nb ek np aa hh iam ao ne lipo aa SS WAV {sion Section ; vi My a Ay An if Sarge 4 , Ly Ky e i ire _ Mary at oh 4 ' , 2 ty ie ‘RT we 4 \ . oo ‘ ae, y 4 ; ‘ J } \ ie \ ) ; . JF ’ 4 F WARS Ae vi - ih fy i 4 * : ) A BS Oy. pe in Pay Ba mes het Fas AS ee , : ‘ Aj ny oi 4 oe rt HOW TO MAKE A BY at FRANKLIN BOBBIT Ben as Professor of Educational Administration LOGICAL seth The University of Chicago HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1924 BY FRANKLIN BOBBITT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Che Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. PREFACE WE are here presenting the plan of approach to the problems of curriculum improvement that was em- ployed recently in Los Angeles. It was designed to serve two purposes. The minor one was that in- considerable amount of revision of current courses which is advisable at any one time. The major purpose was the inauguration of a program of curriculum im- provement which will require a generation or more for its consummation. ‘This is not to say that we could foresee the developments of a generation. All that was possible was to take our bearings with the greatest care, conscious of the unreliability of our professional instruments of guidance. It is believed that these are reliable enough to show us the general route to be traveled; and that vision of the exact road will develop as the experience of each step throws its light forward over the next beyond. FRANKLIN Bossitt Digitized by the Internet Archive In 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/nowtomakecurricu0Obobb CONTENTS . PRELIMINARY SURVEY . THE OBJECTIVES . SUGGESTIONS RELATIVE TO OBJECTIVES . Puprt ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES . GENERAL EDUCATION . LITERATURE AND GENERAL READING . THE SOCIAL STUDIES VIII. . MATHEMATICS NATURAL SCIENCE . PoysicAL DEVELOPMENT AND MalIn- TENANCE . UNSPECIALIZED PRactTIcAL ACTIVITIES . UNSPECIALIZED PracticaL ARTS OF MEN . PracticaL Arts oF WOMEN . Drawine, Desicn, Visuau ART . Music . ENGLISH EXPRESSION . Moprern LANGUAGES . LATIN . ADMINISTRATIVE SUGGESTIONS INDEX — 129 146 165 177 199 209 219 229 238 256 267 280 287 , ‘ dy beh Gy® ard tr e y \ a Ass tes 5 4\ i r hy of a a | i ‘—— a Oe ae >. ~ of ao — - — — rae aie ~ oe — a. | i _ _— a HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY SURVEY THE engineer who plans the construction of a railroad from Omaha to Los Angeles, let us say, begins his work by taking a general over-view of all the region which lies between. He examines in a general way the lay of the land: the hills, mountains, plains, rivers, valleys, plateaus, passes, slopes, canyons, cities, populated and vacant regions, and the like. On the basis of this pre- liminary observation, he plans the general route of the line. Laid out on a map of ordinary scale, it will show in about the position where the road will ultimately be. Yet to this point he has not once taken up his surveying instruments for laying out the exact position of the line, its distances, its grades, and its curves. This latter labor is indispensable, but it isa subsequent step. The first step is the broad survey of all of the factors; and the preliminary laying-out of the general line of the route. To plan the route that a growing man must travel from infancy to the goals of his growth, his culture and his special abilities, is an immeasurably more compli- cated task than the simple one of planning a thin steel 2 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM line across the continent. Within man and in the social world at large there are spiritual mountains, morasses, plains, storm-regions, valleys, deserts, quicksands, and a host of other similar things through the midst of which man’s developmental growth-route must lie. And to complicate the matter, the route is not a single line leading to a single goal, but an end- lessly complex network of lines leading to a multiplicity of goals. The first step of the educational engineer is to take a broad over-view of the entire field of man’s life by way of seeing the major factors in perspective and in re-~ lation. On the basis of this preliminary over-view, he will plan the general educational route to be followed, This general route must be laid out before he is ready to undertake the accurate surveys of the details. It is a far more difficult task than that of the railway engi- neer because of the intangible, uncertain, and fluctu- ating character of so many of the factors. The best maps and charts of man’s nature and of human affairs that are available are admittedly inaccurate and in- complete. One will, however, use the best that are available; and he will himself have lived the life of man, participated in social affairs and observed widely, so as to know the various matters at first-hand. With all of these helps, in the present state of human and social science, he will move much of the time with a sense of great uncertainty. And yet the educational engineer cannot evade this first indispensable step of laying out the general route. PRELIMINARY SURVEY 8 However keenly aware of his uncertainties, he must still do the best that is possible, trusting that as the work proceeds he may be able to correct any errors made. This volume relates to the preliminary step of laying out the general educational routes. One who has had long experience within the field comes to be keenly conscious of his uncertainty relative to innumerable factors. The best statement possible at present on the part of any one can be only probability; and at times nothing more than possibility. Not often, even in the more familiar portions of our field, can there be even relative certainty. While things are here usually stated with positiveness for the sake of definiteness and clearness, yet there can be no present justification for any degree of dogmatism in the statements. They are tentative. In dealing with difficult professional problems, so long as there is no solution capable of scientific veri- fication, our profession is in a mood to leave the matter in the form of a question. This, of course, is a healthy state of mind for either educational investigator or practitioner. The practitioner, however, cannot act on the basis of questions. Hecan act only as there isa solution. A tentative solution on the basis of the best evidence available is better for him than a question. He ought, of course, to realize that it is tentative and problematical; but so long as it represents the best solution at which he is able to arrive, it is the safest thing for his purposes. 4 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM A second thing we would greatly emphasize. It is that a curriculum-making group should not take its thought second-hand. It should do its own seeing, thinking, judging, and deciding. It should for itself lay out the general routes to be followed by children and youths as they travel their educational journey. As we suggest a general route, therefore, we are in the main merely presenting a pattern of kinds of things that ought to be done for itself by each curriculum- making group. | There are numerous educationists at present, mainly scientific investigators, who believe that we can evade this preliminary step of broad general planning of the educational routes. They are certain of a few of the goals to be attained, and of some of the lines to be traveled in achieving them. For example, they are certain that the ability to read, to write, to spell, to compute, to use language grammatically correct, and to perform the specific tasks of one’s vocation are proper developmental goals. They believe that the thing to be done now is to take our educational surveying in- struments and accurately to locate the exact goals within these fields, and the exact details of the pro- cedure to be employed. In this latter contention there can be no question as to the validity of their position. For the matters enumerated, in their general outlines, we have been clarifying our professional vision for centuries. Weare certain of these goals and reasonably certain of the major lines of procedure to be followed. It is clearly PRELIMINARY SURVEY 5 time for an accurate study of the various factors in- volved. ‘This is an indispensable second step which must be taken before we can have completed our educational planning. Fortunately, this work is being rapidly carried forward by numerous investigators in all parts of the country.! In spite of the abundance at present of these accurate surveys of the details, this is clearly not yet the major task of educational engineering. While we have © located a few of the goals with considerable exactness and some of the roads to their attainment, yet as a matter of fact our profession is exceedingly uncertain as to what most of the goals are; and among these appear to be some of the most important ones. And not knowing the goals, naturally the roads to be traveled bave not been, and cannot yet be, located. The major task of curriculum-making at present is this discovery of the goals in a general way and this planning of the general outlines of the routes. As these matters are defined, one after the other, the obvious ones first and the more elusive ones later, then the accurate analyses can be made for determining the exact details. This second step must await the first. In the labor of curriculum-making, one may take the short view or the long view. When a school system is confronted with the immediate task of revising its courses of study, it looks not to the far future but to the 1 Surveys of this character that have been made to date, some fifty-four in number, have been summarized in the valuable volume by Professor W. W. Charters, entitled Curriculum Construction, (Macmillan, 1923.) 6 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM work which is possible or desirable during the next year or two. On the other hand, viewing the present educational situation in the light of our past history and also in the light of current demands upon edu- cation, we can confidently predict a generation-long program of curriculum improvement. This latter will of course be the sum of the many small improvements made year by year as the immediate labors are per- formed. In this volume we are looking both to the generation- long process of curriculum advancement and also to the immediate labors of preparing courses of study for next year for any particular school system. We are looking to the long program as guidance for the steps of the short programs. In the nature of the case, the immediate changes in any one year must be relatively small. ‘“‘Next steps” in man’s progress must always be relatively short. But the many short steps make up the long journey. That the short steps of progress be in right directions, it is indispensable that one have the long view of the long journey. In laying out the latter, therefore, so far as we do not go astray, we are making the best provision for taking the immediate short steps. In suggesting the long view, there is no thought that any one who is really fit for educational leadership will misunderstand and be so foolish as to attempt to go all the way at a single step. CHAPTER II THE OBJECTIVES For a number of years the world has been in a state of unusual unrest. Social currents have been moving in strange, threatening and often disastrous ways. They have carried us far from where we were only a few years ago. And the present speed of change indicates that we have yet far to go. Because of the social changes, education must shift its ground in fundamental ways. It must perform functions which it has not hitherto attempted; and dis- continue labors no longer serviceable. It is easy to make changes. There are many who delight in any kind of change, and feel that they are making progress when they are making changes. But merely shifting position is not necessarily progress. There are more ways of going wrong than of going right. The status quo is usually better than changes in wrong directions. Curriculum-making must find guiding principles which will lead it with all the certainty that is possible in right directions. It is helpful to begin with the simple assumption, to be accepted literally, that education is to prepare men and women for the activities of every kind which make up, or which ought to make up, well-rounded adult life; that it has no other purpose; that everything should be done with a view to this purpose; and that nothing 8 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM should be included which does not serve this purpose. Education is primarily for adult life, not for child life. Its fundamental responsibility is to prepare for the fifty years of adulthood, not for the twenty years of childhood and youth. When we know what men and women ought to do along the many lines and levels of human experience, then we shall have before us the things for which they should be trained. The first task is to discover the activities which ought to make up the lives of men and women; and along with these, the abilities and personal qualities necessary for proper performance. These are the educational objectives. The plan to be employed is activity-analysis. The first step is to analyze the broad range of human experience into major fields. The lines can be drawn in any number of ways. Each curriculum-making group will make the divisions that seem best to it for its purposes. The following is a classification that has been found serviceable: 1. Language activities; social intercommunication. 2. Health activities. 8. Citizenship activities. 4. General social activities — meeting and mingling with others. 5. Spare-time activities, amusements, recreations. 6. Keeping one’s self mentally fit— analogous to the health activities of keeping one’s self physically fit. 7. Religious activities. 8. Parental activities, the upbringing of children, the maintenance of a proper home iife. THE OBJECTIVES 9 9. Unspecialized or non-vocational practical activities. 10. The labors of one’s calling. While the curriculum-maker may desire to analyze the field along entirely different lines, he will be careful to see that his analysis omits no portion of the broad range of desirable human experience. Many matters will be taken care of through the normal processes of living, and without any systematic educational labor. Other matters will be left to non-scholastic agencies. But in the original analyses of human experience, the whole field should be viewed in order that the portions which belong to the schools may be properly seen, within themselves, and in relation to the whole. The major fields of human action having been de- fined, the second step is to take them, one after the other, and analyze them into their more specific activities. In this analysis, one will first divide his field into a few rather large units; and then break them up into smaller ones. This process of division will continue until he has found the quite specific activities that are to be performed.! At all stages of the analyses, attention should be fixed upon the actual actwities of mankind. In part the analyses will be made on the basis of simple observa- tion. This is all that is needed so long as there is virtual unanimity on the part of all objective-minded analysts of the situation. This will largely be the case with the major units, and their larger subdivisions. As the an- 1 For detailed information relative to these analyses, see Charters, Curriculum Construction, chaps. Iv-Ix. 10 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM alyses approach the units that are minute, numerous, and interrelated with each other, and especially when accuracy demands quantitative definition, careful scientific assembling of the facts becomes necessary. _ The activities once discovered, one can then see the objectives of education. These latter are the abilities to perform in proper ways the activities. The two are cognate, but not identical. For brevity, it is possible to state the two together in the way shown subsequently in this chapter. In the following list of objectives, the several major fields are divided into their principal subdivisions. We have not here attempted to go into the more minute subdivisions. We have held, in the main, to those which represent the practically unanimous judgment of some twenty-seven hundred well-trained and ex- perienced adults. In a number of cases, however, where the field is complex or obscure, the items repre- sent only majority approval. They are still upon the level of hypothesis and require further study and analysis. They are attempts to define regions of fields which we know exist, but the details of which are yet obscure. We cannot ignore these regions simply be- cause our knowledge of them is incomplete. We must define them as best we can for working purposes; and then further clarify our vision through the two methods of scientific research and of dealing practically with them. It is well to have a proportioned vision of the whole field even though many spots be obscure and problematical. THE OBJECTIVES 11 The following ! is presented merely to illustrate the kind of statement of objectives that appears to be needed — on this particular level of generality. The curriculum-making group will formulate its own statement on the basis of its understanding of the realities. Masor OBsEcTIVES OF EDUCATION I. Socrat INTERCOMMUNICATION 1. Ability to use language in all ways required for proper and effective participation in the community life. 2. Ability effectively to organize and present orally one’s thought to others: (a) In conversation; (b) In recount- ing one’s experiences; (c) In more serious or formal dis- cussion; (d) In oral report; (e) In giving directions; (f) To an audience. 8. Ability to pronounce one’s words properly. 4. Ability in speech to use the voice in ways both agree- able and effective. 5. Command over an adequate reading, speaking and writing vocabulary. ' 6. Ability to use language which is grammatically correct. 7%. Ability effectively to organize and express one’s thought 1 This statement of objectives has grown up gradually through twelve years of codperative effort on the part of some fifteen hundred members of graduate classes in “The Curriculum” conducted by the writer at the University of Chicago. Recently the list was critically examined by some twelve hundred high-school teachers in Los Angeles, and again revised. It was then used as a basis for deter- mining the objectives of the several junior and senior high-school departments in the recent curriculum labors in that city. It is still, of course, but a tentative draft. It will require revision and re-revi- sion on the basis of accurate scientific analyses of detailed portions of the field as these accumulate. Or it may be entirely discarded in favor of a different plan, should a more serviceable one be offered. 12 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM in written form: (a) Memoranda; (b) Letters; (c) Re- ports, news items or articles, systematic discussion of questions; (d) Giving directions; (e) Written addresses. 8. Ability to write with proper legibility, ease, and speed. 9. Ability to spell the words of one’s writing vocabulary. 10. Ability to use good form, order, and arrangement in all of one’s written work: margins, spacing, alignment, par- agraphing, capitalization, punctuation, syllabication, abbreviation, ete. 11. Ability to understand the oral expression of others. 