THE MICHIGAN DAILY lucators Meet To Discuss Changes In Philosophy Of Teaching, Readjustment Of School Program To Non-Academic Groups Finds Five-Year Plan Working . uccessf ully ' x (Continued from Page 1) with the statements: "Superinten- dents replying to an inquiry recently made by the United States commis- sioner of education reported three or four times as many postgraduates in high schools as were enrolled a few years ago. "Minneapolis reported 505 gradu- ate students. In the last 10 years postgraduate registration increased 800 per cent throughout the United States., "An increase of 320 per cent in one year was reported in October, 1932, by 207 of the largest high schools'in Michigan. In February, 1933, even larger numbers of postgraduates were enrolled for the second semester than for the first. Reasons Are Cited The Kalamazoo decision in 1872 that high schools are comprehended under the term "common schools" and therefore to be supported by tax- ation, the greatly improved economic status of the average family, the gradual closing of industry and busi- ness to children of high school age, the enacting of compulsory school attendance laws and the increasing desire on the part of parents to pro- vide educational opportunities for their children were all said by Pro- fessor Carrothers to have converged on the problem at one time. "Secondary schools were establish- ed in every hamlet and village as demands increased," he said, "and this sent high school enrollment up- ward so rapidly that it has practi- cally doubled in each of the past four decades. "From 1890 to 1930 high school enrollments increased 1241 per cent, and the .holding power of these schools has been even greater than the drawing power. The number of graduates increased 1371 per cent during this 40-year period. Colleges, however, enrolled a continuously de- creasing proportion of those gradu- ated by high schools," he continued. ,"In 1930 the Office of Education estimated that there were in the United States 10,231,000 living high school .graduates. Of this number 1,694,000 had graduated from.college, 1,100,000 were still in college and there were 7,437,000 who had not continued their education toward receiving a college degree," Professor Carrothers said. Many Problems Created Providing facilities for college edu- cation for millions of youths is vastly mrore difficult and expensive than es- tablishing high schools for children in local communities," he said," and this has caused unprecedented num- bers of postgraduates to clamor for re-entrance into already overcrowd- ed, under-staffed local high schools and has stirred up many perplexing problems. "About one - third of the high schools of this country are so small that by the time a pupil has reached graduation he has taken every course offered. "Postgraduates returning to these schools must, therefore, re-enter courses which they have already had. This creates serious problems for teachers, pupils and administrators. Large high schools with more than one curriculum and a large number of courses frequently find the prob- lem less serious. "Yet, -during the past three years many of these schools have had to drop courses, consolidate sections, in- crease the size of classes, and in- crease the teacher load in order to meet needs of regular studeits. "The newer subjcts sometimes re- ferred to as the frills, such as public speaking, journalism, and other spe- cial courses in English, home eco- nomics, industrial arts, and commer- cial studies - the very courses most often desired by postgraduates-have frequently been the first to be omit- ted. This has further complicated the problem," he went on. Only a short time ago an academic" class of 40 pupils was considered too large, Professor Carrothers said, but now there are schools where no class enrolls less than that number if it can be avoided. "In one private secondary school visited there were class enrollments as follows: Three public speaking classes with 68, 76, and 78 pupils;, two algebra classes with 76 and 82 pupils; and an English class and a Latin class each with 68. Such crowd- ed conditions practically prohibit the caring for any postgraduates. "'The Citizens Conference on the Crisis in Education', held in Wash- ington in January, 1933, adopted unanimously a report which stated that: 'The size of classes in art, music, shop work, home economics, and other special subjects should be made as large as that of the average academic class'," Professor Carrothers quoted. Putting this suggestion into prac- tice will enable schools to take care of some of the postgraduates since nonracadeniic sections are now tra- ditionally smaller than academic sec- tions," he said. "Postgraduates (college freshmen in high school) assert themselves in an attempt to get enough teaching to satisfy college requirements and thus make a demand on the time and thought of teachers entirely out of