The American secondary school and some of its problems

Preface

There are educational questions involving so large an area of interest that they defy treatment at the hand of an individual ; a mere enumeration of the problems that attach themselves to our secondary schools would suffice to indicate the unwisdom of such an attempt. On individual questions and groups of questions, thoughtful men and women have concentrated their efforts ; to combine their contributions to the various phases of the subject under wise editorial control into a consistent whole, to create a thesaurus of sound opinion on what the secondary school has been, is, and should be, seems the only way of reaching an agreement on the rational conduct of our middle schools. The cooperative idea seems peculiarly appropriate to this need of our educational scheme.

As for the present treatise, its title speaks for itself. It has been realized by the author that it is wiser to concentrate attention upon some of the problems of the secondary school and indicate their significance rather fully, than to compass all, or even a majority, of the questions that attach themselves to our system of middle schools. He has subordinated all questions of method,

VI PREFACE

of curriculum, to what has appeared to him the determining factor in a secondary school system, the fitness of the teacher for his task; the book has, in consequence, become an appeal to and for the teacher. It traverses many topics which other writers have found it necessary to elaborate into special treatises; the value of these he does not disparage, though he thinks their appeal might often with profit be presented more compactly. The American secondary teacher of to-day is constantly and very properly reminded in books, educational conferences and lectures, of the technique of his task; despite some objurgators of a science of teaching it may be said, once for all, that in almost all civilized countries of the world the necessity of the professional training of the teacher is recognized. But he cannot make bricks without straw, — his own intellectual grasp, his capacity in the subject-matter he handles, must be beyond question ; he must be prepared to grow, must feel the supreme obligation to grow, intellectually ; he must experience the glow of the artist, not rest content with the cleverness of the artisan. In accord with this dominating thought, there have been added to the body of this book, besides two excursuses, a series of outlines on The Teaching of several subject groups in the Secondary School Course; their object is to rouse the individual teacher to such study of his chosen field as will give him the widest

PREFACE VU

possible survey of the questions involved in the presentation of the subject. Here and there the wording of these outlines may reveal the personal convictions of the author, but it is the author's aim, with the aid of the bibliographical notes, to invite each teacher to a formulation of his individual opinion on any and every phase of the teaching issues. With his classes the author has used similar outlines for the group of mathematical and science subjects ; he has limited himself, in the present instance, to the historico-Hnguistic group for definite reasons ; in one and all of them there still prevails the widest divergence in procedure, the significance of which each teacher must fully grasp, if he would be an adept, not a slave to tradition.

To President Nicholas Murray Butler the author is deeply indebted for the first impulse that led to the inception of the present work. In its progress he has derived constant inspiration and guidance from the investigations of Sadler and Findlay in England, of Matthias, Fries, and Reinhardt in Germany, advocates, one and all, of an idealism in education which transcends the borders of nationalism and of local educational problems.

JULIUS SACHS.

New York,

CONTENTS PART I

FAGB

The Teacher i

Part II Chapter

I. The Present Status of the Public High School 85

II. The Private Secondary School . . . .154

III. The Educational Policy of the Secondary School 192

Excursus I. The Continuation School . . . 230 Excursus II. The Function of the Educational Expert 242

Appendix: Outlines for the Teaching of Certain

Subject Groups in the Secondary School Course 269

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

The American people will find it to their advantage to direct an increasing amount of attention to the secondary school, its function and its problems. The task of the elementary school is of necessity defined with reasonable clearness and certainty. The task of the secondary school, however, is much less fully understood. The experience of European countries will aid and guide us in many ways. A close study of the problems of mental growth and development, as these occur in connection with boys and girls from twelve to eighteen years of age, will also do much. A study of the social and industrial opportunities and influences which are at work in present day society, both in Europe and in America, will do perhaps even more.

The work of the secondary school is of a kind that necessitates differentiation and a choice between different programs of study and between different, sometimes competing, educational ends and aims. The secondary school must exist in sufficiently diverse forms and must be administered with sufficient elasticity of method to enable it to adapt itself to the needs of a complex

social organism.

xi xii editor's introduction

In a democratic society the secondary school has one other and vitally important function to perform. It must train those who, by a process of natural selection, are marked out for leadership in their several communities. It must so shape their minds and characters and so direct their energies that they will be able, in later life, to make wise use of the opportunities for leadership and direction that have come to them. The secondary school that overlooks this aspect of its problem is not a secondary school at all, but only a link in a chain.