12. Ability to read the written or printed expression of oth- ers with proper ease, speed, and comprehension. 13. Ability to use dictionary, encyclopedia, atlas, hand- books, card catalogues, reader’s guides, indexes, and other library and reference helps in finding facts or ma- terials wanted. 14. Ability to read and interpret facts expressed by com- monly used types of graphs, diagrams, and statistical tables. 15. Ability to express facts by means of graphs, diagrams, and statistical tables. 16. Ability to use maps with ease and understanding. 17. Ability to read drawings, and to prepare simple draw- ings or designs. ‘TI. Maintenance or Puysicat Erricency 101. Ability to control one’s dietary in such ways as to make one’s food contribute in maximum measure to one’s physical well-being. 102. Ability to keep the body mechanism properly oxy- genated. 103. Ability to utilize muscular exercise as a lifelong means of maintaining a high level of physical vitality. 104. Ability and disposition throughout life to engage with 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. THE OBJECTIVES 13 pleasure and profit in a varied repertory of games, sports, athletics, outdoor recreations, etc., such as swimming, skating, hiking, rowing, riding, tennis, golf, ball games of various kinds, running games, dancing, fishing, hunting, canoeing, motoring, camping, athletic events, etc. Ability and disposition to engage in a variety of unspe- cialized practical labors which contribute to one’s re- pertory of physical experiences. Ability to employ setting-up exercises for corrective or emergency purposes when nothing better is available. Ability to carry one’s self and to move and act with ease, grace, and precision. Ability to maintain postures conducive to the best physical functioning. Ability to make one’s various mental and emotional states and activities contribute in maximum degree to one’s physical functioning. Ability to make one’s sleep contribute in maximum measure to the development and maintenance of a high level of physical vitality. Ability to relax physically and mentally at proper times and in proper ways. Ability to protect one’s self from micro-organisms; and to deal with them and their products effectively in case of attack. Ability to take proper precautions against the spread of disease. Ability to protect from dust, smoke, and noxious gases. Ability rightly to control the factors involved in the maintenance of body temperatures. Ability to dress in ways that promote the physical well- being in maximum degree. Ability and disposition to maintain personal cleanliness. 14 118. 119. 134. 135. HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM Ability to provide the most favorable conditions for the elimination from the tissues, organs, and body in gen- eral of all harmful or needless substances and agents. Ability to control one’s relations to sunlight so as to secure maximum benefits therefrom. . Ability to secure that variety or diversity of physical experiences necessary for maximum well-being. . Ability to draw up an individual program of work, play, rest, sleep, meals, etc., best suited to one’s physi- cal nature and capacity. . Ability to avoid preventable accidents. . Ability to deal with conditions produced by many kinds of common accidents. . Ability to care for the teeth. . Ability to care for the eyes. . Ability to care for nose, ear, and throat. . Ability to care for the skin. . Ability to keep the heart and blood vessels in normal working condition. . Ability to care for the hair and scalp. . Ability to care for the nails. . Ability to care properly for the feet. . Ability to control sex-functions in the interests of phys- ical and social well-being. . The ability to keep reasonably well-informed, in the de- gree to be expected of the layman, as to the discoveries of science in the fields of health conservation and pro- motion. Ability alone or in codperation with physicians and nurses to deal effectively with many kinds of disorders. Ability to care for the sick, — so far as laymen need this ability. 136. 137. 138. 139. 201. 202. 203. ' THE OBJECTIVES 15 Ability to take the protective, precautionary, or reme- dial steps necessary to protect one’s self or family from common ailments. Ability wisely to utilize the services of physicians, nurses, dentists, and other specialists in health and physical upbuilding and maintenance. Ability within one’s occupational field to codperate ef- fectively in providing wholesome working conditions. Ability to perform one’s civic functions in codperating with and in the social support and control of public agencies engaged in promoting the general physical wel- fare. TI. Errictent CirizENSsHIP Ability to think, feel, act, and react as an efficient, intel- ligent, sympathetic, and loyal member of the large so- cial group — that group that is prior to differentiation and within which social differentiation occurs. Large- group or citizenship consciousness. Sense of member- ship in the total social group, rather than in some special class. Large-group local consciousness when dealing with local problems; large-group state con- sciousness when dealing with state responsibilities; large-group national consciousness when dealing with national matters; large-group world-consciousness when dealing with mankind’s responsibilities for world co- operation and management. Ability and disposition to view the specialized or func- tional groups and agencies, not as independent entities, but as service arms of the general social whole, without which they could not exist. The ability of the citizen to do his individual share in performing those social functions for which all citizens are equally responsible in the establishment, organiza- tion, maintenance, protection, oversight, and control of the specialized groups and agencies into which soci- ety is differentiated for effectiveness of action. The young citizen-in-training is to acquire those abilities 16 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM which, when adulthood is reached, will enable him to perform the following things m connection with the several specialized social agencies: (a) Sharing fully in an informed and impelling public opinion, which looks to the general welfare in its control of each service agency. (b) Setting up in public opinion and maintaining the standards of result to be achieved by each service agency. (c) Seeing that each service agency aims at the stand- ards of results to be achieved. (d) Seeing that the service agency employs proced- ures which are effective in producing the de- sired results and which are economical in social costs. (e) Seeing that the material working conditions nec- essary for the most effective and economical procedures are supplied. (f) Seeing that each service agency is provided with personnel and organization of the kind required by the procedures to be employed; and properly rewarded. (g) Directly or indirectly selecting or approving the selection of the personnel of the agency. (h) Supplying the funds necessary for the efficient, and in all ways proper, conduct of the agency. (2) Currently or periodically examining, directly or through publicity reports, or both, mto the re- sults achieved by the agency, and the degree: of economy employed. (j) Where results achieved and degree of economy employed comply with standards of expectation, approving and properly rewarding the labors of those who have thus given good service. (4) Where results do not reach the standards of ex- pectation, or where there has been waste, finding the causes of the deficiency, and removing them as expeditiously as practicable. 204. 205. 206. 207. 208. 209. 210. 211. raz 213. 214. THE OBJECTIVES 17 Ability to organize and use social facts effectively in ar- riving at conclusions. The ability to use general principles in analyzing and considering economic, political, and other social prob- lems. Ability to protect one’s self from social, economic, and political fallacies, illusions, misrepresentations, petty- mindedness, fragmentary-mindedness, sentimentality, selfish prejudices, and the like, through one’s continual reliance upon facts and principles. Ability to discern the character and the extent of one’s social obligations and duties in the amount and charac- ter of things done for one by other individuals, groups and agencies. Ability to discern one’s individual rights in the quantity of one’s services to the general group. Ability to read one’s rights as things earned. Ability to see social relations so clearly as to discern the duties of others, individuals and groups, within the social whole. Ability to see social relations so clearly as to discern the rights of others within the social whole. Disposition of the citizen’as consumer to avoid waste. A sufficient knowledge of the laws which one is expected to obey. An understanding and appreciation of the social-service labors and sacrifices which have brought cur institu- tions and social procedures to their present high levels of development. Ability to organize and express one’s ideas clearly and effectively in the discussion, formal or informal, of so- cial problems. . Ability wisely to choose a specialized occupation in which one can give good service to one’s self, to one’s family, and to society. 18 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM TV. GENERAL SocrAL CoNnTACTS AND RELATIONSHIPS 301. 302. 303. 304. 305. 306. 307. 308. 309. 310. 311. 312. 401. Ability and disposition to talk and act in those sympa- thetic, tactful, and human ways that are both most agreeable and also most effective in the conduct of one’s relations with one’s associates; and conversely, to avoid the many things disagreeable to others. Ability to comply automatically and relatively uncon- sciously with those ordinary social forms and conven- tions which facilitate human association. Ability to associate easily and naturally with individu- als of diverse ages, interests and specialties. Ability and disposition to make a wise choice of com- panions; and ability to develop and maintain friendship with people of high character and of diverse natures, ac- tivities, and interests. Sincerity, honesty, straightforwardness, truthfulness, fair-dealing, steadfastness, and dependableness in one’s dealings with others. Ability to discern the motives which actuate human be- havior. Ability to discern the unspoken expectations of others. Ability to sense and evaluate the reactions of others. Ability to gain the confidence of those with whom one comes in contact. Ability in dress and otherwise to maintain a proper per- sonal appearance. Ability to create and maintain a homelike and hospi- table atmosphere about the place in which one lives. Ability to converse agreeably and effectively upon a variety of topics and in a mood and manner suitable to the situation. V. Letsure OccuPpATIONS Ability, disposition, and habit of diversified observation 402. 403. 404. 405. 406. 407. 408. 409. 410. 411. 412. 413. THE OBJECTIVES 19 of men, things, and affairs as an enjoyable and fruitful leisure occupation. Ability, disposition, and habit of abundant and diversi- fied reading as a means of enjoyable and fruitful indirect observation of men, things, and affairs; of vicarious par- ticipation in those affairs; and of entering into the thoughts and moods of others. Ability profitably to utilize pictures, and other visual modes of representation as means of indirect observation of men, things, and affairs. Ability to utilize the drama, spoken and silent, as a means of enjoyable and fruitful indirect observation of men, things, and affairs. Ability to utilize conversation as a profitable and enjoy- able means of participating in the thought of the world. Ability and disposition to give expression to one’s thoughts and experiences in proper ways and under proper circumstances. Ability in quiet thought to turn over in mind, evaluate, organize, and assimilate one’s experiences. Ability to participate in the more formal public discus- sion of matters of current interest as an enjoyable and fruitful spare-time occupation. Ability and disposition to utilize public addresses, lec- tures, etc., as means of widening one’s thought by en- tering into the thoughts and experiences of others. Ability, disposition, and habit of taking up occasionally the systematic study of some new thing; and of explor- ing untried fields of human experience. A disposition toward experimentation, exploration, dis- covery, and invention in those fields of one’s activities and interests which permit initiative. Ability profitably to utilize the participative and obser- vational opportunities of travel. Ability to utilize music for a healthful, abundant, and varied awakening of one’s emotional nature. 20 414. 415. 416. 417. 418. 419. 420. 421. 422. 501. HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM Ability to utilize the products of the visual arts as sources of enjoyable and profitable esthetic experiences. Amateur ability in fields of the fine arts. Ability to participate in desirable activities of social clubs. Ability to entertain one’s friends, and to respond to en- tertainment by one’s friends. Ability to carry on in proper ways one’s family and gen- eral social correspondence. Ability and disposition to engage with pleasure and pro- fit in a sufficient and varied repertory of games, sports, athletics, and outdoor recreations, such as swimming, skating, hiking, rowing, riding, tennis, golf, ball games of various kinds, running games, dancing, fishing, hunt- ing, canoeing, motoring, camping, athletic events and other things physically and socially equivalent. Ability and disposition to utilize outdoor life in the midst of natural surroundings as recreation for mind and body. Ability and disposition to participate in a variety of un- specialized practical activities as enjoyable and fruitful spare-time occupations. Ability to draw up for one’s self and hold to a balanced program of desirable leisure occupations. VI. GENERAL MENTAL EFFICIENCY A proportioned and emotionalized intellectual appre- hension, such as one’s natural capacities will permit, of the realities which make up the world of man’s life: (a) Man; human nature; diversities of human nature. (b) Man’s activities and affairs in their diverse fields and forms. (c) Man’s institutions. (d) The territorial or regional groups that make up the local community, the state, the nation, the world. Their situations and affairs. THE OBJECTIVES 21 (e) The specialized or functional groups — eco- nomic, political, religious, and the lke — to- gether with their special situations, activities, duties, rights, and relationships. (f) Man’s geographical habitat. (g) The development of man and of his nature, habi- tat, institutions, manners and customs, special- ized groupings, etc., as revealed in biology and history. (h) The world of plant life. (t) The world of animal life. (7) The world of chemical phenomena. (k) The world of physical phenomena. (l) The geological world. (m) The astronomical world. (n) The world of number, quantity, magnitude. (0) The world of sound and music. (p) The world of language and literature. (q) The world of form, color, visual art. (r) Man’s inventions and creations. (s) The world in composite forms: woods, hills, streams, lakes, oceans, farms, cities, and the like. (t) The world of myth, legend, folklore, fairy tale — realities of a sort even though they are but cre- ated in man’s imagination. In each field: awakened interests; tendencies to attention; appreciations; normal emotional re- actions. 502. Ability effectively to perform the mental activities in- volved in the proper exercise of the many specific func- tions which one should perform. Some of the mental states and activities needed for any specific ability are as follows: (1-a) An interest in the things involved in the ex- ercise of the specific ability: the materials, forces, processes, relations, experiences, and results. 22 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM (2-a) Automatic watchfulness or attention to the things involved. (3-a) Right valuations, attitudes, and appreciations of things involved. (4-a) Desire for the results which come from an exer- cise of the ability. (5-a) Delight in the experiences involved in the exer- cise of the ability. (6-a) Desire for the ability for the sake of the experi- ences, the results, or both. (7-a) Normal and healthy emotional responses to the things, situations, and experiences involved in the exercise of the ability. (8-a) The specific habits and skills which are neces- sary for easy and effective performance of the activities. (9-a) Self-direction and_ self-control in performing specific activities. (10-a) Habits of planning action prior to execution. (1l-a) Knowledge of the things involved. Command over the science required in the efficient exer- cise of the ability — both the general or back- ground science and the specific applied science. (12-a) Interest in and right attitudes toward the sci- ence which should always guide planning and execution. (13-a) Disposition to follow the dictates of science both in planning and in execution. (14—a) Confidence in the guidance of science. Auto- matic habit of turning to science when seeking guidance. (15-a) Ability to analyze a situation into its several elements or factors and to see them in propor- tion and relation. (16-a) Power to foresee developments and results. (17-a) Resourcefulness in meeting unexpected situa- tions. Ability to analyze perplexing situations into their elements by way of resolving the ditficulties. THE OBJECTIVES 23 (18-a) Habit of keeping abreast of developments. Openness of mind toward new developments, discoveries, or inventions. (19-a) Ability to collect, organize, and interpret facts needed in the exercise of each ability; and to arrive at conclusions justified by the evidence. (20-a) Knowledge of, and habit of using, methods which are most economical in time, labor, and cost. (21-a) Habit of accuracy in thought and execution. (22-a) Ability to do one’s thinking in quantitative terms where this is necessary for accuracy. Skill in handling the quantitative or mathema- tical matters involved. (23-a) A valuation and habit of system and order in dealing with the several factors. (24—a) A sense of the reality or substantiality of the things, forces, processes, and relations that are involved. (25-a) Ability to use language efficiently as the vehi- cle of one’s thought. (26-a) Habit of thinking primarily in terms of the reali- ties concerned — with the verbal element prop- erly subordinated. (27-a) Sense of responsibility for doing adequately, promptly, and cheerfully everything that needs to be done. (28-a) Valuation of high standards of achievement. Habits of holding to high standards. Disposi- tion always to do one’s best. (29-a) Ability to self-judge the character of one’s per- formance, and of the results, in terms of appro- priate principles and standards. (30-a) An active dislike of things faulty when meas- ured by proper standards. (31-a) Ability to recognize defects, errors, or short- comings in conditions, processes, or results. 