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It is believed, however, that the extension service of the public school would gain in effectiveness by organizing for more definite service in the interest of community betterment. High-school teachers are no longer unskilled men and women. The scope of the curriculum has made specialization necessary as a qualification for teaching in a high school. Perhaps the best teaching that is being done to-day is to be found in the high schools. Should not the community conserve and use the talents of these men and women in every possible way? It seems desirable that the larger and better organized high schools should have a committee on extension. This committee should be charged with the duty of studying the possible lines of service that the high school could follow in serving the complex needs of the community. The work of extending knowledge must be organized in some center. We cannot expect the community to know or to realize the possibilities of the high-school force as we know them, but with proper organization we would challenge the community to invite the high school to help in the solution of community problems.

CONCLUSION

The organization and policy of the high school of the future are already foreshadowed in the tendencies to which attention has been directed. There will be the junior high school and the senior high school and the junior college so articulated as to constitute one unit. The high school of the present is the most energized of our educational institutions. It has already expanded downward, and we prophesy that it is destined to expand upward, and in no less degree will its expansion be lateral. Our hope and prophecy for the high school of the future is that it will keep its organization sufficiently flexible to

meet the ever-changing demands of new situations. We must not forget that, however valuable the material equipment, and however costly our high-school plants, the high school cannot save the cause of education because of its boasted equipment or palatial housing. Its aims must be definite. Its course of study must be adaptable. It must maintain its relation to higher education without at the same time sacrificing its responsibility to community needs. We must recognize the latent possibilities of the high schools. To assume that the present type of secondary school represents the limits of its possibilities would be to shut our eyes to the most obvious fact in the educational situation of to-day. TOPICS FOR REPORT AND INVESTIGATION

1. A program of home work for boys.

2. A program of home work for girls.

3. An argument for a six-year high-school course.

4. An argument against a six-year high-school course.

5. The place of the junior college in our educational system.

FURTHER READINGS

Boynton, E. D. "A Six-Year High-School Course," Educational
Review, XX, 5, 15-19.

Cubberley, E. P. Changing Conceptions in Education. Houghton
Mifflin Co.

Dewey, John. Schools of To-morrow, chapter viii, "The Relation
of the School to the Community."

Eliot, Charles W. "Changes Needed in American Secondary
Education," Occasional Papers, No. 2, General Education
Board.

Hall, G. S. "The High School as the People's College," Pedagogical
Seminar, IX, 63.

Harper, W. R. "The High School of the Future," School Review,
XI, 1-3.

Johnson, Charles H., and Others. High School Education. Scribner.
Liddeke, F. "Extension of the High School Course," School
Review, XII,635-647.

L

Monroe, Paul. Principles of Secondary Education. Macmillan.

CHAPTER XVII

THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY-ITS PURPOSES AND POSSIBILITIES

HE problems of maintaining educational standards, of increasing the virility and stimulating the efforts of the teaching force, of adjusting courses of study to the ever-changing social situations, and of determining the efficiency of the school plant and its equipment should be matters of constant concern to those engaged in administrative educational work. There should be unceasing attention given to standards and efficiency if progress in school work is to be maintained. Educational institutions maintained at public expense are continually having their activities scrutinized and their standards reviewed by the public. City councils and state legislatures are concerned about the per capita cost of the physical plant for which the taxpayers are required to provide funds. There has been in recent years an increasing demand on the part of the public that school authorities be required to present data that give evidence of having been secured with a reasonable degree of accuracy. This is not a thing to be despised. It is one of the endless means of social control. It is perhaps the surest means of preventing us from becoming indifferent to the maintenance of standards that will insure reasonable results from the efforts and funds expended.

These conditions have been largely responsible for educational surveys that have come into such general practice within the last few years. More and more the experience of private business has reflected itself in school activities. The expenditure of a half billion dollars on

higher education in 600 colleges and universities attended by approximately 400,000 students is too large an enterprise to leave to haphazard methods. The great city school systems, with hundreds of teachers and thousands of students and millions invested in school buildings and equipment, demand some measurement by which the public can determine the returns from such an outlay. If a system of measurement is desirable for a college and a city, it is even more important for a great system of schools of various types maintained by the state. The most gigantic educational enterprise that has been undertaken has been that of surveying the entire educational situation of an entire American commonwealth. As the educational survey idea is now in the ascendency, it seems well to consider in more detail some of the aspects of it as an educational problem.

THE GENESIS OF THE SURVEY MOVEMENT

Foreign educational surveys had a comparatively early beginning. For example, there was a Swiss survey made in 1799 by Minister Stapfer in accordance with a decree of the Helvetian Directory of May 2, 1798.1 In this connection a questionnaire was sent out to the different cantonal schools, and the information acquired was used in much the same way as is that of the modern survey.

English surveys are reported by the same authority as having been made between 1861 and 1869. Several of these were based upon orders issued by the House of Commons, and the work was conducted by experts. Recent developments of the educational survey in this country have probably come directly from two sources: (1) The geological survey, soil survey, and certain social surveys have suggested the application of similar methods

of collecting facts for information and guidance in educational policies. (2) The increasing tendency toward supervision and inspection of instructional methods has suggested a more formal and systematic collection of data as a means of more definite knowledge of teaching standards.

In recent years the scope of the survey has been greatly extended. Farm management, rural churches, and many special community problems, both in the city and in the country, have been the subjects of more or less important and accurate investigations through survey methods.

THE PARTS OF THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY

The systematic survey comprehends the following welldefined features:

1. Securing the facts. The survey is justified on the ground that its conclusions are based upon accurate information rather than upon mere conjecture or opinion. A thorough investigation of the actual facts and conditions is the first step in the problem. These facts are supposed to be acquired by trained investigators acting as reporters of what is seen and heard, or through information contained in a carefully prepared questionnaire. The facts acquired should not only be reasonably accurate, but a sufficient number of them should be available to justify the conclusions reached from them.

2. Analysis and interpretation of facts. Once the data are assembled, the question arises as to their meaning. The second characteristic, therefore, is the analysis and interpretation of the data acquired. Much depends upon the correct analysis of the facts acquired and the interpretation given to them. For example, suppose that

1 Mahoney, "Some Foreign Educational Surveys," Bulletin No. 37, 1915, United States Bureau of Education.

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