The Larger High School
Preston W. Search
1900
The School Review
Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the mid--seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non--commercial purposes. Read more about Early Journal
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... ntent at http://about.jstor.org/participate--jstor/individuals/early-journal--content. JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not--for--profit organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. THE LARGER HIGH SCHOOL THE thoughtful student of the times must recognize that we are now entering on a new era in high-school education. The high school of five years ago was not the same as the better high school of today, and that which is today is but the intimation of the greater and grander mission to which the high school is readjusting itself. Then, a privileged few pupils, through courses of study of limited differentiation and opportunity, had recognition of their wants. The manner of instruction was typified by the so-called laboratory where the instructor performed marvelous feats on a few pieces of costly apparatus for the curiosity and amusement of the class. The superfine air-pump or electrical machine at other times was carefully locked away from plebeian touch or else became the demolished object of a center rush when the instructor was out of the room. The hours of study were abnormal, the regular school session being appropriated largely by the teacher, the immature pupil working late into the night to accommodate the talkative teacher during the day. All of this not more than five years ago, or at most not more than ten. But since then there has been tremendous advancement. The old-time school man, who, hostile to any change, felt he served his generation best by sitting as an executor on some bequeathed educational estate, is arousing himself to the spirit of the times. The aristocracy of the pupils who can is giving way more and more to the democracy of those who may. In the days of glorious Greece, it is said, "every free man stood on the backs of nine slaves." To continue the metaphor of President David Starr Jordan, "part of the achievement of the time consisted in keeping the nine men down that the tenth man might be raised aloft." This, true in civic Greece, has also been too much true in education. The high school has been constructed too largely for those who knew they were predestinated for college graduation and for a limited kind of professional life. 220
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