proportion to their numbers. Thus they rob regular pupils of what is rightfully theirs and stir up trouble- some problems for the entire school," Professor Carrothers continued. Solutions Are Planned A considerable number of colleges and universities are making definite plans to give examinations on work taken by postgraduates in high schools for the satisfying ofncertain freshmen course requirements, he said. "Proficiency examinations for ad- vanced standing are offered in the University of Illinois, the University of Michigan states that advanced credit is granted for studies equiva- lent to courses offered in the Univer- sity, and similar provisions are made by other colleges and universities." Junior colleges were said to have also attempted to help meet the situ- ation by broadening their curricular offerings. Private groups in some communities have attempted to or- ganize and operate colleges in high school buildings after school hours. "Many of these hurriedly organized schemes or 'depression' colleges are using as teachers college graduates found in the community. Some of the 'professors' are unemployed teachers and superintendents, ex- engineers, unassigned preachers, lo- cal doctors, realtors, and others who have more time than money and who are anxious to exchange a consider- able amount of the former for a rea- sonable amount of the latter," Pro- fessor Carrothers said. Other Suggestions Made "Just as the high school has for many years been thought of as the people's college, the time has now arrived for the reorganized junior college to take this place," he went on. "This new junior college should continue to offer the first two years of regular four-year liberal arts col- lege work. "This, however, should not be the major object of the public junior college. Many terminal courses should be offered for those who are inter- ested in learning how to do better things they will have to do anyway. "Provision ought to be made for courses in child care, home-making, health, cooking, sewing, art, music, simple accounting, industrial arts of all sorts, agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, typewriting, liter- ature for enjoyment rather than analysis, radio, bird study, science groups of many kinds, dramatics, play production, news reporting, and the like, just as far "as community Carrothers said. "The University of Nebraska Bull- etin 84, June, 1931, says the Benton Harbor high school today probably carries on a more extended program of correspondence work than any other resident high school in the United States. "The Citizens Conference on the Crisis in Education reports that the University of Nebraska is trying the experiment of supplying from the state university extension depart- ment, correspondence courses in whatever subjects any student in a study. "This method of procedure, devel- oped for the enrichment of limited high school curriculums, has far reaching possibilities for use in the post-secondary area of education. "Some of the limitations and diffi- culties met with when postgraduates re-enter high schools such as, (1) lack of carefully organized advanced courses, (2) close association of ma- ture with immature students, (3) lack of requirement of self-help on the part of students, (4) teaching and examining members of staff one and the same, as is now found in all high schools, (5) inadequate library facil- ities, and many others might be greatly minimized by organizing cor- respondence extension centers," Pro- fessor Carrothers stated. "Such a program if carefully de- veloped and honestly administered ought to, (1) furnish a rather wide variety of choice of subjects, (2) place more individual responsibility on postgraduate students than is ordi- narily expected of high school pupils, (3) make possible the handling of larger numbers of students by one teacher, (4) reduce the per-pupil cost of education, (5) furnish an en- riched post-high school curriculum near at home, and, (6) should pro- vide for quick curriculum changes to meet local needs," he said. Altogether too widespread is the notion that a person must take a course in a subject if, he is to know anything about it, he continued. "A person with a reasonably good educational foundatin can teach himself almost anything he desires to know, if he only has the will to work. Greater stress ought to be given to this fact in the post-secon- dary area. I know a man who in just a few years as a part of his recrea- tion, or play as he calls it, became almost an authority on one phase of Shakespeare's writings, Professor "Education is an individual, con- tinuous process and that person is best educated - who knows how to participate most actively and effi- ciently in life's affairs as a producer and who knows best how to live hap- pily and harmoniously with himself, his family and'his neighbors. Such an education comes as one lives. Education is life," Professor