THE DEMAND FOR REVISION OF THE CURRICULUM
The historical sketch given above illustrates, as do the earlier examples presented in this chapter, the natural conservatism of the school curriculum on the one hand and the inevitableness of an expansion of the school on the other. Historically, the common school had no duties in the direction of vocational training. But we are beginning to realize that it is not profitable to try to throw off responsibility. To-day the school must cope with an urgent social problem. The curriculum was and is literary in its major content. The problem of the future is to expand it so that it shall combine with its literary content a new and productive body of vocational training.
Our study of the curriculum has established, first, the important fact that courses of study are real factors to be dealt with in any school situation; second, the motives which give rise to particular forms of instruction are superseded in the course of school history by new social needs. Nevertheless, the curriculum tends to persist, and often because of its conservatism becomes a menace to progress. Suggestions for innovations come through the insights of individuals or through the formulation of social demands. Whatever the source of suggestions for change, the student of education will find his problem in the fact that the curriculum is undergoing change as is every other phase of modern life. How to understand the changes that are imminent and how to direct them into productive channels is a major problem of the science of education.
Find new subjects other than those mentioned in the text which have been introduced into either the high-school curriculum or into the curriculum of the grades. Within the older courses find some new topics which have been introduced. New subjects in general are not looked on as entirely respectable. Why is this? What should be done to make them respectable?
Why does training for vocation seem less respectable than conventional school work? What is to be done to meet this situation?
Do people in general know what changes ought to be made in the curriculum? Note that the Minneapolis study found difficulties. For these it had clear scientific evidence. Did it have equally clear grounds for its recommendations? Should it have had? How could it secure evidence of this latter type?