24 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM (32-a) Knowledge of the kinds of errors against which one should be on guard. (33-a) Knowledge of the harmful effects of mistakes. (34-a) An effective desire to avoid errors or short- comings. (35-a) Habit of watchfulness against errors or short- comings. (36-a) Disposition to permit no exceptions to right procedure. (37-a) Habit of correcting errors as soon as discovered. (38-a) An awakened conscience, so to speak, relative to rightness and wrongness in the matters in- volved in the exercise of each ability. (39-a) An abiding and impelling confidence in the worth of one’s labors. (40-a) Disposition to be active. (41-a) A disposition to be as vigorous and prompt as the nature of the situation makes desirable. (42-a) Willingness to exert one’s self as fully as needful, to take trouble, to endure pain, to sacrifice the immediate for the remote, the lower for the higher, as far as the situation demands these things. (43-a) Tenacity of purpose, persistence, industry, and courage in grappling with obstacles and in achieving the desired results. (44-a) Confidence in one’s ability to perform the activities. (45-a) Sense of dissatisfaction or disappointment when one fails. (46-a) Knowledge of and respect for the expectations and standards of cultivated right-minded per- sons. A proper degree of sensitiveness to the expectations of such persons, and tendencies to react accordingly. (47-a) The ability, in tasks requiring group effort, to codperate fully with one’s associates. (48-a) Such knowledge of one’s abilities in relation to 503. 504. 505. 506. 507. 508. _ sible specialized occupations; and for the several levels 509. 601. THE OBJECTIVES 25 the tasks that one can know whether he is jus- tified in doing things himself or in getting them done by those who are more specialized and more skilled than one’s self. (49-a) The ability to keep one’s emotional serenity, in the face of circumstances however trying. Ability and disposition throughout life, according to one’s native capacity, to engage with pleasure and profit in a varied repertory of intellectual, social, and ses- thetic activities of play type for the sake of maintenance of one’s mental imtegrity and virility. (See Leisure Occupations.) Disposition and habit of utilizing one’s unspecialized work activites as a means of mental maintenance. (See Unspecialized Practical Activities.) Disposition and habit of utilizing one’s civic activities as opportunities and means of maintaining one’s gen- eral mental powers. Ability to lay out for one’s self and hold to a program of experiences which, considering all circumstances and conditions, promises maximum benefits in the develop- ment and maintenance of one’s mental powers. Ability to see and judge one’s own abilities, capacities, aptitudes, strengths, weaknesses, shortcomings, etc. Ability to judge one’s degree of fitness for the many pos- of proficiency in each. Ability to take the protective, precautionary, or reme- dial steps necessary to protect one’s self or family from the various causes of needless mental mefliciency or dis- ability. VII. Reuictous ATTITUDES AND ACTIVITIES A sense of the brotherhood of man. A full sense of membership in the large or total social group. Large- group consciousness. A sense of human interdepend- ency, of community of nature, of origin, of vicissitudes, 26 602. 603. 604. 605. 606. 607. 701. 702. 703. HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM and of destiny. Tendencies to action and reaction which are inherent in the large-group consciousness, Ability to see one’s environment, the near and the far, the personal and the impersonal, sub specie eternitatis, as a vast and restless sea of forces and phenomena, infinite in extent, subtlety, and complexity. Ability to see and realize one’s inter-relatedness with and within this boundless environment. (The vision provided by science — physical, biological, psychological, social.) Ability to catch for one’s self such glimpses as are per- mitted to finite vision of the Being which actuates the universe as revealed in natural manifestations, in living creatures, in mankind, in man’s highest examples, in the record of man’s thought and action and aspiration as presented in history, literature, art, science, philoso- phy, and in man’s religious literatures. Ability to participate as fully and abundantly as one’s original nature will permit in religious and philosophic thought of the type characteristic of man at his best and highest. Ability, habit, and disposition to follow the leadership of the world’s Men of Vision. An attitude and desire of obedience to the immutable and eternal laws which appear to exist in the nature of things. Confidence in the beneficence of these laws. A sense of personal security which springs from one’s confidence in the beneficence of the general order of things. VIII. PaArentau RESPONSIBILITIES The physical qualities necessary for parenthood of de- sirable type. (Duplicate.) The mental, moral, and social qualities necessary for parenthood of proper character. (Duplicate.) Ability to supply the material needs of one’s children. (Duplicate.) | 704. 705. 706. 707. 708, 709. a0. 711. 712. 713. 714. THE OBJECTIVES a Ability to read, as fully as conditions permit, the po- tential characteristics and abilities of one’s children. Ability to particularize the abilities and personal char- acteristics which should be aimed at in the upbringing of one’s children. Ability to do one’s share in codperatively getting the particularized objectives of the training of their chil- dren determined by specialized agencies; particularly the schools. Ability to judge, and in some part to initiate, the choice of the experiences which their children should have in order to attain the characteristics and abilities proper for them. Ability to do one’s share in getting specialized agencies to determine the child-experiences best for attaining the goals of achievement. Ability to judge, and in some part independently to choose, the material opportunities and conditions to be provided the children for their experiences. Ability to provide the material conditions of the desir- able child-experiences through unspecialized labors so far as it is desirable to provide them in this way. Ability to do one’s share in codperatively getting the material conditions of the desirable child-experiences effectively provided by specialized agencies; particu- larly, the schools. Ability to evaluate personal, social, and moral influences of different kinds as to their efficacy in the right up- bringing of children. Ability to provide the proper parental share of the per- sonal, social, and moral influences necessary to the right upbringing of children. Ability to control the children’s contacts with the gen- eral life of the community, juvenile and adult, in the in- terests of the children’s right upbringing. 716. ong 718. 801. 802. 803. 804. 805. 806. 807. 808. 809. HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM . Ability to do one’s share in coéperatively getting a proper portion of the personal and social factors of their children’s experiences provided by specialized agencies; particularly the schools. Ability to judge of their degree of success in carrying their children’s development forward toward the prede- termined goals of achievement. Ability to judge the degree of success of specialized agencies, particularly the schools, in assisting their children to achieve the goals of their upbringing. Ability to do one’s individual share in the codperative support and control of specialized agencies to which child-training functions are delegated. (Duplicate: Civic.) IX. UNSPECIALIZED PracticaL ACTIVITIES Ability to use all common kinds of measuring devices: measures of lengths, area, volume, capacity, weight, time, value, temperature, specific gravity, etc. Ability to sharpen, adjust, clean, lubricate, replace worn or broken parts, and otherwise keep household and garden tools and appliances in good order and good working condition. Ability to make repairs, adjustments and additions to the house and its equipment. Ability to make repairs, adjustments, and sometimes to construct household furniture or other equipment. Ability to participate intelligently in the original plan- ning of one’s home. Ability to operate household equipment. Ability to keep the house, premises, and equipment clean and sanitary. Ability to keep the house in good order. Ability to care for and operate the electrical system and THE OBJECTIVES 29 appliances in one’s home; and to make simple repairs, adjustments, or replacements. 810. Ability to protect the home from fire. 811. Ability to perform the operations involved in the care of the premises and garden. 812. Ability to care for pets or other live animals. 813. Ability to perform the various activities involved in traveling and outdoor life. 814. Ability wisely to select garments. 815. Ability to design, select the materials, make, mend and alter clothing. 816. Ability to care for one’s clothing. 817. Ability to perform the laundry and other cleaning activ- ities of the home. 818. Ability to perform the various activities involved in pro- viding the family with food. 819. Ability to perform the several activities involved in a proper care of the person. 820. An amateur ability to do productive, creative, or inter- pretative work in the field of the fine arts. (Semi-spe- cialized.) 821.- Ability to perform the simple business operations in- volved in the conduct of personal and family affairs. X. OccuPpATIONAL ACTIVITIES We cannot here present a list of the occupational abilities. There are hundreds, even thousands, of specialized occupa- tions and for each a separate list of abilities must be formu- lated. For discovering these, each occupation must be ana- lyzed separately into its activities. We place the general topic here for the sake of ae ness. For any individual, the total list of his educational ob- jectives will be those of the foregoing nine lists plus those of the specific occupation which he intends to enter. The nine fields constitute his general training; this last, his specialized training. 30 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM OBJECTIVES OF SCHOOLS OF DIFFERENT LEVELS So far as valid, leaving aside the vocational, the fore- going are the objectives of general education in schools of all levels: pre-primary, primary, elementary, junior high school, senior high school, and junior college. All of these schools are training for the same adult life. All are aiming at the same ultimate goals. Some are nearer the beginnings of man’s educational journey, some are nearer its consummation. All the parts, however, make up one journey. It should be direct, consistent, straight, unconfused. Tue INGREDIENTS OF ANY SpEciFIC ABILITY What is an ability? In most or all cases an ability appears to be a complex thing, composed of many in- eredients. Take, for example, the ability to use language which is grammaticaily correct. This ability involves certain habits, skills, valuations, attitudes, desires, knowledge, sensitiveness to the expectations and criticisms of others, watchfulness over one’s lan- guage, ability to self-judge, dislike for grammatically incorrect language, a feeling for right and wrong forms, an interest in language matters, and doubtless many others, — all referring specifically to one’s use of language. No one of these factors alone is sufficient to produce correct English. ‘The ability to use correct English is operative only when there is a simultaneous working of all of them. To develop the ability involves the development of each and all of the specific factors. THE OBJECTIVES 31 Space does not permit us here to take one by one each of the several score specific abilities presented above, and to enumerate the elements which compose it. There is enough similarity, however, in the types of ingredients of the several abilities to permit the use of a series of types of component factors. Such a series we have presented above under item 502. It is numbered in a special way, l—-a to 49-a, to facilitate its being used for the special purpose here indicated. If one will take that list in connection with any one of the specific abilities and reword the list in terms of that ability, he will have a statement of its component elements. Since the abilities are of diverse character and value, and the list of component type-elements general enough in statement to cover all of them, naturally the educationist must use ordinary judgment in rewording the statements according to the character and value of the several abilities. A merely mechanical use of the device in so complex a field merely reduces the matter to an absurdity. The rewording must be carefully fitted to the realities. CHAPTER III SUGGESTIONS RELATIVE TC THE OBJECTIVES Tue first step in curriculum-making is to decide what specific educational results are to be produced. The results to be produced should be stated in human terms. Most of them are human abilities of one kind or another. Operating within these as factors are personal qualities and characteristics of many kinds. The objectives should be stated in definite terms. When so stated, it is possible for educationists to know with certainty at what they are aiming. It is also possible for parents and students to understand. The objectives should be stated, so far as their nature will permit, in the everyday language of common sense. They should be easily intelligible to everybody con- cerned, especially to parents and pupils. General unanalyzed objectives are to be avoided. For the ten major divisions of human action, it would be possible to state ten corresponding abilities. These would be so general as to be practically useless for curriculum-making. ‘Ability to care for one’s health,” for example, is too general to be useful. It must be re- duced to particularity: ability to manage the ventila- tion of one’s sleeping-room, ability to protect one’s self against micro-organisms, ee to care for the teeth, and so on. Objectives that are only vague higb-sounding hopes SUGGESTIONS RELATIVE TO OBJECTIVES 33 and aspirations are to be avoided. Examples are: “Character building,” the “harmonious development of the individual,” “social efficiency,” “general culture,”’ and the like. a> 66 discipline,”’ “‘self-realization, All of these are valid enough; but too cloud-like for guiding practical procedure. They belong to the visionary adolescence of our profession, not to its sober and somewhat disillusioned maturity. Every school system should formulate its own state- ment of its objectives. If it seems desirable, the fore- going lists can be used as starting points. Eliminate what is not approved. Modify what is partially approved. Include what has been omitted. In certain portions of the field careful, sometimes scientific, activity-analyses have been made. Most of these are in fields of spelling, language and grammar, arithmetic, history, geography, and vocations. Many of these can, and should, be used for suggestion.! Except for a few such analyses, however, they are too incomplete and tentative to be of service for actual guidance. In large measure they are nothing more than promising experiments in the technique of activity-analysis. But even so, they provide numerous practical suggestions, and should be used for all that they are worth. It is unfortunate that so little scientific analysis has yet been possible in most fields of human action. No- body knows with definiteness, for example, what 1 The curriculum-maker can find a summary of them, and refer- ences to the originals, in Charters’s Curriculum Construction. 34 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM specific things the good citizen should do. Little scientific analysis of civic activities has yet been made. In matters of personal hygiene, our knowledge is some- what more complete; but there are no authoritative analyses of community health activities which can be accepted for guidance in listing objectives of health education. Recreational analyses have not been made. We do not know accurately what specific activities parents should perform in the upbringing of children; or what activities should make up the religious life; or the field of unspecialized practical arts. While we recognize the desirability of using scientific method, we must admit that as yet we lack a technique which is adequate for the satisfactory analysis of any one of the ten fields; and that trained investigators are not yet available for doing the work. Until such time as the objectives can be scientifically established, practical workers will employ less rigorous methods in formulating their working objectives. Asa matter of fact, innumerable things are proved by practical experience. Take, for example, the ability to read. No scientific study has been made which proves that this is a needed human ability. But practical experience has proved it with finality. And what is thus proved takes its place as scientific verity. One does not employ the refined methods of research to demonstrate the obvious. In the same way, practical experience has demon- strated the need of other human abilities and charac- teristics. in the foregoing chapter, we have attempted SUGGESTIONS RELATIVE TO OBJECTIVES 35 only to assemble results of practical experience on the basis of the testimony of some twenty-seven hundred mature and cultivated individuals. We should use the exact methods of science to dis- cover what is proved by practical experience where there is any doubt of the matter; also to be sure that vital matters are not omitted by oversight; and finally to introduce the quantitative element when standards of achievement are to be definite. Some abilities are so simple and natural that they can be taken care of through the general processes of living: ability to walk, to run, to talk, to listen to others, to operate the electric lights, and the like. The unfoldment of these abilities is a portion of one’s total education, but is not an objective of one’s school education. All education should proceed upon the assumption that nothing should be done by the schools that can be sufficiently well accomplished through the normal processes of living. Only those abilities which are so complex that they are not sufficiently developed through the normal processes of living will be included among the objectives of systematic education. In locating the objectives that require special em- phases, especially in general education, the diagnos- tic method of discovering the personal and social shortcomings to be overcome is most fruitful. Let one discover the mistakes commonly made in Eng- lish expression, and these will point to the aspects of the English training that are to be specially empha- sized. Find health errors that are common, and one 36 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM can discover the health abilities that will prevent these errors. Locate civic deficiencies in the adult world, and they point to the attitudes, powers of judgment, habits, and other civic matters to be emphasized. The recreational shortcomings of our population show the kinds of preventive and protective training needed. The principle extends to all aspects of education. Errors do not show what one ought to do; but they show where emphases are to be placed in bringing one to do the things which activity-analyses show that he ought to do. Certain attitudes, characteristics, and abilities can- not be made the objectives of public education be- cause the community is too much divided. This is notably true of the objectives of religious education. It is equally true of some of the objectives of civic and economic education. And we find also divisions of community sentiment in training for health, recre- ations, parenthood, vocation — in fact, in about all fields of practical action. It is clear that a long period of community discussion and education will be nec- essary before there can be developed sufficient com- munity support for any complete or fully rounded program of education. Certain abilities are precluded by practical con- ditions. The ability to swim, for example, cannot be an objective where the schools lack swimming facili- ties. The ability to participate in an orchestra is precluded where the school cannot secure instruments or teacher, and where there are not enough students SUGGESTIONS RELATIVE TO OBJECTIVES 37 to warrant it. The ability to write shorthand cannot be an objective in a very small school which cannot afford the necessary special teacher. The objectives actually set up by any school or system must largely be determined by such practical considerations. The comprehensive working list of abilities should be put into printed form. This makes them definite. It prevents their becoming confused and changed through processes of discussion. It enables all con- cerned to have the same things before them and the same things in mind at once. It enables one to see the entire range of abilities as he considers any one of them or any group of them. It assists in seeing each in relation to all. It prevents losing sight of any of them. It assists in providing a broad common ground of understanding for all concerned. The printed working list of abilities should be dis- tributed to all who bear responsibility for education. These are, in the first instance, the parents and lay community in general. These bear the primary re- sponsibility for education. ‘The responsibility rests in secondary or derived fashion upon the professional organization. The list of abilities should be considered by all who bear responsibility. The educational profession should lead in formulat- ing this comprehensive list of abilities. It has been commissioned to develop them in human beings. It ought therefore to have specialized skill in seeing them within individuals and as they operate in human society. 