Find new subjects other than those mentioned in the text which have been introduced into either the high-school curriculum or into the curriculum of the grades. Within the older courses find some new topics which have been introduced. New subjects in general are not looked on as entirely respectable. Why is this? What should be done to make them respectable?
Why does training for vocation seem less respectable than conventional school work? What is to be done to meet this situation?
Do people in general know what changes ought to be made in the curriculum? Note that the Minneapolis study found difficulties. For these it had clear scientific evidence. Did it have equally clear grounds for its recommendations? Should it have had? How could it secure evidence of this latter type?
Relating this discussion to the first paragraphs of Chapter I, let us inquire what steps with regard to informing the community are necessary to the success of a new program of studies.
Whose duty is it to plan new courses—that of the board of education, the superintendent, or the teacher who is a specialist in some subject?
Bobbitt, J. F. What the Schools Teach and Might Teach. Published by the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation. (Copies may be secured from the Russell Sage Foundation.)
Koos, L. V. The Administration of Secondary-School Units. Supplementary Educational Monograph No. 3, Vol. I, of the School Review and the Elementary School Journal. The University of Chicago Press. Contains a summary of the practices of the approved schools of the North Central Association.
Minimum Essentials in Elementary-School Subjects. Fourteenth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I, 1915. Public School Publishing Company, Bloomington, Illinois. This is an effort to bring together a statement of the essential requirements for the elementary curriculum.
Report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary Education. National Education Association. American Book Company. The most important report ever prepared in relation to the organization and courses of study of the high school. Its appearance marked the beginnings of the present era of high-school expansion.
[CHAPTER IX]
SPECIALIZED EDUCATION VERSUS GENERAL EDUCATION
Present-Day Wavering between Specialized and General Training
Because there is an urgent social demand for the reorganization of the curriculum and because the principles which should underlie a sound curriculum are as yet not clear, there is much running back and forth in the educational world and much controversy that at times grows very bitter and even personal. Experiments are set up and lauded or assailed. Optimists are hopeful that out of this experimentation will come much good. Pessimists see in it the failure of a democratic educational system.