LS

Copyright, 1925
By LAIDLAW BROTHERS
Incorporated

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Acknowledgment is made to The School Review, The Elementary School
Journal, Educational Administration and Supervision, American Education,
Teachers' College Record, and to the authors of the articles and reports, for
their courtesy in permitting the use here made of the materials. Thanks are
due to James M. Glass, Leonard V. Koos, T. H. Briggs, C. O. Davis, W. C.
Reavis and H. H. Ryan, for advice regarding the selection of articles and
reports.

2

The successful functioning of junior high schools in such cities as Berkeley, Cal., Easton, Mass., Trenton, N. J., Solvay, N. Y., St. Louis, Mo., New York City, Okmulgee, Okla., Sioux City, Iowa, Denver, Colo., and other representative cities throughout the country, has been both the inspiration and the basis for the development of intermediate schools in many other communities. Authoritative literature upon the comparatively new movement has been difficult to obtain. Especially is this true of articles dealing concretely with actual school practices. In order to bring together in form convenient for use in classes, material covering various significant phases of the junior high school movement, the editors have undertaken the collection and publication of JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL PRACTICES.

Those who have been the administrators and advisors in the movement have been pioneers, and their work has been largely experimental. Many of these experiments which have proved highly successful have been recorded here for the benefit of other workers in the field.

The tendency to imitate progressive practices rather than to think reflectively on the purposes of education, the characteristics of early adolescence, and the learning process, in order to bring about new educative experiences, has very real drawbacks. Compromises, half-way measures, mere adaptations to local conditions, and even actual mistakes made in an institution of outstanding reputation are copied in schools which need not have limited themselves if an adequate philosophy of education and a wider knowledge of the practices in intermediate schools had been used to check up the practices under consideration. Progress in an educational movement does not come by imitation alone, but by careful study of the experiences of others in the field, and adaptations to local needs.

While actual visits to progressive institutions by administrators and teachers are doubtless the most effective way of securing information concerning them, a far greater number of persons interested in these developments have been reached by magazine articles and reports describing the improved practices. These articles have been almost universally used in connection with courses in schools of education dealing with junior high school problems. The articles in this book have been so chosen as to throw light on the problems of organization, administration, equipment, curriculum, and student activities of the junior high school. They deal with city schools and with the schools of rural communities. The bibliography at the end of the book gives an adequate list of articles on all the various phases of the junior high school movement.

3

R. L. LYMAN

PHILIP W. L. Cox

601489