38 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM While educationists will, of course, lead, it is probable that the general community should assist in determin- ing the several abilities which are to be developed within the younger generation. Itis they who make up the world of practical affairs and who perform the sev- eral activities. They are acquainted with the abilities at first-hand. Let us admit that their knowledge is often superficial and fragmentary and that it relates to types of performance which are often crude and primitive. In spite of these things, as a matter of fact, it is those who are specially proficient in the practical affairs of the world who can best reveal to our profession what the abilities are which ought to be generally developed. The actual abilities at their best show us what they ought to be. And these things at their best are to be found here and there within the community life. Those who possess the abilities are specially competent to pass judgment upon the formulations of the pro- fessional analysts; and to take the lead in bringing the entire community to an appreciation of the objectives. Specialized groups within the community should be held responsible for specially expert services in locating the abilities involved in those portions of the field with which they have to do. This is especially clear in locating the vocational abilities. Salesmen and supervisors of salesmen are specially competent in pointing out the abilities which are needed by salesmen. Printers are specially competent to point out the abilities which are needed by successful printers. The principle applies also outside of the vocational SUGGESTIONS RELATIVE TO OBJECTIVES 39 field. Physicians and nurses possess specialized ability to assist in formulating the objectives of health edu- eation. Civic and social workers ought to be able to provide specialized assistance in formulating civic ob- jectives. Religious workers ought to be able to advise with reference to desirable religious attitudes, habits, characteristics, and abilities. Specialists in the field of recreational agencies should advise relative to desirable abilities in these fields. The educational profession should utilize experience wherever it can be found. In this connection of course one will remember that the layman often tends to be dogmatic, dictatorial, and intolerant, especially when he feels himself impelled by religious, patriotic, vocational, political, or other crystallized social sanctions. ‘These are the usual symptoms of social ignorance and unfamiliarity with civic responsibilities and procedures. Enlightenment, through civic functioning under good leadership, is the cure. Out of considerations by all concerned, decision should be reached relative to the abilities which are to be left to the general processes of living; those which are to be left to the systematic care of homes, churches, recreational and other agencies; and the ones which are to be made the responsibilities of the schools. The comprehensive list of abilities should be deter- mined wholly without reference to subjects or depart- ments. It should present simply the characteristics and abilities needed by men and women. At a later stage, subjects will be considered. But at this stage, 40 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM the curriculum-maker should remain oblivious to them. Attention should be fixed on man, his affairs, his powers. This does not mean that the services of the special- ized educational departments are not to be employed. As a matter of fact, the services of every type of specialist should be fully utilized. The art department in the schools, for example, will be able to discern certain aspects of need on the part of the general adult community which cannot be so clearly discerned by any other group. The department of physical training ought to be specially proficient in discerning the phys- ical needs of the population; the department of home economics, the needs of housewives; the social studies department, the civic needs of the citizen. Ultimate decision, however, relative to any proposed objective is not to be made by any special department; but by those who bear the general educational responsibility. The abilities are to be determined on the basis of human needs without reference to the place or time of doing the work of developing them. Each school system should formulate its own ob- jectives. It is probable that before long we shall have a generally acceptable professional statement of specific educational objectives. When that time comes, the local labors can be greatly lightened. To date, however, no city has gone far enough to pro- vide a sufficient model for any other. For the sake of sound professional progress, it is good that the work be done independently and simultaneously in many cities SUGGESTIONS RELATIVE TO OBJECTIVES 41 and states. Each then serves as a check upon the others. And what is for the present more important, each can best educate itself for the work by doing the work. In any revised educational program, every worker should be thoroughly familiar with it. This familiarity is to be acquired chiefly through partici- pating in the labors of formulating the new program. Understanding is not a thing which can be imposed. It grows up out of practical experiences. Some of the abilities that will be set down in the general comprehensive list must be of a type which are possible and practicable for only a part of the popula- tion. Whether we like the matter or not, we must rec- ognize the plain fact that individuals differ in their natural capacities. Mentally some are of large capac- ity, others medium, others small. No amount of edu- cational labor will develop large ability on the part of those possessing low natural capacity. For these we shall be compelled to determine a limited set of abil- ities and we shall have to aim at only a moderate, or even low, standard of achievement in those abilities. On the other hand, those of large potential capacity should have their powers fully unfolded. They should be expected to develop types of ability that are not ap- propriate to their weaker brethren; and they should at- tain higher levels of proficiency where they are aiming at the same general types. The ability to read a foreign language, for example, is appropriate for those of considerable natural ability. It is not a needed nor a desirable ability for every mem- 42 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM ber of our population. The ability to do public speak- ing is for some but not for all. A broad vision over human affairs, historical and sociological, is possible for those of large intellectual caliber. The same type of vision and understanding is unfortunately impossible for those of low intellectual endowment. The comprehensive list of abilities and characteris- tics should be that which is appropriate to individuals of large natural capacity. It can then be cut down to meet the needs of those of lesser capacity. The essentials of the education of the bright tran- scend the essentials of that of average pupils. The es- sentials required by the latter go beyond those of the dull. “Minimum essentials”? which equally represent the irreducible needs of all isa myth. A different set of minimum essentials needs to be formulated for each ability class. - 'The abilities that are generally needed by men and women, without regard to their specialized occupa- tions, are the objectives of general education. Except as the objectives must differ according to natural ca- pacity and social situation, they should be much the same for everybody. The abilities enumerated in the first nine lists of the foregoing chapter are the objec- tives of general education. The specialized abilities involved in any calling are the objectives of occupational education for that calling. To prevent confusion, the objectives of vocational edu- cation should be drawn up strictly with a view to the vo- cations, and in no degree for general training purposes. SUGGESTIONS RELATIVE TO OBJECTIVES 43 The ultimate objectives, in non-quantitative form, as in Chapter II, are first to be located. After this is done, it is possible to decide how far pupils should go each year in attaining the several goals, and thus to deter- mine the grade-objectives or progress-objectives. It is even possible at present in some cases to make grade standards quantitative. Except as they can be made quantitative, however, it is practically impossible to fix progress objectives. About all that can be done in any case is to set up the ultimate objective as the goal of work of all the grades; to lay out the long sequence of pupil activities and experiences for all the grades from the time the training is begun until the goal is reached; and to cover on each grade level that portion which is appropriate to the pupil’s level of maturity. The comprehensive list of objectives approved for the schools should include definite statements of all powers, characteristics, and abilities that are to be aimed at. ‘There are then no others sanctioned. It will then include the rightful objectives of each and all special subjects and departments. Let each depart- ment then find the ones which are its responsibility. In the chapters in this volume which deal with the special subjects, the plan recommended is used. The special subject objectives are taken from our illus- trative comprehensive list, and bear the same numbers. CHAPTER IV PUPIL ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES EpucaTIon is the process of growing up in the right way. The objectives are the goals of growth. The pupil’s activities and experiences are the steps which make up his journey toward those goals. The activities and experiences are the curriculum. The curriculum-maker will take the objectives, sometimes singly and sometimes in groups, and dis- cover what the pupils should do and experience by way of achieving the desired results. This task must be approached with circumspection. There are a number of obstacles to be avoided. One of these is the common conception that education is mostly a matter of textbook memorizing followed by lesson-hearing. It is not usually regarded as primarily a matter of growing up in such a way that one develops the specific abilities and qualities which are to function throughout life. As a corrective, the curriculum-maker will always keep the functional objectives before him. If he has himself discovered them in his own social analyses, and if he has stated them in common-sense terms, then he can always see education as the process of developing human powers and qualities in human beings; and that anything else is irrelevant. And he can see that there PUPIL ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES 465 is no other way to produce them but through the processes of growth. Another obstacle is our dominant educational meth- odology. This tells us what a pupil should do in order to master subjects. It has not greatly concerned itself with what he should do and experience by way of de- veloping right attitudes toward life and affairs, or ability to perform the citizen’s inspectorial function, or lifelong recreational habits, sense of social justice, good health habits, or the thousand and one human things which make up man’s everyday life. The familiar task of mastering abstract subjects out of relation to man’s life is a quite different matter. The best corrective for this archaic methodology is a generous application of common sense to the proc- esses of education. Let one view the objectives clearly as human qualities and abilities. One can then usually see a common-sense road to the attain- ment of each. His educational science can be nothing more than a refinement of this common sense. Nat- urally one will assemble and use all available educa- tional science. It is unfortunate that there is not more of it. Let us begin with this question: What are the gen- eral types of activity and experience dictated both by common sense and educational science, which will enable the pupil to achieve his several goals? Here are some of them: 1. Observation. From early infancy onward, with- out thought of learning, man normally observes the 46 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM world round about him. As he moves along the streets, drives through the country, sits at a car win- dow, visits a factory, codperates with his fellows, and wherever else, he is ever watchful, automatically watchful without effort or intention, of persons, ac- tions, manners and customs, the things and phenomena of nature, the work of man’s hands, and whatever else makes up his surroundings. Child or man, savage or civilized, this continuous observation is one of man’s normal reactions to the presence of environment. This observation is not merely visual. He also listens without conscious effort to the sounds, particu- larly the language, which make up his auditory en- vironment. He explores things with his hands. He tests things with sense of taste or smell. He lifts them, feels them, turns them over and examines them. It is the habit of man at all stages of maturity, all ages, all lands, and all levels of culture. It is the nature of man thus to observe. He does not do it for the sake of placing information in storage. It is only a mode of living. To omit it is in part not to live. To do it consciously for the sake of placing in- formation in storage is not to do it normally. The curriculum-maker will find the kinds of obser- vations which individuals ought to make by way of arriving at the goals of their education, and which at the same time are possible within the practical circum- stances. Some of these will be in school laboratories, shops, gardens, and clinics. Most will be outside of the school plant, distributed through the community: PUPIL ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES 47 homes, streets, shops, stores, factories, farms, woods, and the thousand portions of one’s environment. They cannot be taken to the schools. To observe them one must gotothem. It is folly to try to develop an under- standing of the world as it is without an abundant and direct observation of the world as it is and where it is. Most of one’s observations cannot be normal if made class-fashion with a crowd. The excess sociality in- duced by such a situation intensifies the pupils’ obser- vations of each other and correspondingly diminishes their observations of things outside the class crowd. Neither can the observation be normal if the edu- cational purposes be too conscious. Fundamental experiences appear usually to be best for education when the pupil is not greatly conscious of their edu- cational purposes. ' They appear to be best when he is simply living, and nothing more. When the pupil’s education becomes self-directed, naturally he must be- come conscious in some degree of the purposes. But these should not get too much in the foreground of his consciousness. The technique of employing normal observational experiences outside of certain laboratory and _ field work is much undeveloped. The curriculum-maker will search out the ways and means of greatly aug- menting it in amount and of making it thoroughly effective. There is one type of observation which is specially important and which therefore should be specially singled out, namely: the sympathetic observation of 48 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM desirable types of behavior on the part of others. Edu- cation in the main is to develop powers to do desirable things in desirable ways. Let one therefore see others doing these desirable things in the desirable ways. Let him look uponthem favorably and sympathetically. He will then be impelled to do the same kinds of things in the same kinds of ways. As he does them, his powers are molded into corresponding forms. The mind grows according to its patterns. The curricu- lum-maker, so far as practicable, will see that obser- vational conditions provide for this unconscious social imitation. In the case of most functions, one needs to see them performed by others, With only a few things, as for example, winking the eyes or walking, one’s instincts are fairly definite and one scarcely needs to view the patterns set by others. But most of one’s instincts do not provide for the exact forms of action. It is what one observes others doing that gives him the forms. He sees, for example, some one drive a nail with a hammer. He then can drive a nail with a hammer. He may do it awkwardly at first; but the observation has given him his whole pattern. He simply works to that pattern until he can do it skillfully. Observation supplies the things omitted in the instincts. Thus nature has provided for social adaptation. 