Education: Speaking to the Subject

In Atlantic City last week, 10,000 members of the American Association of School Administrators gathered in annual convention, slogged through dozens of trade exhibits, from green blackboards to air conditioners. But education was far from forgotten; some invited guests spoke vigorously to the subject.

¶ James B. Conant, president emeritus of Harvard, gave the first public report on his current study of U.S. junior high schools. Conant praised efforts to departmentalize the eighth grade (with four specialized teachers per class instead of one), but warned that “drastic revisions may be in order in many schools.” Among them: a longer school day, a possible end to small schools. Then Conant loosed a blast. In his study so far (125 junior high schools in 17 states), he has found “an almost vicious overemphasis on athletics.” Said Conant: “Colleges, of course, are by and large the worst sinners in this regard, but that the disease had spread to the junior high school was to me a new and shocking revelation.”

¶ Philip H. Coombs, secretary of the Fund for the Advancement of Education, called for a teaching “revolution” to sweep away obsolete methods (e.g., “the textbook as Bible”). Education is an “undynamic, unprogressive industry,” said Coombs. “There has not been a profoundly radical innovation in the technology of education since the invention of the book.” Suggested Coombs: every school system in the country should forthwith spend 2% of its budget for a topnotch research division and hire “a vice president in charge of heresy.”