The rapid growth of secondary schools in the United States is evidence, if evidence were needed, that the secondary school problem is being attacked in this country with vigor. The danger lies in the fact that so many secondary schools are established and conducted in mere imitation of institutions elsewhere. Education by imitation is much less helpful than education for ideals. The wise policy for a community to pursue is to make itself familiar with the function and the problems of the secondary school, and then to estabUsh for itself such type of secondary school, or so many secondary schools of differing types, as will best meet the individual, social, and industrial needs of the children of its own population.

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER Columbia University,

New York, May 15, 1912

Introduction

The American Secondary School of to-day is in a process of transformation; it is the outgrowth of a series of institutions, which, under the varying names of Middle or Secondary schools, in different cultural communities, represent systems of instruction that antedate in their origin the elementary school, the college, and the university. From it have developed methods of securing the fundamentals of knowledge-acquisition (primary work) which open the possibilities of intellectual growth to all ; out of it have branched, as insight has increased, the countless phases of inquiry that constitute the burden of a higher education.

The vigorous and unrestricted growth rootward and upward has constrained the parent stock within limitations that have made definition of the present purposes and functions of the Secondary School a matter of difficulty. The upper limits of the elementary school, and the lower ranges of the college studies, have poached upon the secondary school's preserves ; the attempt is here to be made to define more especially as far as the United States are concerned, its proper confines, and to set forth some of its problems and the available means of meeting them.

XIV INTRODUCTION

In this connection we shall freely draw upon the experiences of European schools. The tendency to ignore such experiences is an erroneous one; whatever has proved effective elsewhere is worthy of our serious thought; it is our duty and our privilege to adapt to our own conditions the processes that have approved themselves to expert educational opinion. Our education must be national, but need not be exclusive.

There have been countless contributions, individual and collective, to the study of the problems of the Secondary School; now it was the scientific arrangement of programs of study, now the method and forms of instruction, again the adaptation of the courses pursued to the actual needs of life, that have given direction to the doctrines advanced. The present author's aim, it may be stated at the outset, is to focus attention upon the necessity for America of distinctly superior attainments in our teachers. It is his belief that neither scientific classification of subject matter nor psychological analysis of the adolescent mind and impulses can avail without accurate and ever-growing positive knowledge of the teacher.

As he regards the situation, the day of the textbook as the paramount teacher has passed ; teachers who merely recapitulate or indifferently interpret the formulated statements of the textbook, who cannot contribute from a rich store of collateral information the individual

INTRODUCTION XV

note without which there can be no vital class interest, are useless in the scheme of a rational secondary school. The advocates of the textbook notwithstanding, our boys and girls, if they are to profit by attendance in the secondary schools, must be guided by thoroughly trained, thoroughly informed instructors. And with the decline of the textbook as the sole bulwark of accurate knowledge, there must go hand in hand a complete revision of our recitation system, which in its prevailing form affords but the slightest stimulus to teacher and student. Our secondary school system falls short of ideal results, mainly because we lack a sufficient number of teachers competent to enlarge with the freedom of a generous attainment upon the topics it embraces. It is idle to seek elsewhere the causes of a declining interest in the secondary school courses ; weak teachers create weak courses.

The example of the German and the Scandinavian countries, and more recently of France and England, points clearly to our needs. Abroad we find teachers richly informed in college and university courses that are designed to illuminate their school work, and in addition they undergo theoretic and practical guidance in the art of imparting. The effectiveness of our secondary schools will be determined by a recognition and acceptance of these two fundamental needs; we must insist on similar processes of preparation, though we

XVI INTRODUCTION

may depart because of our special problems from the detail in method pursued abroad. If at present much of our secondary work is pronounced lackadaisical, wanting in spirit and in incisiveness, it is primarily a question of the competent or incompetent teacher. This country can afford to possess fewer secondary schools ; it needs imperatively better-manned secondary schools. It is an issue that should not be obscured ; our best teachers recognize the defect which is due to lack of opportunity in the college and the training school, and they zealously strive to remedy it; incompetent and self-satisfied teachers must be confronted with the fact that the era of conventional performance is passing away.

Our commonwealths too will learn to gauge the true value of capable teachers, and will sooner or later discover that the servant is worthy of his hire; it is an irreparable loss to a community to permit a competent teacher to depart because of a refused increase of salary ; it is not possible to measure in percentages the difference in value between genuine efficiency and commonplace routine attainment. Our schools require teachers who can teach, who are completely at home in the subject or subjects they are called upon to handle and who have mastered the art of presentation ; the hearing of recitations can be but an incident in such a conception of the teacher's function. The

INTRODUCTION XVll

importance, then, of the teacher to the success of any secondary scheme of instruction should justify the precedence given in this book to the chapter on the teacher.