2. Performance of function. The mind grows ac- cording to its patterns. But it will not grow without exercise of function. The patterns are not merely to be looked at. They are to be used. However good PUPIL ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES 49 the pattern, one will not learn to saw a board, or do handwriting, or play a piano, until one saws boards, and does the handwriting, and plays the piano, for him- self. One will not learn to perform the functions of the good citizen by looking on. Observation will give him the patterns of conduct, but not the substance. He must himself perform the functions of the good citizen before there can be hope of growth in civic ability. In one’s occupation, one needs the patterns of performance; but one will become skillful, resource- ful, and responsible only as one performs the labors of the occupation for one’s self. For the academic activities of the school, this is old doctrine. Of course we have practice in handwriting to give one power to write; in dictionary work to give one power to use the dictionary; and in the other so- called “fundamental processes.” The difficulties begin to arise when there is need of functioning which is not merely academic. In occu- pational functioning, for example, the school can give some preliminary ideas of tools, materials, and proc- esses; and sometimes a certain amount of mechanical drill and skill in the use of tools. But in most occu- pations the responsible work itself cannot be brought to the schools. The fundamental educational ex- periences can be had only out in the community in the practical occupation itself. It is therefore no easy matter to arrange and administer occupational edu- cation. The difficulty is even greater in the case of citizen- 50 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM ship training. Here in large measure we lack even the patterns of conduct. No one knows specifically just what the good citizen should do in his capacity of good citizen. We know a few things, but are disagreed upon most. Therefore we do not know what civic conduct the pupil should observe in mature good citizens by way of securing his patterns, and then himself perform for the sake of the training. We do not even admit that he needs thus to observe and to perform re- sponsible civic activities as a means of developing civic ability. We admit that one must practice hand- writing, not merely talk about it; but our citizenship courses ordinarily assume that one can acquire civic and economic abilities by talking piously, patriotically and sentimentally about social arrangements, rights, and duties. It is an easy way to spend the time; it has values; but it should scarcely be dignified with the name of citizenship education. _ Similar difficulties arise in arranging training through fundamental practical experiences in most of the fields of human functioning: health, recreation, parenthood, unspecialized practical arts, and even language. One of the most mischievous obstacles to educational progress is the false assumption that all necessary processes of education are possible at the schools; and that whatever is not there possible is not necessary. It is a subject-teaching fallacy. As education becomes functional, this conception must be discarded. Of course, there is much which can best be done at the schools; but there is also much, and possibly the more PUPIL ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES 51 important portion, which is best accomplished through activities in other places in the community. There is nothing in the nature of things which decrees that all education is to be taken care of at schools any more than that all health is to be taken care of at hospitals. Whether we appeal to science or to common sense, the dominant principle of educational method appears to be this: The mind grows according as it is exercised. Ability to function is developed through normal exer- cise of function. One learns to do a thing through do- ing it. One acquires normal attitudes toward a function and toward everything related to it by per- forming it under normal conditions. One acquires power to direct a function with wisdom by directing it with all the wisdom one can muster and maintain. One learns to live a civilized life of the type approved by our age by living a civilized life of the type approved for our age. These experiences of “normal living” type, from which education normally results, we shall call the fundamental educational experiences. Education will employ them in maximum measure; and anything else only so far as needful. Almost every objective of education can be stated as the ability to do something, whether subjective or ob- jective. The principle above stated therefore applies to practically the whole of education. A thing will often be done crudely and awkwardly in the beginning. Skill will be developed by repetition. It will often be performed at first on a simple and 52 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM primitive level. Any steep is to be climbed by be- ginning at the bottom. For many things a good deal of information is needed for guiding the processes; and this information is too intangible and complex to be picked up incidentally as a part of the performance. In this connection three things are to be said: (1) Greater dependence can be placed upon the normal processes of living, when rightly conditioned, as a means of mastery of information needed for direct- ing the normal processes of living, than is ordinarily assumed. (2) Often there must be conscious preparatory or preliminary mastery of technical information related to the activity prior to undertaking the activity itself; together sometimes with still further studies proceed- ing alongside. In such case the gathering of the in- formation is an organic part of the total performance of the function. It is information-mastery on the functional level. We shall call this the preliminary, preparatory, or accessory portion of the educational experience to distinguish it from the fundamental educational experiences of normal living. (3) Experiences of fundamental ‘“‘normal living” type on the intellectual play-level appropriate to the different degrees of maturity of childhood and youth should result during the earlier years in an abundance of the information called for later in one’s practical activities. ‘Thus fundamental activities of one sort in one year lay informational foundations for funda- PUPIL ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES 53 mental activities of other sorts in a later year. This is to say that if sequences are properly cared for, educa- tion can depend mainly upon fundamental experi- ences; and will have recourse to accessory ones only where matters are specially technical. 3. Reading. Language is an instrument of vision. So intimately is it inwrought in the organism it would perhaps be more accurate to call it an organ of vision. The current gossip, for example, that our friend brings to us enables us to see what he has seen about as clearly as if we had seen it ourselves. If he is more clear-seeing than we, and skillful in language, he may enable us to see the things more clearly than if we had seen them with our own eyes. Man is untiring in viewing the world through the medium of language. He is never sated with the gossip concerning his friends and the immediate com- munity affairs. Avidity grows with what it feeds upon. Deep-seated instinct lies at the core of the language type of observation. f It has advantages over direct observation. It tran- scends the limitations of time and space and sense. It lifts the curtain upon the whole nation and all of its activities, the whole world and all of its strivings, and even the universe beyond as far as man has been able to penetrate. It opens up the past to one’s vision. It can make the long past live before one’s eyes as clearly as the past of an hour ago. It enables one to see the hidden, the minute, the intangible, the invisible, the general, 54 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM It has a further very great advantage. With the eyes of sense one must do one’s own seeing; and none can help. But when one observes through the medium of the language of others, the seeing ones can greatly help the unseeing ones. The mature can help the im- mature; the trained, the untrained; the competent, the incompetent. When the clear vision of the most dis- cerning few is put into language, it can become the clear vision of all. There is no influence greater than this for the upbuilding and maintenance of our civilization. The language revelation of the world will mainly take the form of reading. 'The major problem then is, What should be read? In the search for a solution, let one ask this question: What should man observe? With what things should one, through this indirect observation, become familiar? Man no longer lives within a narrow community. He has come to live in a large world, and one that is endlessly complex. He needs to see this world in a large way and ina balanced way. He needs to see the essential factors which make it up, and the forces which operate it. These are exceedingly numerous. Some of these are human things and some non-human. The experiences of observing them should be abundant and unceasing. .Out of this, the balanced vision grows. Most of this observation must employ the medium of reading. One will see the things through the eyes of those who have seen them directly, deeply, and clearly, and who have skillfully wrought their vision into language. PUPIL ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES _ 55 After the curriculum-maker has discovered what man should observe, his second step is to find the re- vealing readings. ‘The best the world has to offer are the only ones that are good enough. They must be of a kind which easily arouse one’s instinct to observe. They must therefore be very human. This means that for the most part they should be concrete, vivid, emotionalized. They should be replete with the many details, so deftly handled by the skilled liter- ary artificer, that awaken native interests, and auto- matically catch man’s very human kind of attention. The reading is to be a mode of experience, a mode of normal living. It is to be for the slow year-long growth of the twigs, branches, and trunks of the mind. Most of the detailed matters met with in the reading, like foliage, will be deciduous. In fact it must be de- ciduous and fall away if growth of the trunk and branches is to be healthy and normal. Provided the right selections are used, the reading experience is best where there is least consciousness of the educational purposes; where one is simply luxuri- ating in human experiences. Certainly there should not be the quite unhuman purpose of merely placing information in mental storage. ‘There should be no attempt to make permanent the things which should be deciduous. One should here distinguish between “education as memorization of facts” and “education as growth of powers by means of exercise of function.” It is the latter to which we refer. For growth, the readings 56 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM should provide abundance of exercise; and continuing exercise. It should provide for growth through the years of growth, and for maintenance through the years of maintenance. 4. Oral report. In one’s indirect observation by means of language, one mainly will read. But often he will listen to the reports of others. These will be presented by teachers, juvenile associates, parents, friends, members of the community, travelers, investi- gators, lecturers, and others, according to circum- stances. Since one’s natural or instinctive form of language is oral and auditory, there is a vividness in this mode of presentation which is ordinarily lacking in the printed word. For this reason, particularly in the earlier years of education, there should probably be a quite considerable quantity of listening to the oral reports of experiences and observations of others. As one grows more mature, reading comes to be so much a matter of habit as to be practically as easy and automatic as the auditory forms. 5. Pictures. Pictures, using the term to include all available kinds, provide us with another means of ob- serving things distant, past, and otherwise inaccessible to direct observation. They are specially valuable for giving one a visual imagery of details, both of things and of processes. On the visual side there is a vividness and detail that is distinctly superior to that of the language presentation. Doubtless pictures should be used in far greater abundance than is yet practicable. - PUPIL ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES 57 Yet there are serious limitations: (1) Pictures pro- vide for an understanding of only the visual aspect of things. The reports from the other senses are lacking; and these are matters of no mean significance. (2) Pictures reveal only the outward or material appearance of things. ‘The essence of human life and experience is not material and is not visible to the eye of sense. The deep-lying forces and influences which operate the world are not things that can be revealed by pictures. * (3) Pictures reveal only the concrete. While there should be an abundance of this, yet we need some type of presentation which reveals the general. (4) Except in the case of relatively simple and con- crete matters, it is not possible to use pictures to give over to all the thought and judgment of the discern- ing few. In all of these matters, language is immeasurably more serviceable than pictures. ‘These limitations of pictures should be noted because of a tendency in cer- tain quarters to over-value the possibilities of pictures as means of education. ‘They should be used abun- dantly to supplement language presentations; but they are not the major means of educational experience. 6. Prolonging, repeating, and intensifying one’s experiences. It is in the nature of man to think over his more vivid and significant experiences, to repeat them in imagination, to tell them to others, and thus to re-live them a second, third, tenth, or hundredth time. Some of this is done in the quiet of one’s soli- 58 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM tary meditations; and some of it as he discusses his ex- periences with his associates. Each of these forms has its values and the curriculum should employ each kind in due measure. 7. Problem-solving. In one’s thought, whether in solitude or in group, one is ever dealing with problems. Where things are clear and understood, they are taken for granted and passed by. Where decisions have been made, conclusions drawn, or plans perfected, there is nothing further to consider. It is where things are not clear, where decision hangs in the bal- ance, where problems are to be solved, that one gives his attention and his thought. In the degree in which education is living experi- ence, the pupils will be meeting with problems at every turn of the road. Problem-solving, individually and in class-discussion, will be a major type of pupil experience. 8. Generalization. In one’s observations, one may see concrete things of a kind as individuals; or he may see them as a class. He may see the operation of a force within a specific situation; or he may see it oper- ating within a number of situations and discern its common nature and operation in them all. To see the world in a generalized way is thus but a portion of one’s observation of it. Where observations in any field are easy, frequent, and abundant, one normally and inevitably does much classification and _ generalization without thought or effort. But where forces are intangible PUPIL ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES 59 and difficult to see, and relations still more difficult, then the original concrete observations tend to be lacking; and as a consequence the generalizations naturally do not crystallize themselves out. Effort must be made in doing the original seeing. Labora- tory demonstrations, field observations, social surveys, and the like, will be mainly for assistance in making the original concrete observations. A large part of the problem-solving will be making analyses and arriving at generalizations. Another large part will be using the generalizations in the an- alysis of new situations. Tue More Sprcrric Pupitt Activities It appears possible thus to enumerate a relatively few general types of experience. As the curriculum- maker then takes up the several objectives, one by one, or by cognate groups, he will find the specific ways in which these general types of experience will manifest themselves. Looking to any given objective, he will set down the specific activities that the pupil will per- form. Let us take a single objective and illustrate: The Objective: Ability to choose a vocation which promises satisfaction and success. Pupil Activities: 1. The pupil will observe the labors and the working con- ditions of the several vocational groups existing in his community. 2. He will participate in the practical labors of some of the occupations, either inschool-shop “exploratory” courses or as part-time helper in outside vocational labors. 60 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM 3. He will view numerous vocations indirectly through readings that present them concretely, vividly, and ad- equately. 4, Ele will view pictures which show the working condi- tions of numerous occupations, and the processes per- formed. 5. He will listen to the oral presentations of those who have worked in the occupations themselves. 6. He will analyze the several occupations studied and make comparisons relative to hours, wages, sanitary conditions, and chances for advancement. %. He will talk over his experiences, observational, analy- tic, participative, and the like, with both juvenile and adult associates. 