What's Wrong

No matter what kind of campus they came from, the experts seemed agreed: all is definitely not well with the U.S. high school. Last week at a conference in Chicago, some of the experts, with unusual bluntness, pointed out a few of the errors.

"The present high school curriculum in mathematics," said Howard F. Fehr of Columbia Teachers College, "is outmoded, oriented to 19th century mathematics and physics," and completely fails to relate what it teaches with the total structure of modern mathematics. "Any 17th century mathematician, reappearing upon earth today, could enter most classrooms in our high schools and, without any preparation, teach the present traditional curriculum, so far is it behind the times."

A more general trouble, said Chancellor Lawrence A. Kimpton of the University of Chicago, is that the educationists have so often distorted the doctrines of John Dewey. "Thinking begins, says Mr. Dewey, in an interest or a concern. Therefore, said the educator, our problem is to interest students, and this interpretation passed over easily into the distortion of amusing and entertaining them . . . Dewey is really saying that thinking begins in maladjustment to the environment and continues as an active, tough and difficult process . . . This was misunderstood by certain professional educators, whose influence exceeded their wisdom, to mean that the end of the educational process is the adjustment of our youngsters to their environment with no particular concern or activity on their part. For example, grades were eliminated so that the young person might not suffer the frustration of feeling inferior to others . . . This enormous sensitivity and tenderness for the sense of security and adaptation of the child is a frightful travesty upon Dewey's thinking. His was a rigorous mind . . .

"And a final grievous error is made in the interpretation of Dewey's theory of value. He did say that value was growth, meaning by that that the good life is being endlessly challenged . . . But this principle was translated into a complete lack of discipline for youth. Let them express themselves, it was said . . . only then will they grow."

Asked Principal William H. Cornog of New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, Ill.: "How free and wide-ranging should your curriculum be? Not nearly as free and loose as it has become under the pressures of a consumer approach to public education." It is high time "we make the raw assumption that it is the mind of the student with which the school is most concerned" and not with his adjustment to society. "The schools are not in business to teach anything to anyone or everything to everyone. They are not to be confused . . . with shopping centers. We do not, I hope, put signs in our school corridors: 'What you don't see, ask for.' If we have them up, I hope we take down the signs which say: 'The customer is always right.' "

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