II.
The other problem which I wish to discuss is closely connected with the problem of electives. It is, in effect, how shall we overcome the persistence of the artificial separation of the high school from the rest of the school system—a separation that sometimes almost amounts to isolation? Reference was made above to the unsatisfactory condition of our pre-high-school education in spite of the widespread endeavor to improve it. The grammar school is still emphasizing, too much, a very large remnant of the old formal curriculum. Arithmetic, English grammar and political geography are still looked upon as the solid studies of the later years of the grammar school, as they were before the days of enriched programs. The work in foreign languages, algebra, geometry, history, elementary science, manual training, where any or all of these studies are recognized at all, is still looked upon in most school systems as a new and more or less ornamental addition to the real work of the grammar school.[1]
In other words, we have not yet taken the newer studies in the grammar school program seriously. Hence, as I have already mentioned, most high schools do not regard the work done in these studies in the lower grades as really done; and so, in spite of the congested grammar school programme, due to the insertion of the new studies without elimination of the old ones, root and branch, from the last years of the grammar school, the high school still assumes—and probably in most cases justly—that everything below the high school is still chiefly a drill in the school arts, just as it used to be; and that such beginnings of a real education as have been attempted in the lower grades are not really beginnings—they are only trifling with high school subjects; and that, consequently, all those subjects must be begun over again. The result is that the separation of the high school from the
- ↑ The reluctance of some communities and some teachers to abandon the old-time grammar school studies in the later years of the grammar school program, and to substitute for them the studies that constitute a real education, is largely due to the mistaken belief that the really unpractical and purely technical details of arithmetic and English grammar, and the statistical geography, that still consume so large a share of the pupil's time and attention in the last two or three grammar grades possess more practical utility, and have more educational value than good courses in history, literature, foreign language, elementary algebra and geometry, manual training, sewing and cooking. It should be said, also, that many principals and superintendents doubtless hesitate to adopt the improved program because they have not in their corps a sufficient number of properly equipped teachers—teachers who can be assigned to teach both in a given high school and in the upper grades of one or more grammar schools in its vicinity. But such teachers are not hard to find. Our colleges -are sending them forth by the score every year.