8. He will, etc., ete. This may be continued much further. It is good to state each activity in terms of what the pupil will do or experience. One should avoid stating what he will know or be, since these latter are neither activities nor experiences. Often one will take a group of cognate objectives, such as those stated in later chapters for the literature or science, since they are closely interrelated, and work out the pupil-activities for all of them at once in one list. But in such case one should take up each objective separately, and carefully examine one’s final list of pupil activities to see that each objective is adequately cared for. ‘ In the case of most objectives, there is a long road to be traveled from infancy to maturity. The pupil activities will differ according to the ages of the pupils. PUPIL ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES 61 The first step is to formulate a composite list which enumerates all kinds of desirable experiences involved in the entire journey. This done, the next step is to decide which of these are appropriate to the early grades, and in what form; which to middle grades; which to later grades; and so on to the adult level. When this is done one still has but a list of the types of activities and experiences. The final step then is to lay out the detailed activities of these various types for the day-to-day experiences of the children on each age or grade level. One needs the list of types before him for guidance in the choice of cetails. The latter make up the curriculum. The formulation of the list of types of pupil ex- periences is greatly complicated by the presence of in- dividual differences. The activities of pupils of large natural ability must often, possibly usually, be differ- ent in many respects from those of children of lower natural ability. For all ability-levels, there will be the same general types of experiences. But they must be very different in quantity and proportion. In drawing up the pupil activities and experiences which make up the detailed curriculum, the work must be done sepa- rately for the gifted, the average, and the sub-average. In large measure this differentiation must result from practical trial. It seems that our first respon- sibility is to work out the pupil activities and experi- ences that will carry the gifted pupils most effectively to the highest practicable heights. This done, we shall have the average pupils travel the same road so 62 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM far as it is in their power normally to do so; but modify it so far as their limitations make it necessary. The sub-average will travel the road laid out for the average so far as they can do so; but they will depart from it when their limitations make departure neces- sary. CHAPTER V GENERAL EDUCATION EDUCATION exists on two levels: the foundational and the functional. The foundational education is the unfoldment of the powers of the individual without consciousness of the relation of these powers to specific functions. The child at play, for example, is having experiences for the joy of the experiences. Neither he nor his parents look upon them as conscious prepara~ tion for the specific abilities of the man in discharging his adult responsibilities. He is merely acting from inner impulses in response to the immediate stimula- tions and opportunities. He is living. He is not being “educated.”’ And yet his experiences are con- ditioning — and in a sense, producing — his general growth: physical, social, intellectual, aesthetic, moral. For example, his musculature is being developed by his play: strength, endurance, quickness, and certainty of codrdinations. ‘This is quite general muscular devel- opment. The physical powers thus developed will function later in the specific activities of the adult whatever they may be. The foundational training results largely from ex- periences upon the play-level. The broad range of diversified physical play is the experience which best lays the physical foundations of one’s life. It is the diversified activities of social play which lay the foun- 64 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM dations of one’s social life. The numerous and diverse types of intellectual play, more than anything else, lay the foundations of all of one’s intellectual life. And equally, it is one’s esthetic play activities and experi- ences which provide the fundamentals of one’s esthetic life. While much of this will be extra-mural, yet the schools will provide abundantly for experiences on the play-level. Since this will be done by teachers, they must be conscious of the play-activities as educational procedure. ‘Those being trained, however, will see it only as play experience. On the foundational level, the children will not be conscious of the specific edu- cational objectives. This is the first level of general education. In quantity of experiences and in time allotment it will probably constitute the largest portion of one’s educa- tion. To the teacher’s vision it is fully functional in the sense that the foundations are being laid for the later specific functions. ‘The experiences are to be carefully conditioned and guided by the teachers in such way that they will lead to growth along physical, social, intellectual, and sesthetic lines of sorts that are needed as foundations of the specific abilities that are to be built thereon. ‘Teachers will see that the growth is balanced, proportioned, harmonious and full, pro- ducing a full-grown, well-rounded man or woman; not a distortion. On the physical side, there are differences among individuals. Yet the broad outlines of growth and the experiences that condition growth are much the same GENERAL EDUCATION 65 for all normal persons — the only type with which we are concerned in the discussions of this volume. Equally, on the side of social, intellectual, zesthetic and moral potentialities, there are individual differences. And yet for all normal persons the broad outlines of growth are about the same, and the general types of experiences are much the same. In details they will differ endlessly according to general native capacity and special aptitudes; but only in the details of the program. Since the foundational growth along the several lines should continue through elementary school, high school and junior college, we find here a justification for certain “constants” which should run through all the grades of general education and which are part of the training of all individuals. It is not enough, however, to have one’s general powers thus unfolded by diversity of experiences on the play-level. The responsible man or woman has things todo. He should be trained to do them specif- ically and to do them well. He should be conscious of his responsibilities, and the need of proficiency in per- forming the specific activities. This brings us to the level of functional education. It is not really more functional than what we called the foundational, but it is consciously so; and the functions are specific and are held before one as the goals of the training. Here the pupils as well as the teachers should be conscious of the educational ends. Of the fields of specific functioning, we have said that there are ten — as classified in Chapter II. Of 66 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM these, nine are non-specialized. The abilities are to be developed in all individuals. Not equally, of course, since potentialities are unequal. But in kind, the powers aimed at will in general be about the same. As students are classified into ability-groups, high, medium, and low, the broad outlines of each program will be the same. The details will be as different as individual differences make necessary. It seems therefore that the nine fields of non-specialized func- tional activities call for a broad range of “constants” for all students. Except for the differences demanded by variations in capacities and aptitudes, there seems to be no call for specialization in these nine fields of functional training. That portion of the training, both foundational and functional, which is of general need, whatever be one’s occupation or station in life, we shall call in this vol- ume general education, the term signifying non-spe- cialized education, or the common element in the training of all persons. Except for brief references here and there to occupational training, all the discus- sion of this volume relates to the common or general education. Over against this is the tenth functional field of specialized or occupational education. Here each oc- cupation is analyzed independently by way of discoy- ering the specific activities involved. The objectives will be only the specialized abilities called for by the specific activities. The abilities will be developed only in those who have chosen to go into the given occupation where they are demanded. GENERAL EDUCATION 67 When things are included in the educational pro- gram for occupational purposes, they will be placed only in the occupational courses, and taken only by those who are consciously taking their occupational training. For example, activity-analyses will show that trigonometry is called for by the activities of the engineer; that it is not called for by the activities of typists, physicians, or milliners; nor by the general activities of persons outside of their occupations. As a consequence, trigonometry will be prescribed as oc- cupational training in the courses for engineers, but not in courses for the other occupations named; nor for general education. Never will a subject be placed in the general training for all persons simply because it rs of specialized value for certain occupations. When this is done, one has employed vocational analysis as a method of discovering the objectives of general educa- tion. The absurdity of this confusion of vocational and general is obvious when one clearly distinguishes the two. The error, however, is common because of a frequent haziness of ideas relative to the constituents of the general and of the vocational, and of the rela- tions of the one to the other. Thus trigonometry is often included in the high school for vocational pur- poses and then opened to everybody for general educa- tion. ‘There is similar confusion of vocational and general in the administration of algebra, physics, drawing, practical arts, Spanish, economic geography, and many other matters. 68 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM In the following statements, we indicate some of the details of the program which appear naturally to fol- low. In some degree the statements anticipate mat- ters later to be discussed. ‘They refer to all levels of education from kindergarten to junior college. Tur PRoGRAM 1. The general training needed at present by any normal person of whatever station goes much beyond that needed a generation ago. 2. The general training will provide the foundations for all functional training; and also care for all functional training except the specialized or vocational. 8. For those who intend to secure that fullness of general training which is needed by the men and women of to- day, the entire public school period from kindergarten to the end of senior high school or junior college will be devoted to the general training; the specialized or occu- pational training will not begin until the close of the high school or junior college. 4. With possibly a few exceptions, later to be mentioned, the general training should probably occupy the entire time of the student so long as he is taking the general training; when the time arrives for beginning his spe- cialized training, the general should end and the entire time of the student be devoted to intensive, responsible training for his occupation. 5. Courses are to be drawn with the presumption that stu- dents will take both general and occupational training; and in the order of sequence best for both. 6. The junior high school should assume that its purpose is general and not vocational trainmg. The student who goes on to the senior high school will take only general training on the junior high-school level. The latter will organize all of its work so as to emphasize the general and so as to postpone the vocational. GENERAL EDUCATION 69 7. Senior high-school students should be encouraged to take the entire general training course before entering upon the vocational training. 8. The general training program will consist of two por- tions: (1) The basic general training. This is training for those human qualities and abilities the need or desirability of which is universal, evident, and generally accepted. (2) Additional opportunities or extras. These are de- signed to train for human activities that are not specialized and yet not universal; for things that appear to be relatively remote from fundamental human activities; and for things upon which there is no relative unanimity of judgment. 9. The lines of training to be cared for in the basic general program are probably the following: (1) English language: reading, oral and written ex- pression. (2) Citizenship attitudes, judgments, and activities. Social studies. (3) Literature: English and general. (4) The several science fields. (5) Everyday mathematics. (6) Physical training, hygiene, sanitation. (7) Unspecialized practical arts. (8) Musical appreciation and judgment. (9) Art appreciation and judgment. 10. Capable, industrious and ambitious students should be permitted to widen their general training program through the taking of certain extras, such as the follow- ing: (1) Foreign languages. (2) Advanced mathematics. (3) History of English Literature. (4) Music for technical proficiency. 70 ia 12, 13. 14. 15. 16. Livy 18. HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM (5) Art for technical proficiency. (6) Literary writing for technical proficiency. (7) Typewriting. (8) Dramatics. (9) Public speaking. (10) And many others. Except as students are differentiated imto ability classes, there should be but one curriculum of general training, extending through all of the grade levels from primary to end of junior college. Neither its outer boundaries nor its upper limits can be definitely fixed. In these outer and higher portions there should be full freedom of opportunity for any student to go as far as he will or can go, — so long as his total program is rea- sonably well balanced. The basic lines of training should never be elective. For normal persons, the extras should never be per- mitted to displace any of the basic lmes of training. They should always be additional to the basic training. The achievement of a desirable level of proficiency in all of the needed basic traming should be pre-requisite to the choice of any of the extras. Failure on the part of any student carrying extra sub- jects to maintain proper standards in the basic training should result in his dropping extra subjects until he has brought his basic training up to standard. Students will not be required to take any of the extras. They are offered as opportunities. Students should be permitted to take advantage of them provided the basic training does not suffer thereby. The only electives in junior high school, senior high school, or junior college will be those which are extras and taken over and above the basic general training. The extras will not be administered to the student who cannot take advantage of them without an undue amount of teacher labor. 19. 20. 21. 22. 24, 25. 26. GENERAL EDUCATION 71 In administering the basic training there should be at least three groups of students classified on the basis of ability. Students of sub-average ability will usually devote their entire time to achieving sufficiently high standards in the basic lines of training. Except as individuals of this type have well-marked special aptitudes, they will not elect any of the extras. Students of the middle ability group will devote their major time and effort to achieving sufficiently high standards in the basic training. In general, they will not elect any of the extras. Here and there however will be a student of special aptitudes along some partic- ular line, or of special industry or ambition, who will desire to take one or more of the extras. Students of the high-ability group will give the major portion of their time and energies to the achievement of specially high standards in the field of the basic train- ing. Because of their large powers of self-direction, their program will be so drawn, however, as to permit them to take a reasonable or even large advantage of the extras. This is always on condition that they achieve the approved levels of the basic training. . The basic training in its detailed content should first be formulated for the more capable ten or twenty per cent of the population. Courses for the less capable levels of pupil ability will be largely derived from that prepared for the most capable by abbreviation, elimination, lowering standards, pro- viding an easier gradient, and the like. | Each line of training should provide for such continuity of growth that any student will have had training along all lines at whatever point he may drop out of the school. The full values of the extras will be made clear to those students who are in a position to avail themselves of these opportunities; and they will be encouraged to take advantage of the opportunities. 72 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM The offering of sufficiently numerous electives, in addi- tion to the basic course, will give all desirable freedom of spontaneous choices to those in position to utilize such opportunities. The curricula designed for members of the three ability groups cannot consist of an equal number of equal units. Content of units must be unequal. The num- ber of units of the basic work may vary. The number of extras will vary greatly from individual to individual. In the basic general training, there should be a mini- mum of departmentalization. The extras of the gen- eral training may be departmentalized in any degree. There will be no specialization within the field of the basic general training. Both in character and in appli- cation, it is to be what the name indicates. Where there is specialization there is the presumption that it is vocational specialization. In addition to the one general training course where there is no specialization, but opportunities for many extras, there should also be offered many specialized oc- cupational courses. . Except as the schools train for all important occupa- tional fields, their influence will be to over-fill certain occupations and to prepare an inadequate number of entrants for other occupations. Both results are un- desirable. The schools should, so far as practicable, train in a balanced way for the entire range of uscful occupations. Except in special cases, the occupational training will come immediately after the close of the general training. . For those who cannot or will not avail themselves of op- portunities for full general training, the occupational training should be offered at the time that they choose to discontinue their general training. This means that occupational training is to be offered those who drop out of school upon each of the levels from late junior 36. 37. 39. 40. 41. GENERAL EDUCATION 73 high school to the end of the senior high school. This calls for low-grade occupational courses for immature students and high-grade courses for advanced students. Where a student leaving school prematurely finds it ad- visable to take a juvenile vocational training course prematurely, whether in the last year of junior high school or in some year of the senior high school, his gen- eral training should continue to the latest practicable moment before the vocational training is entered upon. The latter should then be given intensively by way of ushering him with the greatest practicable impetus into the occupation itself. Parents and children should be made thoroughly famil- iar with the nature, purpose, and content of the general training by way of securing their support for full gen- eral training prior to the vocational training. . The vocational training which can profitably be given upon the junior high school level must be training for a juvenile occupation or the juvenile level of an adult occupation. Nothing more than a relatively brief vo- cational course is therefore warranted. And it is only for those who leave prematurely. Vocational courses for those who leave school prema- turely should train for jobs which are actually obtain- able. Occupational courses will be long enough to achieve the approved standards of occupational proficiency; and no longer. Courses for different occupations will be of different lengths ranging from a few weeks to many months. They will not be artificially equated in length. For each occupation a careful study should be made of the amount of time actually needed for achieving any given standard of proficiency. The occupational course should then be of this length even though it be an irregular number of weeks or months. When the voca- tional training comes at the end of the general training and occupies the full time of the class, then this time- arrangement is easily administrable. 