CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY: PURPOSE AND METHOD

The following chapters present, largely from the point of view of the educational administrator, the results of an investigation into the status of the teaching of almost all subjects appearing in the secondary-school programs of study. If constitutes a digest and interpretation of facts gathered for the use of the Committee on Reorganization of the Secondary School and the Definition of the Unit of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

To make the significance of the facts and their interpretation more apparent than might otherwise be the case, it is advisable to rehearse here very briefly the history of this committee and to state the relation of its modus operandi, about to be described, to that of bodies and agencies that have previously had to do with the definition of units.

On motion of the North Central Association at its meeting in March, 1913, the president appointed a Committee on the Revision of the Definition of the Unit and to Investigate the Practice of Colleges in the Admittance of Students with Conditions. This committee presented at the next annual meeting of the Association, in March, 1914, an extended report' in two parts, that part dealing with definitions of the unit suggesting, among other things, the desirability of providing in such definitions distinctions between elementary, intermediate, and advanced work. At the conclusion of the report the chairman presented for the committee a set of resolutions, from which the following excerpts are made:

Resolved, That it is the sense of this body that a revision is desirable of the unit definition of secondary subjects now in use.

That the unit definition should discriminate between elementary and advanced units, the former term to apply to the work of the first two years

1 Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, 1914, pp. 101-17.

2 Ibid., pp. 117-18.

I

and the latter to that of the last two years of the present usual four years' secondary-school course.

Resolved, That a committee of at least seven members be appointed by the President of the Association . . . . to provide for the general revision of unit definition for secondary-school work.

That this committee shall be authorized to co-operate with the general committee in the preparation of unit definitions.

....

The resolutions were adopted and a Committee on the Revision of the Definition of the Unit, composed of eight members, was appointed. This committee, at the meeting of the Association in March, 1915, presented a report' which was, however, not in the nature of a revision of definitions, but a statement of the recognition of the relations of definition-making to the reorganization of elementary and secondary education. Upon this problem of reorganization another committee of the Association—namely, the Committee on the Reorganization of the American High Schoolpresented a report at the same meeting. In consequence of the intimate relations of these two problems the two committees were constituted a single Committee on the Reorganization of the Secondary School and the Definition of the Unit and were instructed to make, before the next annual meeting, a report in print to the members of the Association. The method pursued in the preparation of this report will be described after there has been set down at this point a characterization of the method of definition-making heretofore used by standardizing bodies and agencies. Those standardizing bodies and agencies from whose activities illustrations of the method used will be drawn are the Committee of Ten of the National Education Association, which was the first body to attempt standardization on a very large scale, the College Entrance Examination Board, the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, the Commission of the National Education Association on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, and a few institutions of higher learning. The institutions of higher learning that have been selected to represent the sort of definitionmaking attempted by these institutions as a whole are Harvard

› Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, 1915, pp. 27–30.

University, Yale University, and the University of Illinois. As the New England College Entrance Certificate Board uses the definitions framed by the College Entrance Examination Board, and as the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools of the Southern States uses for the most part those of the North Central Association, there will be no need of making further reference to them. The Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland has not undertaken the task of definition-making and will therefore be omitted in subsequent discussion. At a later point in this chapter brief reference will be made to the activities in this line of state authorities, such as the Regents of the State of New York and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

The essential features of the method of definition-making as usually employed may be said to be, on the positive side, (1) the delegation of the task of framing definitions in particular subjects to committees of specialists in those subjects, and (2) dependence, sometimes almost exclusively, upon syllabi of content to be covered in the courses. On the negative side this method is characterized by (3) too little regard for the facts of practice in the schools, and (4) neglect of administrative considerations vital to the definition of the unit. As will be seen, it is not assumed that all these characteristics apply in all efforts at definition-making heretofore made; the writer contends merely that they are essentially true of each effort or that most of them apply to any one instance of definitionmaking.