Carroth- ers concluded. The next speaker on the general: topic of readjusting the school pro- gram to non-academic groups was Dr. Price, who chose as his topic, "Solutions Attempted in Detroit." Dr. Price opened his talk with a brief statement of the financial situ- ation and its effect on high schools, with the resultant increase in the teaching load because of decreased budgets and larger responsibilities. He then spoke of the origin of postgraduate membership at two rep- resentative Detroit high schools, Cass Technical and the High School of Commerce, and at academic high schools, with emphasis on the grow- the of postgraduate enrollments throughout the City of Detroit. His next treatment of the subject courses that are taken by these post- graduates that are filling the schools, the relatonship of their selections to teaching loads and the size of classes, and the probable costs of the expan- sion. He also compared free post- graduate work with college and night school tuitions. Closing, he spoke of the establish- ment of fees, the basis on which it could be computed, and the probable effect that this would have upon the membership of schools now hav- ing large postgraduate enrollments. Concluding the session of readjust- ing the school problem to non-aca- demic groups, Prof. Raleigh Schor- ling spoke on "The Problem of the Dull Child," using as a source for his material the report of the committee on individual differences, of which he served as chairman. This committee was appointed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in 1932 and was in- structed in investigate ability group- ing, differentiated curricula, and re- lated subjects, and later an existing committee of the North Central As- sootation of Schools and Colleges took over the work in order to avoid duplication. Speaking of suggested reformations in schools, Professor Schorling said, "I have no sympathy with those who advocate eliminating the 'fads' and 'frills' in the curriculum. What s a fad for one pupil may be the salva- tion of an adjusted pupil of a wholly different type. Wants 'Fad' Retained "Moreover, the fads and frills may turn out to be the avocational inter- ests to save us in an immediate fu- ture characterized by excessive 16i- sure time," he continued. "I believe that the American secondary school has not placed enough emphasis on some of the ;newer subjects, for ex- ample, fine arts, health, the general sop, and mathematics, but I deny that the soluton for the slow stu- dent lies in sweeping out mathema- tics and ,ubstituting less organized material," he stated. "In the last 15 years mathematics teachers have taken high rank as a group that was willing to readjust' their work to the changing needs of children," Professor Schorling said. Laggards in To Stay "Whether or not laggards should be in our schools is an academic., Prof. John Sundwall, director of the division of hygiene and public health, who spoke yes- terday on "Some Impressions of Modern Russia" on the Sum- ner Session special lecture series. A report of Professor Sundwall's talk will be found on Page. 1. question," he continued. "The fact is that they are here in classes. We cannot get them out of school and even if we could they would be un- able to find positions. Witness the fact that they are now 5,152 gradu- ates back in .512 North Central high school fo rtheir thirteenth year of schooling," he said . "In brief, we cannot even get rid of our laggards by graduation. The sensible thing to do is to design cur- ricular materials that will fit their needs," Professor Schorling said. "The only way to do this, I think," he went on, "is through classroom investigation. We must mobilize our experience, create a variety of units that promise contribution to the so- lution of the problem, and we need to test each unit by classroom trial on the basis of a systematic record of -pupil responses. Guides Are Suggested "The special psychology of the pupil of low ability in the secondary school has never been written, but for a working basis there are a num- ber of tentative guides that are sug- gested as effective," professor Schor- ling said. "One of these is to delay the teaching of a task to a slow pupil as long as feasible. Remember that a slow student is mentally immature and may do successfully and with satisfaction the simpler tasks of an earlier grade. "Another thing to remember is that -the slow student is usually afraid of mathematics. Also, it should not be assumed that the slow pupil is a lazy pupil. Material should be organized so that each step is very small, it must be characterized by activities, and visual aids should be emphasized," Professor Schorling continued. "One must reaiize that drill alone will never get a pupil anywhere, even though it is probably a fact that the slow pupil needs more repetition and forgets more quickly than others," he said. "Dull Students Can Learn" Supporting