A word as to the general tone of this treatise, which to some may seem a picture gray in gray ; not to forestall or disarm opposing views, but in the interest of the cause that the author desires to advance. He is a firm believer in the value of outspoken criticism ; it is not in a spirit of petty faultfinding that he indicates the present shortcomings in our secondary schools. Self-complacency is the eternal foe of progress; it is not pessimistic to apply unhesitatingly the probe of experience to our efforts. Let others, our visitors from abroad, commend what they find commendable in our schools ; we want to ascertain wherein we are deficient, and then endeavor to improve. There is something stimulating and wholesome in a state of mind that is never satisfied with present achievements ; in education, least of all, can any community afford to rest upon the laurels of its attainments; a virile disaffection prompts to further endeavor, to revision and reconstruction in effort.

And finally we have no desire to make our schools an exact copy of any type of foreign school ; there are abundant reasons for adhering in our aims to ideals particularly suited to our conditions. The courses of a

XVlll INTRODUCTION

German gymnasium, a French \yc6e, or an English public school, like Eton or Rugby, we would not duplicate, if we could, for our pupils ; they would not bear transplantation, they would be an exotic in our system. But it is the high order of efficiency in their teachers, rather than the nature of their curricula, that imparts distinction to them, and it is this quality in the teacher, professional ability and exactness in information, toward which our efforts must be directed. Granted that our aims are more modest than those that prevail abroad, they should at least be rigidly maintained and completely realized. Consummate knowledge and skill in the teacher are imperatively the backbone of any and every system of secondary education.

PART I

I. Preparation in subject matter.

" An open-minded examination of the merits of foreign systems is the guarantee that secures us against stagnation^ against declined — De Tocqueville.

On the teacher and his preparation depends primarily the success of the secondary school. It is no easy task to create a public opinion that will accept with all its consequences the consideration of the teacher's vocation as a profession, and that will be ready to look upon the teacher as a professional expert. He himself must challenge public opinion on this subject in two ways : by his present attitude, and by the steps he has taken to reach his present station ; i.e. by his view of the true nature of his professional work, and by his professional preparation. By these will he be judged, and he has no right to claim the emoluments or the social distinctions that come to a professional man, unless his attitude in both these respects is correct.

The physician secures professional standing by evidence he furnishes of a prolonged course of study in which he acquires the scientific basis of his subject; to this he must add during years in the medical school and in hospital service practical clinical work, before health and life are intrusted to him. The same holds for the lawyer, engineer, architect; with this additional proviso, that in none of these callings would a man enjoy professional confidence unless it were felt that his calling were not adopted as a makeshift, but as a permanent life's work, with a clear perception of the fact that a rise through various stages to positions of responsibility will depend upon his own constant mental growth. The transitional work in teaching, of which this country affords so many familiar examples, whilst it may be good for the teacher, is, except in very rare cases, bad for pupil and school ; lack of perspective, absence of stimulus to secure a broader grasp, has harmed teaching as a profession ; it has been assumed that any one can teach.

Our conception of preparation is a curiously inadequate one, and we may at once characterize as makeshifts some of the agencies upon which many secondary schools draw for their teaching staff. Our normal schools are more or less adequate to the training of the elementary school teacher ; they do not suffice for the future secondary school teacher. As informational material, high school subjects are desirable, even necessary, for the elementary teacher, but these normal schools cannot properly embrace in their curriculum the theory and practice in the teaching of high school subjects without weakening their effectiveness for the elementary school work. Their instructors are in the fewest cases capable of handling the theory of the higher subjects with the necessary mastery, as the statistics of their own preparatory training show ; ^ in too many instances their high school instruction is apt to be a weak effort to reach the plane of an efficient high school course.

Experiences in England to train elementary and secondary teachers in the same training colleges have called forth the following comment : " I believe that training is affected to a small degree by the kind of educational work students are going to undertake, but it is affected to a considerable degree by the kind of education which students have received ; it appears to me undesirable to train together a pupil teacher educated in an elementary school with another student who has a degree obtained at Oxford or Cambridge. On the

1 Meriam, J. L., Normal School Education (Columbia University Contributions to Education), Chap. VI. Thirty per cent of all normal school instructors have received no educational training in advance of the school in which they are now teaching.

X other hand, I see no reason why two university graduates should not with advantage be trained together, although one intends teaching in a secondary school, the other in an elementary school." ^

The consciousness of this weakness, and of the meager mental outlook that normal school students usually bring to their course, suggested the plan of creating a special type of normal school for students of collegiate rank, intended to fit them directly for secondary work ; such a proposal was made in Massachusetts,^ but was defeated. It is in fact not feasible, and it would involve a wasteful duplication of effort.'