METHODS OF DEFINITION-MAKING

1. Definition-making by specialists.-To show that the first feature just named is characteristic, it will, for the most part, be necessary only to refer the reader to, or make brief quotations from, publications of the bodies and agencies we have named. The original conference that resulted in the provision for, and the appointment of, the Committee of Ten presented as the first of three resolutions the following: "That it is expedient to hold a conference of school and college teachers of each principal subject which enters into the programmes of secondary schools in the

United States.

Nine "conferences,' or subcommittees, of ten members each were finally appointed to deal with the following subjects or groups of subjects:2 (1) Latin, (2) Greek, (3) English, (4) other modern languages, (5) mathematics, (6) physics, astronomy, and chemistry, (7) natural history (biology, including botany, zoology, and physiology), (8) history, civil government, and political economy, and (9) geography (physical geography, geology, and meteorology). A glance through the lists of names in these various conferences will leave no doubt as to their being constituted of specialists in the respective fields.

The College Entrance Examination Board also has followed this practice. Under the head of history in its manual, Document No. 68, 1914, we find this note: "The requirements in history are based on the recommendations of the Committee of Seven of the American Historical Association";3 under Latin: "The following requirements in Latin are in accordance with the recommendations made to the American Philological Association by the Commission on College Entrance Requirements in Latin, October, 1909";4 under French: "The requirements in French follow the recommendations of the Committee of Twelve of the Modern Language Association of America";s under mathematics: "The present definition of the requirements in mathematics is in accordance with the recommendations made in September, 1903, by a committee of the American Mathematical Association, 196 etc. The statements made in connection with all the subjects listed in this document are similar to those quoted.

That essentially the same practice of delegating the task of definition-making to bodies of specialists obtained in the North Central Association may be seen in the definitions published in its Proceedings in 1910. On page 77 will be found the personnel

1 Report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary-School Studies (American Book Co., 1894), P. 3.

2 Ibid., pp. 5, 8-11.

3 College Entrance Examination Board, Document No. 68, 1914, p. 20.

4 Ibid., p. 21.

s Ibid., p. 25.

6 Ibid., p. 23.

Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, 1910.

of the Committee on English, constituted of eighteen members, thirteen of whom are specialists in this field, and five, administrators; on page 83 is listed the Committee on Mathematics, proportionately similarly constituted; and so on through the committees for the remaining subjects.

The Commission of the National Education Association on the Reorganization of Secondary Education is constituted of fourteen committees, twelve of which have to do with various high-school subjects. Ten of these committees were organized by 1913 as follows: those dealing with English, social studies, natural sciences, ancient languages, modern languages, household arts, manual arts, music, business, and agriculture. These are made up wholly of specialists.2

There is little direct evidence that specialists have had to do with the framing of definitions appearing in university catalogues; that is to say, we find practically no references to committees or individuals who have prepared the statements for these catalogues. Nevertheless, we are probably justified in assuming that these statements concerning subjects for admission have in most instances been prepared by members of the faculty in whose provinces the subjects with which they deal would seem appropriately to lie, that is, the statement concerning admission requirements in Latin would be made by the department of Latin, that in mathematics by the department of mathematics, etc. The "High-School Manual" issued by the University of Illinois gives evidence of a practice somewhat at variance with this, although still resorting largely to the action of committees of specialists. For instance, the description of the work in agriculture4 begins with a very brief characterization of the course which conforms to that appearing in the catalogue of the university,5 but contains in addition an extended "outline of the work" prepared by the Agricultural Section

* U.S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1913, No. 41, p. 8.

2 Ibid., pp. 16, 27-28, 29, 40, 58, 62, 66, 75, and 78.

3 "High-School Manual, Standards and General Recommendations for Accrediting of High Schools," University of Illinois Bulletin, Vol. XII, No. 43 (June 28, 1915).

4 Ibid., pp. 15-17.

5 University of Illinois, Annual Register, 1914-15, p. 85.