the next part of his address with data that was collected by the committee, Professor Schor- ling stated that it pointed to the fact that dull pupils can learn aca- demic tasks and learn them at a very high level of achievement. "The dull student can learn," he said. "Also," he continued, "the rate of forgetting does not appear to be so great for the slow student as has been assumed once the mastery has been driven to a high level." In concluding his address, Profes- sor Schorling referred to a table presenting a summary of a number of measures of pupils in Flint schools who served as subjects in the investi- gation. In the conference on the general topic of "Readjusting our Education- al Philosophy to the New Era, Prof. S. A. Courtis opened the meeting with :an address following the theme, "In Elementary Education." "Science has completely under- mined religion," he said, "destroying intellectual belief in God as Father and in an after-life. With religion has gone a powerful sanction for the moral codes governing both individ- ual and social behavior." Professor Courtis stated that early American life was rural, agricultural, a n d comparitively unspecialized, whereas modern life is urban, highly specialized, and intrdependent. "The controlling motives in men were re- ligious, the dangers of frontier life put a premium on intelligence, on individuhalistic qualities, and every man had a chance," he said. "However," he went on,, "during the last 100 years changes so great as to amount to reversals have oc- curred. . "To prepare children to live suc- cessfully in the new social order three adjustments are necessary. They are: (1) The dominating motive of life must become self-expression and self-realization through contribution to the collective struggle for human betterment, (2) Individuals must bc trained in the technique of co-opera- tive methods, and, (3) The school must build its goals, curriculum, an teaching methods around the de- velopment of emotions and their con trol," Professor Courtis said. Functions of the elementary schoo under this reorganization were sai by Professor Courtis to be the de velopment of the individual in es sential controls and characteristic and the equipment of the studen with those procedures essential fo co-operative participation in botl work and play, leaving specializet training to the higher schools. "The progressive emphasis upor the 'child-centered school' and upoi 'the °education of the whole child points the way to the essential re- vamping of our absurdly artificial curriculum into a program of co- operative life activities," Professor Courtis said, in closing.' The next speaker on the schedule was Dr. John Brubacher, who chose as his topic, "Readjusting our Edu- cational Philosophy to the New Era in Secondary Education." Dr. Bru- bacher opened his address by saying the American philosophy of second- ary education is distinguished by the propositions that the secondary school should be (1) open to all, (2) co-educational, (3) cosmopolitan in organization, (4) at public expense, (5) with a curriculum broad enough and (6) with methods and standards sufficiently flexible for all abilities and interests. T h e s e fundamental hypotheses have been compounded from pecu- liar American conditions, he said. (1) They are, the open frontier of :he 19th century with its extension of suffrage, leveling of social dis- dinctions, and abundant wealth, (2) increasing industrialization in the Twentieth Century leading to a com- plexity anddifferentiation in daily life for which elementary schooling alone became insufficient prpara- tion, and (3) psychological investi- gation which emphasized individual differences and stressed the utilitar- ian rather than disciplinary.value of curriculum materials. No Fundamental Change "It is submitted that no immediate fundamental readjustment of Amer- ica's philosophy of secondary educa- tion is needed at present," Professor Brubacher said. "All the foregoing conditioning factors still persist, with the exception that there is no longer free land, and will therefore, con- tinue to demand the kind of sec- ondary education already outlined. "Doubtless the "new deal" indi- cates some basic readjustments in economic and political life. Now fundamental, enduring and pervasive these will be is far from clear at present. It would be unwise, there- fore, to propose changes in our phil- osophy of secondary education on so inconslusive a base." Concluding, possibilities that one TYPEWRITERS - PORTABLE New Seo HanH d Rebilt, Sn 3 Corona, Noiseless, Unc-eSwoo, a Annrbor. should hold in mind were named as1 follows: (1) The chance that our abundance of natural wealth and its industrial development in the past hundred years have made us over- optimistic as to ,our ability to afford universal secondary education. (2) Even if we could afford such a program it may be more advisable to divert that