THE MODERN HIGH SCHOOL ITS ADMINISTRATION AND EXTENSION WITH EXAMPLES AND INTERPRETATIONS OF SIGNIFICANT MOVEMENTS EDITED BY CHARLES HUGHES JOHNSTON, PH.D. (HARVARD) PROFESSOR OF SECONDARY EDUCATION IN THE CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON PREFACE AMONG the fairly distinct problems confronting the serious student of our modern high schools are those of the specific adjustments which may be made consistent with the gradually clearing conception of social education. At present we do not perhaps greatly need any more books which attempt merely the consistent formulation of theories of social education. "One example is worth a thousand arguments," says Gladstone. This book contains those accounts and expert indorsements of high-school movements which are illustrating for us the only kind of social education which as yet can have definite meaning. The cumulative results of these accounts and definite points of view furnish data for a respectable social philosophy of education. The field covered is simply that indicated by the title of the volume: i. e., a survey of policies, examples and suggestions of ways and means of making the strictly socializing work of our actual high schools more definite, more effective and more nearly universal. A former volume ("High School Education") was concerned primarily with the problems of classroom instruction in the different high-school subjects and with certain technical matters of administration closely related to these problems. A third volume is under way which is to deal strictly and systematically with the clearly distinct problems of high-school supervision (es pecially of class teaching). It is hoped that this present second volume may make definite contributions and prove stimulating to the movement for promoting the efficiency of social administration as distinguished fror merely mechanical administration of our high schools. This book is in no sense a compilation of articles written originally by different authors with different aims in mind. It is, instead, distinctly a work co-operatively undertaken with a clear agreement beforehand as to the one dominant purpose in view, which has been expressed above and which is elaborated in the Intro duction. The editorial policy, in chapter headings and throug out the volume, has been to have these social problems called by their common names, and, where necessary, to sacrifice the appearance of adherence to a set sociological system of treatment in the interests of concreteness and wider appeal. The new awakening all over the country to a realization of the social and democratic meaning as well as the purely instructional nature of secondary education warrants the conviction that the popular demand for the book is genuine. There are, furthermore, no works at present which in any way cover the same field. The most impelling reasons for the issuance of the volume, however, are that it is genuinely needed, and that it will itself be an instrument of great social value. No other appeal or motive could have assembled so many specialists for such a co-operative venture. There has been a conscious and constant attempt on the part of all the writers to adopt a style which is not. too technical, and a general mode of presentation which is as popular as the nature of the topics in question will allow. The reader may find in each chapter a formulation of general principles and a setting in educational theory for the definite proposals made to high schools. The editorial policy has been to modify or reconstruct, minate or make additions, only where consistency with the fundamental purpose set forth in the Introduction (Chapter I) seemed to demand such alteration. The material of this volume has been used in regular college classes in Teachers College, Columbia University, and in the University of Illinois. Many important hanges and additions have been suggested by these dly and co-operating critics, particularly the mems of the summer-school classes of Teachers College. 1 ese latter large and representative groups of actual schoolmen, who had met the problems in their actual school settings, contributed much to what value the organized material here presented in book form may nave. The volume, as was its predecessor, is dedicated to the high-school teachers of the country who now are finding themselves immersed in the very sea of problems whose tentative solutions, or whose statements at any rate, the co-operating authors here seek systematically to propose. Were the authors themselves not in a sense signers,. of the Preface and Dedication, they should be included in the above group because of their generous and courteous and constant attitude of co-operation throughout long months of the undertaking. CHARLES HUGHES JOHNSTON, Editor. |