Sociological Determination of Objectives in Education

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III READJUSTMENTS OF CURRICULA: HIGH SCHOOLS AND VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS I. CERTAIN FUNDAMENTAL DISTINCTIONS As measured in terms of public interest and support, secondary education has been, during the last three decades, very dynamic. As measured in terms of adaptations of curricula to social needs,...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III READJUSTMENTS OF CURRICULA: HIGH SCHOOLS AND VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS I. CERTAIN FUNDAMENTAL DISTINCTIONS As measured in terms of public interest and support, secondary education has been, during the last three decades, very dynamic. As measured in terms of adaptations of curricula to social needs, improvements in methods of teaching, and adequate training of teachers, the reverse seems largely true. Attendance in high schools has increased three times faster than population. Public money has been generously supplied for buildings and equipment. Parents have widely exhibited desires to have their children share in some of the supposed advantages of high-school education. But curricula have changed little in the last thirty years. Methods of teaching the standardized subjects have advanced but slightly. Few indeed of the 50,000 high-school teachers of the United States can, as yet, be said to have been professionally trained for their work. But changes, perhaps of a sweeping character, are impending. Demands for school-supplied vocational education to supplement general education have brought complications, some upsetting of traditions and perhaps some new light. The psychologists have disturbed our inherited faiths in certain panaceas of mental, moral and perhaps physical, discipline. As a means of setting forth compactly the writer's present tentatively held convictions as to probable early developments, the following brief of conclusions and theses is submitted: It is of the utmost importance to American education at the present time that there be established and documented by competent authorities the necessary distinctions between vocational and general education as these affect the training and instruction of young people from twelve to eighteen or eve...