pon it from the
standpoint of the industrial needs of the community. I fully believe
that a high school should be to-day just what it was originally planned
to be back there in the first half of the nineteenth century--a school
higher than the elementary, controlled by the community, in co-operation
with the educational leaders of the State, serving the needs of the
community, fitting its boys and girls for service in the community and
discriminating, if at all, in the favor of the group of boys and girls
who are not going to college, since that group is much the larger. Since
boys and girls are nearer to us than industrial needs, I have chosen to
look at the problem from that angle.

I am well aware that my point of view in this entire matter is not quite
in accord with the present-day program. The American high school still
has preparation for college as the one dominant object. Its curriculum
is planned for that end. It is rated at first, second, or third class,
depending upon the degree in which it meets college entrance
requirements--not upon the degree in which it serves the community needs
or develops the community's children.

I realize fully that the change suggested would involve quite a decided
rearrangement of the ordinary high school program. With the time at my
disposal it will be impossible to discuss the matter in detail, but it
should be touched upon briefly to get the matter of relationship clearly
before us.

The first change would be in the matter of organization: instead of
having the elementary school, as now, covering eight years and closing
with the child at the age of 14, it should cover but six years, sending
the child to the high school at about the age of 12, at which time,
approximately, begin those physical and psychological changes earlier
spoken of, as belonging to adolescence. And that thought has taken root,
as we all know, in the junior high school movement. Six years is long
enough to do well all that the elementary school should be expected to
do. It certainly is as long as children can be held interested in the
kind of work thought necessary for the child, and as long as he can be
happy in the atmosphere of the ordinary elementary school. It is long
enough for the laying of foundations. It is time something else should
be taken up.

Planning to meet the needs of adolescents, we must take the adolescents
as they are--many of them not primarily students of books, but
individuals