IV. CONCLUSION The conclusions drawn from this study may be stated in the following paragraphs: 1. Administrative cooperation in the making of courses of study in elementary schools has been approved by a sufficiently large number of superintendents of schools in cities of twenty-five thousand population and over to establish it as an accepted principle of administration of schools in such cities. 2. In cities below twenty-five thousand administrative cooperation has not been tested in a sufficiently large number of places to conclude that superintendents of such cities as a whole have set their approval upon it. Nevertheless a large majority of those who have tried it express such judgments as to indicate their approval, altho in some cases with minor reservations. 3. There are still a large number of superintendents, particularly in the smaller cities, who prepare courses of study themselves or with only incidental and unorganized assistance of teachers and principals. Many of these superintendents have not in all probability given extended thought to the advantages that are to be derived from cooperative effort in the making of courses of study. Other superintendents, in both large and small cities, firmly believe that centralized control of details and strict uniformity in courses of study are essential to efficient schools. These practices are not in accordance with the principles of administration deduced from the science of efficiency nor with the practices approved by the majority of superintendents in their replies to the questionnaire used in this study. 4. There is no general agreement as to the best form of committee for cooperative effort. So few superintendents have tried more than one form of committee and their experience has been so limited and so recent that their judgments as to the best form of committee do not furnish a reliable index of the best committee organization. The form of committee most frequently found includes but a small number of the supervisory and teaching force working with the superintendent without organized contacts with other teachers. These were chosen by the superintendent primarily because of their abilities for this work; representation of an equal number of teachers from each building or district was of minor consideration. 5. The procedure in the preparation of courses of study was also of such variety as to indicate no conclusion as to the best practice. The limitations exprest in the previous paragraph regarding the experience and the reflective thought given this question apply also here. 6. In the absence of sufficient definite experience in these particulars the theoretical principles derived from the science of efficiency as formulated by the students of management may be relied upon as furnishing the best available criteria by which to test the various forms of organization and procedure which a superintendent may be considering for adoption in his city. The criteria deduced from the principles stated in Part I may be formulated as follows: a) Which form of organization or method of procedure best promotes the coalescence of the practical knowledge of all the teachers with the expert knowledge of the superintendent and supervisors and gives to each its due weight in determining the course of study? b) Which form of organization or method of procedure best promotes the realization in the classroom of a common body of institutional ideals and principles relating to the course of study, made up in proper proportion of the superior knowledge of the experts and of the more intimate experiences of the teachers? c) Which form of organization or method of procedure best promotes the morale of the entire corps? d) Which form of organization or method of procedure gives the best opportunities to each individual to make his best contribution to the work and to feel that he has received in return the proper appreciation for his efforts? 7. While application of the criteria to determine a choice between any two or more forms of organization or courses of procedure would necessarily be made in the light of the conditions in the school system concerned and so would lead to conclusions differing slightly from one another in different cities in accordance with those varying conditions, nevertheless there are certain forms and procedures which under typical conditions tend more than others to secure the best results. Thus it can be said: (a) That a committee of supervisors or principals is not so good as a committee of teachers, and that neither is as good as a committee upon which all are represented. (b) That the larger the number of persons engaged in committee work or in some related capacity the better. (c) That any plan is much strengthened if formal agencies are provided by means of which members of committees can constantly ascertain the attitude of teachers whose work is covered by the proposed course. (d) That the method of selection of members upon the committees should be such as to secure, if possible, the most competent persons and also those in whom the teachers have confidence and to whom they can and will express themselves freely as well as receive from them adverse opinion without having their interest chilled. Appointment by superintendents, by principals, or by teachers does not always secure this. A plan of nomination by teachers and appointment by the superintendent is better adapted to meet this end. (e) That qualifications of teachers for the work should have greater weight relatively in the selection of members of the central or main committee, while representatives of grades or buildings or both should have greatest weight in appointment of subcommittees. (f) That the plan should include the largest possible participation of the superintendent or of the expert representing him in all phases of the work, including that of the subcommittees. (g) That revision of courses of study workt out by committees should be reduced to the minimum and if possible avoided altogether. 