High Schools Under Fire

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Commissioner of Education Ernest Boyer, former chancellor of the State University of New York: "We've gone through a period of overpromising. We felt education was the answer to every dilemma we faced. More recently, we seem to have expected too little from our schools." Boyer now sees, and applauds, "a new commitment to excellence in education, to search for ways to improve schools without flash-in-the-pan innovations." As a theme for the Carter Administration's as yet vaguely defined education policy, he has suggested "Access to Excellence." ut how is excellence to be defined? That was relatively simple in the colonial era, when American education consisted largely of small, church-run academies designed mainly to turn out clergymen. The basics were the elements of the classical curriculum imported from Europe: Latin, Greek and mathematics. That tradition continued, with only minor modifications, through the advent of the public high schools in the 1850s. But after the turn of the century, as U.S. society became more secular, industrial and urban, schools began to turn away from the classical curriculum.

Over the next 50 years, several competing ideas emerged. Vocational studies gained respectability. In the 1920s, John Dewey's ideas about "progressive" education, in which a child's emotional development was to be nurtured along with his intellect, came into vogue. By the late 1930s, a number of educational conservatives, including Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, began calling for a return to the classical curriculum. Advocates of vocational training refused to retreat. With the launching of Sputnik in 1957 and the sudden feeling of U.S. inferiority it engendered, excellence was hurriedly redefined in terms of better science and math courses

Then came the clamorous 1960s. With the growth of the civil rights movement, the drive for educational quality collided with the imperatives of social equality, the sense of entitlement. Schools were given major responsibility for the repair of racial injustices and began to ease requirements in the name of helping the deprived. At the same time came the protest era. "The counterculture rejected intellectuality," says Harvard Sociologist David Riesman. "Viet Nam and civil rights created an alliance of relaxed grading with social promotion."

Newly vocal students demanded— and got — "relevant" courses and softer requirements. Elective courses many of doubtful merit, mushroomed. "Naderism has taken over education," complains Clark Kerr, head of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. "But some basics are needed in schools, and in college too. The faculty has given away the curriculum."

Teachers became as consumer oriented as their pupils. A generation ago, teachers were low paid but highly dedicated professionals. Today, more than 80% of secondary-school teachers are members of either the National Education Association or the American Federation of Teachers, aggressive unions that push hard — and successfully—for higher pay and greater benefits. Although the average teacher salary is now $13,662, some teachers in areas with strong unions earn more than $25,000 a year. Says one educator: "Teachers now decline to take home papers or stay after school to talk to the