Conant Offers Program For Public Education

Dr. James B. Conant '14, President Emeritus, has issued a report urging junior high schools to give their students better preparation for high school. The report, released Saturday by the Educational Testing Service, includes the results of Conant's second major study of public education in America.

In the report, entitled "Education in the Junior High School Years," Conant sharply criticizes schools which over emphasize athletics or pretentious academic ritual at the cost of basic intellectual skills. Problems Conant particularly emphasizes include: communities that bloat the importance of a junior high school "senior"; the inability of many ninth graders to read even at sixth grade level; lack of coordination between a community's junior and senior high schools; and frequently a lack of coordination between grades in the junior high school itself.

In many respects, his recommendations point toward a return to the early junior high school programs in effect before educators began to concern themselves with the need to separate young adolescents from "adults" in high school.

Originally, junior high schools required their students to study algebra and foreign languages in the seventh and eighth grades. Urging a partial return to this plan, Conant suggests that junior high schools institute "elite" classes.

Such classes would permit students with high mathematical aptitudes to begin the study of algebra in eighth or ninth grade.

All students should spend 60 to 70 per cent of their classroom time on "solid" academic subjects, Conant urges. Seventh and eighth grades should study English with stress on reading and composition, social science with stress on geography and history, and mathematics and general science.

"Even the poorest readers ... should read at least at the sixth grade level," Conant says. Amplifying this point. Conant notes that he has "been at schools in which from 35 to 50 per cent of the ninth graders were reading at sixth grade level or below."

In addition to the solid academic subjects, all students should study art, music, and physical education. In addition, boys should receive instruction in industrial arts, and girls in home economics.

Teacher Shortage

The shortage of teachers in junior high school is extremely severe, Conant says. Recognizing the fact that junior high school classes are the hardest to teach, he calls for at least 50 instructors for every 1,000 pupils. He also urges that more teachers decide to pursue their careers in junior high schools, instead of using them as a springboard for posts in senior high schools or colleges.