Courses of training based upon human needs should be diversified where
conditions are diversified. Uniform courses of study for all schools
within a city were justifiable in a former simpler age, when the
schools were caring only for needs that were common to all classes.
But as needs have differentiated in our large industrial cities,
courses of training must also become differentiated. In Cleveland this
principle has been recognized in organizing the work of the special
schools and classes. For all the regular elementary schools,
however, a uniform course of study has been used. Under the present
administration, principals and teachers are nominally permitted wide
latitude in its administration.
A large part of this freedom is taken away by two things. One is the
use by the city of the plan of leaving textbooks to private purchase.
For perfectly obvious reasons, so long as textbooks are privately
purchased, a uniform series of textbooks must be definitely prescribed
for the entire city. Uniform textbooks do not necessarily enforce a
uniform curriculum. In usual practice, however, they do enforce it
as completely as a prescribed uniform course of study manual. As the
schools of different sections of the city are allowed to experiment
and to develop variations from the course of study, they should be
allowed greater freedom in choosing the textbooks that will best serve
in teaching their courses.
The second condition enforcing a uniform course of study in certain
subjects is the use of uniform examinations in those subjects. We
would merely suggest here that it is possible to use supervisory
examinations without making them uniform for all schools. Different
types of school may well have different types of examination.
Different social classes often exist within the same school.
Administrative limitations probably must prevent the use of more than
one course of study in a single elementary school. But as the work of
the grammar grades is departmentalized, and as junior high schools
are developed, it will become possible to offer alternative courses
in these grades. Those practically certain of going on to higher
educational work requiring foreign languages and higher mathematics
should probably be permitted to begin these studies by the sixth or
seventh grade. On the other hand, those who are practically certain
to drop out of school at the end of the grammar grades or junior high
school should have full opportunities for applied science, applied
design, practical mathematics, civics, hygiene, vocational studies,
etc. When the necessary studies are once organized and departmental
work introduced, it is not difficult to arrange for the necessary
differentiation of courses in the same school.
Finally, courses of study should provide for children of differing
natural ability. Extra materials and opportunities should be provided
for children of large capacity; and abbreviated courses for those
of less than normal ability. In departmentalized grammar grades
and junior high schools this can be taken care of rather easily by
permitting the brighter pupils to carry more studies than normal,
and the backward ones a smaller number than normal. Under the present
elementary school organization with classes so large and with so many
things for the teachers to do, it is practically impossible to effect
such desirable differentiations.