Is Your School a Clambake?

"It took Tod one and two-thirds min utes to cut out a paper cat. At that rate, how many could he cut out in half an hour? HELPER: First think 'One half hour equals how many minutes.' "

"A stack of pamphlets is in three piles. The first pile contains one-sixth of them, the second pile several fifths of them, and the third pile contains six. What is the total number of pamphlets?*

To Harold L. Clapp, 47, professor of Romance languages at Iowa's Grinnell College, these two math problems illustrate a disagreeable point. Both come from texts used in the sixth grade. But the first is from an American book, the second from a Swiss. Clapp's point: through their "stranglehold on education," U.S. educational theorists have so diluted the aca demic content of the public school that it now lags far behind those in Europe.

In speeches and articles, Clapp has been doing his best to remedy the situation. But at the same time, so have such like-minded critics as Historian Arthur Bestor (Educational Wastelands], Botanist Harry J. Fuller of the University of Illinois, and free-lance Writer Mortimer Smith (And Madly Teach). Last summer the various critics announced that they had at last got together to form the Council for Basic Education.

Though public-school men have already begun to denounce it as overly doctrinaire and often unjust in its criticisms, the council hopes to become a major clearing house of information for parents and teachers who are worried about present standards. Its monthly Bulletin (present circulation: 2,000) spotlights various school programs of high academic quality, reviews pertinent articles and books. In the current Bulletin, the council attacks various classroom distractions which, it claims, are justified by educationists "in the name of 'educating the whole child,' or of the Dewey-eyed notion that instead of preparing a child for society, a school should be a miniature, make-believe re flection of society." Among the questions it urges parents to ask themselves: P: "Are club meetings, play rehearsals, band rehearsals, 'pep' meetings, and other extracurricular activities scheduled during regular class periods or outside of hours?" P: "Are classrooms equipped with TV sets so the whole class may watch the World Series? Don't laugh. This happens on specified grounds that the series is a part of the world we live in. So, it could be argued, are nightclubs, canasta, and . . . The question is: Are such blessings as TV used to educate or distract?" P: "What about 'field trips'? Are all the grade-school junkets to the bakery and print shop essential to the training of your child's mind? When a peripatetic 'social studies' class goes gaily off to the county jail for a half-day at a time, what effect does it have on other classes and classwork?"

P: "We have said nothing about such miscellaneous diversions as safety campaigns, fire-prevention week (when youngsters ride the fire wagon instead of learning to read), or that favorite excrescence on school programs (and budgets): driver training . . . We allow ourself one more question . . . If your school resembles a clambake or decathlon, if it seems more likely to bewilder and daze than to sharpen, furnish, and organize young minds, whose, ultimately, is the fault?"

-Answer: 180.

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