The natural agency for the training of secondary teachers is the college which is to furnish the requisite knowledge of subject matter, and the training college which is to apply the general principles of pedagogy to the secondary school subjects. The demand that graduation in good standing from a reputable college shall be the minimum attainment of the future secondary teacher is unfortunately not yet generally recognized ; certain it is that the intellectual outfit acquired during the secondary school period cannot suffice for the future secondary

1 Roberts, Education in the Nineteettth Century, Cambridge Extension Lectures, 1900, p. 182.

* F. Atkinson, Professional Preparation of Secondary Teachers in the United States, Breitkopf & Hartel, 1893. Atkinson prefers the name " Post-graduate Pedagogical School " ; cf. Eng. Spec. Reports, 7. 381.

s Pritchett, Carnegie Foundation, 5th Annual Report, 76.

teacher. He would be likely to teach just what he was taught and as he was taught; this danger can be removed by the interposition of the larger mental experience gained in a new period (the college years) of study and thought ; it enables the candidate to rise to something Uke a critical estimate of his former teachers and their methods.

An examination of the teaching body in the high schools of many states reveals a large percentage of teachers whose academic training has been insufficient. Unless the legislation of a state specifically demands of its high school teachers college graduation, a lower order of attainment is likely to be the rule. The laxity in a number of our older states in this respect is in striking contrast with the specific and insistent demand of states like California.^ What has been enforced as a minimum standard in scholarship in several western states ought to be made by legislation the irreducible requirement everywhere. It could not be made retroactive, for it would eliminate a large percentage of our actual teaching force that has enjoyed either no college course or only a fragmentary one, but it should govern the appointment of new teachers, so that within a generation or less a uniformly higher scholastic standard would be assured.

1 Brown, J. F., The Training of Teachers for Secondary Schools, pp. 210-214, Macmillan, 1911.

But let it be said at once : the perfunctory completion of a college course does not qualify a young man or woman to teach high school subjects. Many of these young persons have not definitely had the teaching career in view, and the actual record of their college performance does not offer a very sound guarantee of definite scholastic attainment; in the case of the teacher, more than that of any other professional man, success depends largely on the soundness of preparation in fundamentals; for it becomes his duty to lay the foundations for the intellectual growth of the next generation.

The character of the future teacher's own training in the foundations of his subject or subjects it should be the business of the college to determine; if the terms of admission to college are not sufficiently exacting to insure accuracy in fundamental knowledge (and they are not, whether tested by entrance examinations or by admission under the accrediting system), then the college should not send such a candidate forth as teacher without the special training that makes for accuracy. A superstructure of advanced collegiate courses, reared on a basis that is imperfect or inadequate, propagates superficiality, inaccuracy. There is no part of a college's work more important than the proper intellectual equipment of the future teacher ; ^ it

1 Butler, N. M., Meaning of Education, p. 159. The colleges have, until very recently, done little to show that they are aware of what is should be recognized as a distinctive feature of college work, and if its attainment involves the creation of special sections for intending teachers, that step should be undertaken in the interest of sound teaching. In coeducational institutions and in the women's colleges, from which a very large percentage of the teachers issue, such an arrangement is specially desirable.

Even in Germany, where a rigorously organized secondary school system insures a high degree of accuracy in the future teacher's fundamental training, provision to emphasize this accuracy is made in the university scheme by the institution of seminars for a resurvey of the school subjects in the light of the more advanced pursuit of the same subjects. Professor Baumann of Gottingen advocates under the general heading of Schulwissenschaften ^ a fuller consideration of this relationship, and urges the appointment for the teaching of these Schulwissenschaften of men who have risen to the rank of advanced academic scholars from a previous career as expert teachers in secondary schools.

We need, says Baumann, a special group of university professors who combine with genuine scientific bent the

being accomplished in the study of education. Consequently they have failed to contribute their proper proportion of duly qualified teachers.

zeal to make their subjects available for teaching purposes in the schools ; the teaching point of view should be constantly kept in sight, so that parallel with the scientific pursuit of a subject there would be considered the questions : what can be taught (in the secondary school) ? how is it to be taught ? to what degree are modern theories to be introduced ? "Unquestionably," he continues, " unless counteracted, the tendency of college and university studies leads away from the needs of the classroom."