income for a program of social insurance, unemployment, old age, health, etc. (3) If large scaie social planning is to become dominant, educational and vocational guidance will and should receive great impetus. Yoakum Last Speaker The last speaker was, Vice-presi- dent Clarence S. Yoakum, who spoke on "Readjusting Our Educational Philosophy to the New Era in Higher Education." Dr. Yoakum opened his address by saying that the larger strategy in education is important for national and international aims, and highly general objectives point to these poli- tical and social purposes. "They do not, however; make the classroom procedure effective and cannot determine the educational content and technique which must be used to utilize the best in each in- dividual," Dr. Yoakumscontinued. "In addition, then, to social and general objectives there must be more im- mediate aims to be used in measur- ing the progress of the individual and in selectingshis course of study." They are: "(1) increase in men- 'al skills, (2) increase in knowledge >f the material for thought and in ;hought, (3) increase in personal )alance, (4) increased sensitivity to ;cholarly matters, and (5) increased ower for success," Dr. Yoakum said. Furthermore, since attitudes are de- eloped by living and by reflection, ormal education must use the sec- nd more effectively than it has. To se the second, consciously, requires hat the subject matter be partially etached from personal tradition, be t the proper level of symbolic think- ig and have for the student a rec- gnizable goal," he continued. Stenography and mathematics may oth be fitted to these criteria pro- 'iding there is to be no essential con- inuity in mental. growth and such ;rowth has a definite upper biologi- 'al limit, according to Dr. Yoakum. "History and the social sciences 'ave failed to recognize that the' .igh school and college come at a period in mental development when .hinking is just beginning," he con- tinued. "They have disregarded the pos- sibility of fitting their .concepts to the capacity of the students' mind. We must start the educational pro- cess on the basis of the variable cap- acities of individuals. Basic notions measuring growth toward the sta- ture of self-education are self-con- trol and critical ability and facility in the tools of thinking, language, logic, and mathematics," he con- cluded. I , Seek A SAN DIEGO, Calif., July 25.-(P) -The entire San Diego police tle- partment today searched for some I ews that might lead to the slayer of Dalbert Aposhian, 7, whose mu- tilated body was found in San Diego bay. Mothers, worried concerning the safety of their children, organized to demand speedy solution of the murder. Telephone calls to city offi- cials from representatives of one group of 100 women asked that the slayer and all of his kind be rounded up immediately. Sailors crossing the bay Monday found the body of the boy, missinga week from home. Dr. F. E. Toom- ey, county surgeon, said the boy's death was from "multiple mutilat- ing operations." He said the body had been in the bay about four days. Chief of Detectives Harry Kelly as- signed all his men to search isolated dwellings, shacks and lots along the water front and in other parts of the city. Many men, listed in police rec- ords as suspicious characters, were brought to the police station, but none was held. The boy left his home last Tues- day with a playmate. They went to a department store and looked at toys. Then they separated, Dalbert saying he was going to the park to visit the zoo. At 5:30 p. m: that day he was seen in the neighborhood of the cleaning establishment operated by his father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. George W. Aposhian. At 1:30 a. w, Wednesday, G. K. Rose, a taxi driver, saw the boy on a downtown street. Corporate Earnings Of Steel Conpany Grow NEW YORK, July 25.-(A)-Pub- lication of the second-quarter earn- ings statement of the United States Steel corporation serves to focus at- tention upon the spectacular im- provement of corporate earnings gen- erally during those months over the preceding bleak period. While operations of this .giant in- dustrial leader during the second quarter again fell short of covering interest charges, depreciation and depletion, the improvement over the grim days of the first, three months was substantial. The buoyant stepping-up of pro- duction schedules from April through June-with no current signs of a lag -has enabled many companies to swing into the second half of 1933 with some black ink behind them instead of the discouraging red of previous comparative periods. 6 To San Diego Bay Murder ,. I d ii! SUMMER FICTION 1 NOW jr '3(" Hundreds of Volumes of Recent Light Fiction; regularly priced from $2.00 to $2.50 NOW at the S.A.E. HOUSE Corner Washtenaw and South University ON 25C. 11 _ -19- . i" T. , I. .r, ", . ,, rrv, _ I . ri i- rra nr in r rr- r^n tinrf I I