Not all the foregoing questions proposed can be fully discussed here. Whatever is said, however, is an outgrowth of our own professional observations, extending over the past seventeen years. In particular these observations result from the current obligation at Public School 500, Manhattan (Speyer School), to promote to senior high school our first group of children now reaching the thirteenth birthday.
It is obvious that we have to determine upon an age for promotion to the senior high school. This must take into consideration "the whole child." We cannot isolate the intellect for this purpose. "Body, mind, and soul" must pass as a unit to secondary school.
The brightest of our pupils were fully ready for the scholastic work of the ninth grade when they were 8 years old; several others, when they were 10 years old. Ability to "pass examinations" set for 8B pupils cannot, therefore, reasonably become our criterion for promoting these children, unless we wish to assume responsibility for placing prepubescent, 8-, 9- and 10-year-old children in a scholastic milieu that is determined by the physical size and social maturity of adolescents.
After much discussion, we fixed upon 13 years as the age for transition to senior high school. We came to this largely as a result of our pooled professional experience, but not wholly on that basis. We gave considerable weight to the follow-up study of pupils identified in 1922, and kept together for three years in special classes at Public School 165, Manhattan. [5] There were 56 of these children whom we promoted to the ninth grade at an average age of 11 years; and the high-school careers of all of them were followed through sixteen different high schools. [6] In the course of this follow-up, the question was repeatedly asked, "What would be the best age to enter the ninth grade?"
Sixty per cent of these pupils gave 13 years as the "best age" to enter high school, and twenty-six per cent gave 14 years or older. Only one child gave an age younger than 12 years as optimum for entering high school. This group, as a whole, would have preferred to enter the ninth grade at an age older than that at which they entered, and gave cogent reasons for the preference during their high-school careers.
These ideas persisted through the college careers, especially among the boys, many of whom felt they were misplaced in college at 15 years of age. Entering high school near the thirteenth birthday, a child saves time, and yet is not made subject to the tensions which may result from trying to meet social and physical requirements for which he is too immature.
Junior high school is omitted from the picture as ours was a five-year plan. Such a plan of curriculum enrichment as ours fits best into the 8B setup, for such a program cannot be supervised if the pupils are scattered and the situation made subject to the transition from 6B to junior high school. In the metropolitan situation it is not feasible to take the pupils for special classes until they are at least 7 years old. The infrequency of their occurrence makes it necessary to assemble them from several districts, and they are not mature enough to come from a distance when they are 6 years of age. Parents cannot assume the burden of accompanying them twice a day. Our pupils were 8 years old, on the median, when they entered our rapid learner classes.
We have found it feasible to organize classes for 8-year-olds, give them a five-year program of special studies, and have them fully ready for senior high school at 13 years of age. This plan has worked out well, whereas, if we had had to consider a transition to the junior high school in the midst of our work, difficulties would have arisen, and it is not clear how our program could have been carried out at all. However, a field for experimentation lies here for those who would be predisposed to favor the junior-high-school plan of school organization.
We decided that no ceremony of graduation should mark the promotion to senior high school. Our pupils will make the transition not in a body, but a few at a time at the end of each term. Some informal social event may take place, but no ceremony of graduation as such.
The question, "What items of cumulative record should accompany each child from the elementary school?" is one requiring much study. Here we are working quite experimentally. The public schools of Altoona, Elkins Park, and Fort Wayne, Pennsylvania, are reported to have formulated a cumulative record card for rapid learners, which we hope later to consult. The records of mental tests, the record of scholastic-achievement tests, and a statement of teachers' ratings on a variety of character traits should no doubt be included with the health record and attendance record in the elementary school.