It is not yet generally recognized in our own college circles that students may very appropriately be initiated into the advanced stages of scholarly insight and appreciation, in the same subject matter that in its more elementary forms constitutes the material of instruction in the secondary schools ; e.g. a classical author, read in the schools, like Vergil, may well form the topic of an advanced college course; in the broader outlook of such a college course the future teacher would find many a fruitful suggestion that would enrich his later presentation of the subject to his class.^ There is distinctly need, in the interest of th^ intending teacher, of brief didactic courses in which the

1 In a summer course at Columbia, Professor McCrea interprets several books of Vergil to teachers {vide announcement)

a. as they should be known by the teacher.

b. as they should be known by the class.

classification and grouping of the mass of knowledge in a given subject becomes a vital feature; he should acquire broad, but correct, generalizations from college professors who have reached these conclusions after, and because of, careful specific detail work, and who present general statements with cautious reserve.

The candidate teacher for the secondary schools must not be a narrow specialist, absorbed in one subject of the secondary school course, and indifferent and inexperienced along every other line. From the undesirable extreme of earlier days, when a teacher with or without qualifications for the task was expected to teach almost every subject of the secondary curriculum, we have gone to the other extreme of the one-subject teacher, and the colleges have ardently advocated this tendency to speciaHzation. Aside from the fact that the one-topic teacher is an obstacle in the arrangement of the curriculum of all but large city schools, as he is either disquaUfied or reluctant to be assigned to any other subject, this tendency to specialization is harmful to every type of secondary school. The one-topic teacher appreciates only the significance of his own field; desirous of making it prominent in the school curriculum, he is apt to demand in its favor a sacrifice of other topics ; being himself limited in the range of his interests, he is not likely to apportion in a judicial spirit the emphasis that should be distributed among a lO THE AMERICAN SECONDARY SCHOOL

number of subjects of the course.^ In fact the very intensity of the specialist operates against the primal function of the secondary school, an expansion of youthful interests, disclosure of various avenues of pursuit,- each with an interest of its own, each offering attractions to one or the other student.

As an integral part of a school organism, and as a contributor to the making of an all-round human being with a wholesome preliminary outlook into various possibilities of human activity before a final choice is made, the specialist has little to offer. The interplay of intellectual interests should be unfolded to the growing minds of our young people ; even where a strong native bent manifests itself early, the influence of the school should be in the direction of a broadening of sympathies, rather than of a narrowing tendency.^ Necessary as specialization has become in the activities of life, and in the higher stages of professional activity, its limita-

1 Sadler, English Special Reports, IX, 20 : " Under right conditions technical and professional studies are restrained by the humane influences of general culture from undue or premature specialization, and from selfish preoccupation in their own immediate concerns." And of this undesirable tendency in the specialist Bascom says, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1903, p. 749 : " Not only does he not rise to the height of all knowledge, he does not rise to the height of his own knowledge."

2 Woodhull, J. F., " Modern Trend of Physics and Chemistry Teaching," Educational Review, March, 1906, pp. 236-247. Canfield, James H., " Wanted : A Teacher," Educational Review, December, 1900, pp. 433- 443. Sachs, J. " The Departmental Organization of Secondary Schools," Education, April, 1907, pp. 484-496.

THE TEACHER II

tions do not serve the best interests of the pupil in the secondary school, and the specialist teacher in the secondary school, if completely engrossed in his specialty, is not the most helpful adviser. Goethe's "Wer nur eine Sprache kennt, kennt keine " is particularly applicable to the one-subject teacher of the secondary school ; a teacher is likely to be the more effective in one field, if he surveys his subject from several distinctive points of view.

The secondary teacher in Germany and France, whatever his chosen line of study may be, must show mastery for teaching purposes in at least two additional subjects ; one of the three must always be the vernacular; and the striking results attained in the clear and cogent oral and written utterances of their secondary pupils are due to this demand made on the teachers. The plea urged in favor of the one-topic point of view, that no man can excel in more than one field of activity, falls to the ground before the evidence furnished by German and French teachers. It is a wholesome offset to undue concentration of interest upon one subject to be compelled to adjust oneself to several topics, and to the pupils concerned it is of striking advantage to have the same teacher correlate their experiences gained in various subjects ; it makes the teacher more human in the eyes of his pupils, if they recognize that his mind is open to various interests.

It will be natural that the several subjects which each teacher chooses to handle will group themselves along certain accepted lines of kindred interests ; the historico-linguistic ; group, the mathematico-scientific group, these are the usual combinations ; but it will happen at times that a linguist is a first-class mathematician or a keen student of geographical research, that a teacher of mathematics has a fine sense of literary form ; and such combinations are particularly valuable in the school life.