74 42. 43, 4A. 45. 46. 47. HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM There is to be no trifling with occupational training. It is to be administered only to those who have chosen an occupation and who intend to go directly from the training course into the oceupation itself. The only ex- ceptions should be where certain occupational courses are opened as extras to those taking the general train- ing. The general education needs to be improved, and the community understanding and appreciation of it de- veloped, if it is necessary to have a long anamic four- year occupational course in the high school in order to hold the students in school for the general training. The extras of the general training can often be em- ployed for building broadened and deepened founda- tions for specific occupational training to which certain of the students will lock forward. ‘This field of extras may therefore constitute a justifiable twilight zone be- tween the general training and the specialized voca- tional training. It may thus definitely count for both. When one of the extras can be part of the general train- ing of high-grade amateurs and at the same time voca- tional training for those who have definitely chosen that field for their calling, then it is possible and prob- ably desirable to have the vocational run parallel to the general training. This appears to be true of training for musicians, artists, designers, professional literary workers, foreign language interpreters, etc. ‘There are but few such occupations. Vocational courses parallel with the general training are probably justified only in the case of those vocations that one can enter currently into, usually at home, dur- ing school days: agriculture, animal husbandry, house- hold occupations; or those which can run as extras for the general training of amateurs while at the same time vocational training of professionals. Each occupational course should confine itself strictly to the matters involved in the particular occupation. General educational is not its province. 48. 49. 50. GENERAL EDUCATION 75 In the case of students going on to college, their major need is the general or unspecialized training. Among their extras, they may choose courses especially desir- able as foundation for already chosen professional courses to be taken on the college level. Except for these extras, for these students, there will be no pre- vocational training upon the high-school level. Boys and girls who postpone their occupational training until late should early acquire familiarity with occwpa- tions; be expected early to make choice of vocation; and to plan their education so as to take adequate care of both general training and vocational training. The ordinary high-school graduation requirements are based almost wholly on a pure subject-teaching concep- tion of education; and upon a false assumption of pupil- equality which calls for an equal number of equal units for the equal students. ‘The usual requirements are quite inappropriate for a functional type of education, designed for very unequal pupils. CHAPTER VI LITERATURE AND GENERAL READING How do literature and general reading function in the general community life? How should they function? 1. They widen the range of one’s observation. In his reading one can view human affairs in all regions of the earth and in all past ages. He can view human institu- tions in their nation-wide and world-wide distribution. He can view all types of men as they react within all types of environment. He can view all social classes and human groupings of every kind, together with their activities and the conditioning environment. He can see human nature in all of its aspects and its in- finitely diverse ways of working. As reported in his reading by those who have seen, he too can see things invisible to the eyes, hidden, intangible, minute, re- mote, general. Whatever man can see and report in language, he too can see. Thus reading removes the limitations of one’s narrow environment and gives one vision over and into a world as wide as any man’s Vision can extend. It takes him out of what would otherwise be his little world and places him in the midst of a large world. Literature is in a way a magic window overlooking the affairs of men and enablingman continuously to see to the farthest ends of the earth. It should be abundantly used by all men and women. It should present a vision that is true, undistorted, and LITERATURE AND GENERAL READING 177 proportioned. It should reveal the things which make up the world according to their values and their significances. 2. Reading widens the range of one’s participation in the affairs of men. As one reads a vivid story which pulsates, let us say, with the life of the middle ages, in a very real sense one relives the human experiences of those days. In a narrative which reconstructs the life, for example, of India, one experiences for a time the life of India. In the same way, where the narrative is an adequate reconstruction of human experiences, reading makes it possible for one to participate vicariously in human experiences in any region of the earth and in any historical period. Reading enables one to live in a large world. The huge and beneficent institutions which man has created in recent generations could never have been developed by a race of beings whose vision and experiences were confined to their immediate physical and social en- vironment. They cannot be further developed except as there is this largeness of vision and experience. They cannot even be maintained on their present levels un- less there is continuance of these expansive experiences, 3. It widens the range of one’s thought. The wider the range of one’s observational and participative ex- periences, the greater the quantity of thought materials and the broader the foundations of one’s thought. One is thus prepared to understand and appreciate the in- tellectual reactions of men living and thinking and expressing themselves under diverse conditions. Read- 48 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM ing can then bring to one the more general thought of men of all times, regions, and environments in their reactions to life and affairs. It can thus take one out of the narrow provincial thought of one’s immediate environment and place him in the midst of the large world of infinitely diverse thought. 4. It elevates one’s thought. In the nature of things there can be relatively few great thinkers. But all can read the writings of the few. All can then think the same large thoughts, in the same large ways — so far as their native capacity permits. In any case each one can rise above the plane of his own natural thinking. While lesser minds will not achieve the highest heights, they will rise to higher heights than had this influence been absent. 5. It enables one to see with the eyes of those who have seen most clearly, and to feel with the hearts of those who have felt most deeply. As a matter of fact, mankind seems to live upon a plane which is above that which would be determined by the average vision, intelligence, and good-will, were this average operating alone. The follow-the-lead instinct is strong in man and he instinctively discerns the presence of those of larger vision and understanding. He tends strongly therefore to take on the vision provided by the clear- seeing ones as these latter express their vision in language; and to reflect the feeling and general reaction of those who feel most deeply and react most vigorously as these express themselves in language. 6. Reading awakens the interests of men. As the LITERATURE AND GENERAL READING 79 modern world grows complex, and one’s contacts and interdependencies more extended, one needs to know about more things and therefore be interested in more things. To have experience with things, especially interesting experience, is the method of awakening one’s interest in those things. Reading provides ob- servational and participative experiences of kinds needed for awakening the interests. 7. It enables one to live. Reading may function in the beneficent ways indicated; and yet in the main one reads simply as a mode of living. Life is action and reading is one mode of action. One does it because one likes to do it. Reading is scarcely normal except as one reads for the joy of the reading. In man’s normal living, newspapers, magazines, histories, and literature, are not studies to be labored over and the facts stored against a day of need. They are simply used as a means of experience. In proportion as that experience is vivid and normal, it accomplishes the proper results of the reading. In any analysis of community affairs, it will be dis- covered that reading plays a large réle; and that it probably ought to play a larger réle than it does. The curriculum-maker will find the kinds and amounts of readings which are best for man’s purposes. Since reading is a mode of indirect observation, he will ask, What should men observe? The things are countless in number. He has a long list to draw up. Then so far as reading is the best mode of observation, he will find the readings that are best for this purpose. 80 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM Since reading is a mode of vicarious participation, he will ask, In what affairs of mankind should one participate vicariously? Again the number is legion. After making the list, he will find the appropriate readings. Since reading is a mode of thinking the thoughts of others, the curriculum-maker will ask, What are the thoughts of men which should become the thoughts of the on-coming generation? What are the readings which present them in the most effective ways? In selecting readings for awakening interests, he will begin by asking, What are the countless things of the world, present and past, in which the full-formed man should be interested? He must have a long list of the major ones at least. Then he can find appropriate readings. We have gone far enough with this to illustrate how one is to take and to use the community point of view in selecting the readings of all kinds. Further sug- gestions are made, but not discussed, in the list of the objectives of literature and general reading. Fol- lowing such a plan, the curriculum in this field will be a rich program of vital experiences, satisfying in itself as experience, and yet a major means to the achievement of most of the abilities, attitudes, interests, apprecia- tions, and the like, which should characterize the full- orbed man. This program of experiences should begin in oral form in the pre-primary training. As reading, it should get under way in the primary school, though naturally LITERATURE AND GENERAL READING 81 in a form appropriate to the mental maturity of the little children. It will be continuous through all the later stages and levels of one’s schooling — an ever- expanding and deepening thing. The field of literature and general reading is one of great educational complexity; and of controversy. The educationist therefore should formulate in as definite terms as possible the platform of general principles relative to literature and general reading which he can accept and which he is to use for guidance in arranging the details of the program. In the report of the English committee on “‘ Reorgan- ization of English in Secondary Schools,” he will find many suggestions relative to planks which may appear in that platform. In practical curriculum-making, the writer has found the following platform of general assumptions and principles to be of service: GUIDING PRINCIPLES AND ASSUMPTIONS 1. Our age, more than any preceding one, demands width of vision over all the world, past and present, and be- yond; it demands mental alertness, and awakened inter- ests in man and his affairs; and it calls for sympathetic civilized attitudes toward social groups, peoples, na- tions, and institutions. 2. The most effective method of achieving these results is to come into sympathetic direct contacts with men and things the world over; but there are insurmountable limitations. 3. Where direct contacts are not possible, and this applies to most of the world of the present and all of the past, indirect methods are to be employed. Of these, reading is the most important. 82 10. ze 12. HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM . Through reading it is possible to view indirectly the dis- tant, the inaccessible, and the past. As it reconstructs human experiences, it enables one to participate vicari- ously in all kinds of activities in all lands and ages. . One’s readings should be selected with a view to tht widest and most diversified indirect observation practi- cable; and to correspondingly wide and diversified vica- rious participation. . For general education, the emphasis in the revelation of things should be proportioned to the values or impor- tance of those things. . The readings should truly and faithfully portray what- ever they undertake to present. . The medium of indirect vision should give a view as true and undistorted as any medium of direct vision. In the degree in which it distorts the view, it falsifies it, and is unserviceable for its purposes. . A piece of literature is a language-window through which one looks out on the human drama; the less con- scious the observer is of the window itself, the better it is for purposes of observation. The reconstructions of human experiences provided in the readings should be suffused with all the color and warmth and beauty and tingle of life itself; with all the drabness, bleakness and ugliness of life itself; and with the whole gamut of human emotions. Lacking these things, it is not life; not a reconstruction of actual hu- man experiences; not a fit instrument for indirect obser- vation and vicarious participation. Readings are to be used for the experiences. Nothing can be so vital for education as the experiences them- selves. A reading selection usually carries, or ought to carry, its whole message within itself. Explanations and inter- pretations ought usually to be relatively needless. When otherwise, the selection is perhaps either unsuit- able for its purposes, or it is being read prematurely. 13. 14. 15. 16. VE 18. 19. 20. LITERATURE AND GENERAL READING _ 83 For men and women in general, literature is not to be studied for technique and form; it is to be used for the experiences. The writers intended nothing else. The major experience in using literature for education is reading it — abundantly — with enjoyment — under normal reading conditions. Most that the general reader needs to know about liter- ature he can learn through the process of using it. In order to use a field-glass effectively, the layman need not know anything about its structure beyond what he learns by using it. The same is true of any instrument or medium of vision, literature among the rest. The literary technician, whether amateur or profes- sional, must know the instrument itself with thorough- ness. He must know literary technique, be skillful in its application, watchful of technical matters in his own work and in that of others, interested in structural mat- ters, sensitive to flaws, appreciative of merits, and the like. All of these things he needs for his vocational pur- poses. His needs, however, are not those of the general reader. The less the general reader sees the technique of produc- ing effects, the more perfect may be the “‘illusion of life” produced by the reading. The character of the revelation provided by literature and general reading should vary with the degree of ma- turity of mind of the individual. In the beginning, readings will reveal things simple, primitive, concrete. As one matures, it will reveal things progressively more and more complex, intangible and general. It is not necessary to have a complete understanding of all details met with in the reading in order to have the experiences needed for mental maintenance and growth. It is not necessary that the reader understand all histor- ical, mythological, or scientific allusions. He reads for experiences; and no man pretends to a thorough under- standing of everything which enters into his daily expe- 84 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM riences. Some things he understands thoroughly, some in considerable measure, some very little. We must expect reading in this respect to be like all experi- ences of normal living. Understanding of historical, mythological, technologi- cal, scientific, and other allusions is in the main to be developed through abundance of reading and other ex- periences in the fields of history, mythology, technol- ogy, science, and the like. To look up these allusions in handbooks, cyclopeedias, and “notes,” is but to get a brief smattering of things out of relation; and flavored with the musty dullness of didacticism. The story of the circumstances under which a literary selection was written is only occasionally valuable in securing the thought or the revelation which it conveys. The author, as he writes a selection, does not expect the circumstances to be investigated and studied. He ex- pects the selection itself to carry the whole message. In the degree in which it does not, it is deficient for its purposes. The history of the development of literary forms, struc- tures, and technique is a matter of little significance or value to men and women who are not literary special- ists. Books will not be read by the general reader merely because they have an historical interest for the literary specialist. The biographies of those who make literature are usu- ally of no more value than the biographies of those who make automobiles, sky-scrapers, or ocean liners. They should not receive a disproportionate amount of time. There is probably justification for a certain amount of literature that is pure play of fancy, unrelated to reali- ties, irresponsible, fantastic even as dream-life. But dreams should be recognizable as dreams. ‘They should not color one’s waking conception of realities. It is a mistake to assume that the artist can create a world of unreality which is more beautiful or interesting or valuable than things found in the world of actual re- alities. Dreams are pale beside reality. Q7. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. LITERATURE AND GENERAL READING — 85 There is doubtless justification for the use of literature of music-type — rhythm and melody and harmonious sequences of emotion-producing imagery. For those to whom it appeals, this appears to have the same kinds of value as music itself. Fortunately, this tends to be an aspect of all great literature. Literary art has been devised to please the tastes of a race of beings whose natural interests are in the simple activities of family and immediate social groups, and in the concrete things of the environment. The literary presentation of things, forces, and rela- tions which are high, general, and impersonal, has little appeal to man’s native interests. The theory of literary art has naturally been shaped by the simple, even primitive, psychology of mankind. The literary artist and connoisseur often tend greatly to exaggerate the values of literature which merely pleases man’s primitive tastes. For a portion of his reading the pupil will live up to the limits of his powers to view things general and imper- sonal. Studies about literature, for those who need such stud- ies, will be undertaken only after they are familiar with literature through having widely used and experienced it in normal and unsophisticated ways. Men and women are educated for the fifty years of re- sponsible adult life; not for the four years of relatively irresponsible college life. Literature is to educate for life, not for college. Reading habits are to be formed in ways and under con- ditions in which they are expected later to function. Self-directed home reading contains elements of value which cannot be included in the more academic school reading. In the degree which it possesses values su- perior to the school reading, this should receive recog- nition in the credit given. 86 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM Most reading is silent, individual, and relatively rapid. Language in its natural form is a thing of the ear and not of the eye. For full effectiveness, therefore, some literature should be a thing of voice and ear. It is possible that the technique of awakening high hu- manistic attitudes, appreciations, interests, ambitions, ideals, sympathies, loyalties, and the like, will demand a considerable amount of oral reading, especially listen- ing to skilled oral reading by those whose character and social position reinforces the high message of the printed page. It is probable also that a pupil needs the emotionalizing that comes from oral reading on his own part. Since literature is to be chosen as a means of experience, it is a matter of indifference in what language it was originally written, or what the nationality of the writer was. Literature in translation is to be freely used. Those who read a foreign language should secure a por- tion of their literary experience through readings in that language. Most of the content and revelation of literature is hu- man and social. Most of it therefore should be classi- fied with the “social studies” group, its content chosen on the basis of the “social studies” objectives; and made an integral portion of the “‘social studies” pro- gram. A lesser portion of one’s literature and general reading reveals nature and is better classified with the natural sciences. The concrete levels of one’s experiences, whether the contacts be direct or indirect, are to be the bases of one’s generalizations. Except therefore as the litera- ture is of dream or music type, it provides concreteness for generalization purposes. . The teacher of literature should conceive himself to be primarily a teacher of human nature, human psychol- ogy, human forces and influences and relations. These 46. AT, 48. 49. 50. LITERATURE AND GENERAL READING = 87 things literature presents — in the concrete, It is his responsibility to see that literature is chosen which pre- sents them well; and that they are used for generaliza- tions. The test of the educational benefits of reading must be the degree to which it has helped one to achieve the ob- jectives of his training. General training in literature in our high schools is not for the vocational training of writers. Only those are to be trained for vocational production in this field who have definitely chosen it as their work; whom studies of capacity show to be fitted for it; and who are capable of a large degree of self-direction in achieving the skills and understanding. Training for amateur literary production is to be given only to those of proven capacity, aptitude, and indus- try — and who require no great amount of teacher- effort and assistance. Teachers can easily discover those pupils who have keen enjoyment of literature and who are therefore re- sponsive to its beauties and other qualities. In the gen- eral written work of the school they can also discover pupils whose natural endowment appears to fit them for amateur or professional literary production. An elaborate technique probably is not necessary for the discovery of those who can profit from training for amateur literary activity. One cannot be dogmatic relative to matters in this complex and difficult field. The above statement of general assumptions and principles is merely suggestive of a pattern to be employed by the curriculum-making group. ‘They should have such a platform. They should draw it up for themselves. It should include nothing but what they can themselves approve. 88 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM Should they employ the foregoing suggestions as starting-point, they should revise the series until it contains nothing but what they approve; and until it omits nothing which they think should be included. A few further suggestions should be made: 1. Each of the assumptions should be drawn with a clear view of the ways in which literature and general reading function, or should function, in the general community life. Special effort should be made to avoid the obsessions of the literary technician. 2. In general education, we are training the “con- sumer” of literature, not the “producer.” He is de- veloping vision, appreciations, and other things that result from the use of literature, not the understanding and skill needed for producing it. The latter is specialized vocational training with which the general training has nothing to do beyond laying the foun- dations. 3. The statements should be definite and clear. They are intended for guidance in making specific de- cisions. They cannot properly serve if they are un- duly general and vague. 4. There should be no evasions merely because finality is unattainable at present. One should use the best evidence at one’s disposal and take the position which is supported by the burden of the evidence. As an educational investigator, his mind may remain in a state of suspended judgment; but as a practitioner he must take a position and do what ap- pears to be best. If we did nothing where investiga- LITERATURE AND GENERAL READING 89 tors must yet retain a suspended judgment, there would be little doing in our schools. 5. The assumptions chosen should represent not the judgments of an individual but rather of a large group of professional workers who have thoughtfully ex- amined the problems and the evidence. 6. Both the specialists in this field of literature and the general educationists should be concerned in formu- lating the general assumptions. The specialist is needed because of his intensive vision and under- standing; the general educationist because of the width and perspective of his educational vision and judg- ment. In the main the specialist will propose; the generalist will make ultimate decisions. 7. After the basic assumptions and principles are once formulated and agreed upon, they should be con- tinuously used for guidance. Whatever they direct should be done, if practical conditions will permit. Whatever they forbid should be omitted from the program, whatever be our traditional professional thought and habit. Use of the principles for guidance does not call for undue suddenness in the introduction of new things or even in the elimination of undesirable ones. Speed of progress must necessarily be adapted to the nature of conditions. Often it must be slow. It should be only as rapid as practical conditions make advisable. Tuer OBJECTIVES The list of personal qualities and abilities presented 99 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM in Chapter II was drawn up without reference to school subjects or departments. It is as complete as we have been able to make it. It probably includes those abilities and qualities which should be developed through the use of literature and general reading. Our task then is to discover those which can be achieved through the use or study of literature. If one has drawn up a different list for his own use, he will use his own list for the purpose. As one looks them over, it seems that general read- ing, including literature, can serve In some measure in the case of most of them. It is particularly service- able however in the case of certain ones. From Chapter IT, we select the following, retaining the same numbers, as major objectives of the literature and general reading: OpsEecTIVES OF LITERATURE AND GENERAL READING 402. Ability, disposition, and habit of abundant and diversi- fied reading as a means of enjoyable and fruitful indirect observation of men, things, and affairs; of vicarious partt- cipation in those affairs; and of entering into the thoughts and moods of others. 501. A proportioned and emotionalized intellectual appre- hension such as one’s natural capacities will permit, of the realities which make up the world of man’s life. (a) Man; human nature; diversities of human nature. (b) Man’s activities and affairs in their diverse fields and forms. (c) Man’s institutions. (d) The territorial or regional groups that make up the local community, the state, the nation, and the world. Their situations and affairs. LITERATURE AND GENERAL READING 91 (e) The specialized or functional groups — eco- nomic, political, religious, and the like — to- gether with their special situations, activities, duties, rights, and relationships. (f) Man’s geographical habitat. (g) The development of man and of his nature, habi- tat, institutions, manners, and customs, special- ized groupings, etc., as revealed in biology and history. (h) The world of plant life. (7) The world of animal life. (7) The world of chemical phenomena. (k) The world of physical phenomena. (l) The geological world. (m) The astronomical world. (n) The world of number, quantity, magnitude. (0) The world of sound and music. (p) The world of language and literature. (q) The world of form, color, visual art. (r) Man’s inventions and creations. (s) The world in composite forms: woods, hills, streams, lakes, oceans, farms, cities, and the like. (t) The world of myth, legend, folklore, fairy tale — realities of a sort even though they are but cre- ated in man’s imagination. In each field: awakened interests; tendencies to attention; appreciations; normal emotional reactions. 201. Ability to think, feel, act, and react as an efficient, intel- ligent, sympathetic, and loyal member of the large so- cial group — that group that is prior to differentiations and within which social differentiation occurs. Large- group or citizenship consciousness. Sense of member- ship in the total social group, rather than in some spe- cial class. LLarge-group local consciousness when deal- ing with local problems; large-group state consciousness when dealing with state responsibilities, large-group na- 92 202. 203. 213. 601. 602. 603. HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM tional consciousness when dealing with national mat- ters; large-group world-consciousness when dealing with mankind’s responsibilities for world cojperation and management. Ability and disposition to view the specialized or fune- tional groups and agencies, not as independent entities, but as service arms of the general social whole, without which they could not exist. The ability of the citizen to do his individual share in performing those social functions for which all citizens are equally responsible in the establishment, organiza- tion, maintenance, protection, oversight, and control of the specialized groups and agencies into which society _is differentiated for effectiveness of action. An understanding and appreciation of the social-service labors and sacrifices which have brought our institu- tions and social procedures to their present high levels of development. A sense of the brotherhood of man. A full sense of membership in the large or tota! social group. Large- group consciousness. A sense of human interdepend- ency, of community of nature, of origin, of vicissitudes, and of destiny. ‘Tendencies to action and reaction which are inherent in the large-group consciousness. Ability to see one’s environment, the near and the far, the personal and the impersonal, sub specie eternitatis, as a vast and restless sea of forces and phenomena, in- finite in extent, subtlety, and complexity. Ability to see and realize one’s interrelatedness with and within this boundless environment. (The vision provided by sci- ence — physical, biological, psychological, social.) Ability to catch for one’s self such glimpses as are per- mitted to finite vision of the Being which actuates the universe as revealed in natural manifestations, in living creatures, in mankind, in man’s highest examples, in the record of man’s thought and action and aspiration as presented in history, literature, art, science, philoso- phy, and in man’s religious literatures. LITERATURE AND GENERAL READING 93 604. Ability to participate as fully and abundantly as one’s original nature will permit in religious and philosophic thought of the type characteristic of man at his best and highest. 605. Ability, habit, and disposition to follow the leadership of the world’s Men of Vision. 301. Ability and disposition to talk and act in those sym- pathetic, tactful, and human ways that are both most agreeable and also most effective in the conduct of one’s relations with one’s associates; and conversely, to avoid the many things disagreeable to others. 215. Ability wisely to choose a specialized occupation in which one can give good service to one’s self, to one’s family, and to society. 109. Ability to make one’s various mental and emotional states and activities contribute in maximum degree to one’s physical functioning. 12. Ability to read the written or printed expression of oth- ers with proper ease, speed, and comprehension. 13. Ability to use dictionary, encyclopedia, atlas, hand- books, card catalogues, reader’s guides, indexes, and other library and reference helps in finding facts or mae terials wanted. We are not recommending that the practical cur- riculum-maker accept these as the objectives of this training. We present them by way of suggesting the type of procedure which he should probably employ. He will use his own comprehensive series of educa- tional objectives as his starting-point. In it he will discover those for which he would employ the litera- ture and general reading. After the objectives are decided upon, they should be used. In time, this suggestion will be superfluous. In 94 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM our present stage of educational development, how- ever, we are not accustomed to using specific and defi- nite objectives for guidance in formulating programs of education. Our professional habits are not yet formed. The curriculum-maker should be quite certain that no objectives are included except what can be ap- proved and used. Each one should have its due in- fluence in shaping the program. There will be a natural tendency to shun those objectives which look toward largeness of vision, understanding, and good-will. These latter seem alien to human nature in its natural state. Man’s natural spiritual stature appears to be more limited than he likes to confess. He is seriously earthbound; and is pretty uncomfortable except as he is near the solid and immediate things of earth. The high places tend to be vertiginous even for cultivated men. Because of this tendency of weak human nature to shy from things large and humanistic, we recommend that these very things be studied specially carefully by way of discovering their probable validity. If they are valid, they point to the most serious responsibil- ities resting upon our profession. Pupit AcTIVITIES AND EXPERIENCES The curriculum for any given pupil is the total series of activities and experiences which enable him to achieve his objectives. With the objectives before him, and with his general principles and assumptions for his guidance, the curriculum-maker will next draw LITERATURE AND GENERAL READING 95 up a statement of the general types of activities and experiences to be employed. He will have a state- ment somewhat like that of which the following is a beginning: 1. 2. The pupil will read abundantly relative to all important fields of human experience. He will widely observe mankind, human affairs, and the background of those affairs indirectly through read- ing. . He will participate abundantly in human affairs of all kinds and in all lands and ages, in vicarious ways through reading. . He will associate with others whose readings cover the wide fields which he ought to explore. . He will often talk over with juvenile and mature asso- ciates his reading experiences. . He will exercise a large degree of self-direction in his reading: materials, times, places, quantities, ete. He will listen to and heed the advice of teachers, par- ents, and other mature associates relative to things to be read. . For part of his reading he will follow the directions of teachers and parents. . He will read silently and relatively rapidly most of the time. . Some selections he will read repeatedly. . He will listen to the oral reading of others. . He will read orally for mastery of mechanics. . He will read orally at times for emotional intensifica- tion. . He will formulate his criteria of judgment relative to the worths of readings of various kinds. 96 HOW TO MAKE A CURRICULUM 15. He will judge of the relative values of different types of things which he reads. 16. He will cultivate a taste for readings which he consid- ers, in the light of his own criteria, to be of most worth. 17. He will keep a classified record of his readings. 18. He will read such newspapers and magazines as are fitted to his degree of maturity. 19. He will frequently read things which demand all his powers to view matters upon a general level — as far above the level of the immediate and the concrete as his degree of maturity and general capacity will permit. 20. He will utilize experiences of his reading for arriving at generalizations in many fields. 21. He will, etc., ete. The curriculum-making group will considerably ex- tend this series of general types of pupil activities and experiences in this field. Yet it should not be extended too far, otherwise it enters into so much detail as to become unwieldy for its practical purposes. Into the next logical step, we cannot here go because of the limitations of space. This is to lay out the series of detailed pupil activities and experiences for each of the grades. The curriculum-making group will take the series of types of pupil activities, and plan the exact things to be done through all the weeks and months of the first grade; then through the second grade; and so on through each of the grades of general education to the end of senior high school or junior college. These statements will present lists of read- ings to be used; lists of problems to be solved on the basis of the readings; and whatever else will enter into the finished detailed curriculum. CHAPTER VII THE SOCIAL STUDIES A goon plumber is the man who can perform skillfully the one hundred and sixty kinds of jobs which analysis shows the good plumber must perform in the course of his labors.