs that were common to all classes. But as needs have differentiated in our large industrial cities, courses of training must also become differentiated. In Cleveland this principle has been recognized in organizing the work of the special schools and classes. For all the regular elementary schools, however, a uniform course of study has been used. Under the present administration, principals and teachers are nominally permitted wide latitude in its administration.
A large part of this freedom is taken away by two things. One is the use by the city of the plan of leaving textbooks to private purchase. For perfectly obvious reasons, so long as textbooks are privately purchased, a uniform series of textbooks must be definitely prescribed for the entire city. Uniform textbooks do not necessarily enforce a uniform curriculum. In usual practice, however, they do enforce it as completely as a prescribed uniform course of study manual. As the schools of different sections of the city are allowed to experiment and to develop variations from the course of study, they should be allowed greater freedom in choosing the textbooks that will best serve in teaching their courses.
The second condition enforcing a uniform course of study in certain subjects is the use of uniform examinations in those subjects. We would merely suggest here that it is possible to use supervisory examinations without making them uniform for all schools. Different types of school may well have different types of examination.
Different social classes often exist within the same school. Administrative limitations probably must prevent the use of more than one course of study in a single elementary school. But as the work of the grammar grades is departmentalized, and as junior high schools are developed, it will become possible to offer alternative courses in these grades. Those practically certain of going on to higher educational work requiring foreign languages and higher mathematics should probably be permitted to begin these studies by the sixth or seventh grade. On the other hand, those who are practically certain to drop out of school at the end of the grammar grades or junior high school should have full opportunities for applied science, applied design, practical mathematics, civics, hygiene, vocational studies, etc. When the necessary studies are once organized and departmental work introduced, it is not difficult to arrange for the necessary differentiation of courses in the same school.
Finally, courses of study should provide for children of differing natural ability. Extra materials and opportunities should be provided for children of large capacity; and abbreviated courses for those of less than normal ability. In departmentalized grammar grades and junior high schools this can be taken care of rather easily by permitting the brighter pupils to carry more studies than normal, and the backward ones a smaller number than normal. Under the present elementary school organization with classes so large and with so many things for the teachers to do, it is practically impossible to effect such desirable differentiations.