8. It would promote the scientific study of educational administration if superintendents would in the future try out experiments in this field so designed as to test the validity of these tentative conclusions. While such experimentation might lack the conclusiveness produced by objective measurement of results, nevertheless the weight of professional opinion, based upon systematic and careful observation and recording, with the aid of such objective measurements as might be available, would have great value. It is just such procedure that must, for some time to come, be largely depended upon in the building up of a science of educational administration. PART II. REPORT OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON CURRICULUM SECTION 1. EXISTING DEMOCRATIC FACTORS IN AMERICAN PREPARED BY A. DUNCAN YOCUM The most immediate and conspicuous effect of the war on education is an emphasis of the scientific and technical. The movement, already begun by Dr. Elliott and Dr. Flexner, to broaden the scope of scientific instruction in the elementary school has received new impetus from the opportunity for service and promotion given to scientifically and technically trained men in various war activities and the consequent inrush of students into scientific and technical courses in colleges and universities. In the model school conducted by the Russell Sage Foundation at Teachers College, Columbia University, Dr. Caldwell is assembling and organizing into a conspicuously impressive whole all forms of instruction which further this movement. Even Dr. William Allen's questionnaire, with its applied doubt of the newness or necessity of what is being attempted in this school, has made school superintendents all over the country more generally conscious of similar work already being done in ordinary schools. President Wilson's letter to school officials, in which he declares that "the war is bringing to the minds of our people a new appreciation of the problems of national life and a deeper understanding of the meaning and aims of democracy," has been introductory to the bulletins issued by the United States Bureau of Education under the general editorship of Dr Judd. While the resulting "Lessons in Community and National Life" give new emphasis to the little economic and social subject-matter already included in school textbooks and add to it suggestive ideas and principles which tend to give a right viewpoint on social and economic problems, there is no little danger that what is in itself a great national service may unite with the pressure due to war to broaden and give national sanction to an emphasis of science in the course of study to the exclusion of a definitely democratic training. Mere efficiency not democratic.-It must be remembered that efficiency in the economic and material sense is not in itself democratic. It is rather an essential condition to the continued existence of any form of government, including Prussian aristocracy as well as American democracy, and in the main must take the form of the training of scientific specialists rather than the general scientific training of a whole people. General education and especially elementary education are concerned with it only to the extent of keeping the door wide open to every necessary form of specialization and insuring an adequate supply of specialists. As Dr. Prosser1 has pointed out, it was necessary to the winning of the war that the fifteen specialists available in America who were able to mend or destroy by fusion any sort of metallic war apparatus should be multiplied until they were equal in number to the eighty thousand German cripples recently given that skill. But an instruction which makes American skill quantitatively equal to German skill does not inalienably carry with it anything which makes American spirit and habits of service different from Prussian spirit and habits of service. Nor does the Smith-Hughes legislation, with its millions for vocational and agricultural training, inalienably add to its democracy of equal vocational opportunity all or even many of the other factors necessary to make democracy complete. Dr. Dewey, philosophically inclusive as ever, has pointed out that education after the war must include not only vocational training but education for health, education for citizenship, and general education with an emphasis upon preparation for leisure; and that all of the vast material machinery assembled for training to war should, after the war is over, continue to be used for this completer training for peace. But he does not sufficiently emphasize the immediate need of anticipating thru present-day education the problems that follow the war, or with clean-cut realization seize upon a completer democracy as our supremest immediate aim. Professor Briggs3 in masterly fashion indicates the complete reorganization which must take place in secondary education at the close of the war. The final selection of irreducible essentials to a completer democracy, the determination of the definite associations which make their essential usefulness sure, the inclusion of every kind and form of usefulness which are essential, and the most adequate and economic methods of teaching each must be left to groups of experts, as he suggests, nationally selected and organized, employed for long periods of time, and given official authority. But in preparation for their work every effort should be made to arouse a national consciousness of democratic aims, and a realization that they must be taught not merely as information and skill but as ideals, incentives, and habits strong enough to compel democracy. The democracy questionnaire. To this end, as subcommittee on the Course of Study of your Committee on Superintendents' Problems, I have issued a questionnaire which in concrete detail seeks to determine the extent to which American education is as yet democratic. The duty of reading it and answering it will constitute a difficult but highly important service to democracy which no one but school men can perform. See Report of National Council Sessions, Atlantic City Meeting, National Education Association Addresses and Proceedings, 1919. Ibid. Ibid. See sec. 2 of this Report. |