Secondary Schools Today
Sands, William Franklin
GEORGE HERBERT PALMER, professor emeritus of philosophy at Harvard, has a striking essay in the April Atlantic Monthly on the junior college, which begins as follows: Ir^ the last ten years . ....
...It is a fair question whether this situation is not shared in some degree by Catholic schools...
...These are ideals, and to the extent that they are attained in American college life they are good...
...I suppose that no one will contend that they come with their mental digestion functioning...
...It is plain, then, why the junior college, when fully established, must exterminate our scholarly amateur...
...They are known as cultivated persons caring for much besides money-making...
...centres of civilizatiorii we may call them...
...They have followed successfully, but have they led ? The answer comes quickly: Under the common conditions confronting education in America in the past seventy or eighty years, Catholic methods could not lead, in the nature of things...
...second, the utilization of many centuries of educational tradition, in which, while method may change according to the needs of the locality and of the times, the underlying principle remains the same...
...It is fair to ask, then, with Professor Palmer, whether much of American tradition is not solidly good...
...I suggest, however, with the reserve of a non-professional—of a complete amateur, indeed, but one most interested in observing systems of education at home and abroad—that there is an underlying situation to which the junior college is applied as a remedy which is not alleviated by that remedy...
...whether, a formidable problem common to all irt our American civilization having been successfully surmounted, it is not timely and eminently desirable to examine into our achievement, to weigh and consider, and to begin to construct upon those foundations which are well laid, and to test some of those bases, as engineers would, for the weight of the superadded building...
...They have been overtaxed...
...The point, as I see it, is that the principal problem of American education has been, in the past seventy years or so, to induct newcomers in very great numbers into the material advantages of a new world (not only a new country) and to add to their preparation to meet new conditions adequately those cultural adornments which should make of each a better citizen...
...GEORGE HERBERT PALMER, professor emeritus of philosophy at Harvard, has a striking essay in the April Atlantic Monthly on the junior college, which begins as follows: Ir^ the last ten years . . . our acadamies, seminaries, and even our high schools have been offering their graduates an additional two years of study of college grade, enabling them to enter college as juniors instead of as freshmen...
...They come for the most part like the plumbers of the comic papers, with anything but the right tools, and with little knowledge of the use of the tools they have...
...Their problem has been the same as that of all other American schools, with the added need to safeguard the induction of their graduates into the life of a new world offering endless material advantages, from loss of the Faith which, by rights, must be their principal objective...
...and it is a misfortune that the work our fathers did in establishing a cultural tradition which today could be enjoyed by all, has been lost from American and Catholic history so completely...
...Our living conditions do not permit intimate knowledge...
...The focus of the trouble lies in the unpreparedness of youth for the cultural life of college...
...consoling cases...
...it lies in secondary education...
...The principal part of this burden has fallen on secondary educational institutions, and these, with all their gallant struggle, have done only what their inadequate numbers and limited human strength have permitted them to do...
...Parental responsibility is delegated which no parent has a right to delegate, no teacher has a right to claim or to accept...
...In America the general methods of education for Catholics have followed the general methods of all other American schools...
...They can be helpful, in their great majority, neither to the school nor to the scholar...
...It has successfully met our educational needs...
...Another essay (I think it also appeared in the Atlantic some mc-^ths ago) called attention to a peculiarity of American academic life which might well be considered in connection with Professor Palmer's thesis: the dual college life, the life of the classroom, not intensive, except in rare cases, and the very intense life centering about what are called campus activities— all that youthful social energizing which familiarizes the American youth with the existence he is to lead after graduation...
...A small group, chiefly in art and literature, gives itself up to the private pursuit of these tastes...
...The latest official figures I have seen give 375 junior colleges already established and an average increase of something like five a month...
...whether this particular Catholic tradition in America has not some desirable quality...
...The rest enter some one or the other of the professional schools, but no sharp line is drawn separating men of affairs from scholars...
...They are our true aristocrats, keeping our precious democracy wholesome...
...But it is historically untrue that the Church in America has always been till now a "submerged" church...
...It is Professor Palmer's thesis that this development, which appears to be a noteworthy movement to put us "on a genuine level with education abroad," would actually, if successful, blot out what he regards "as the precious distinction of the American university in contrast to the European...
...The modern commuting parent does not know the son or daughter who is to carry on the world...
...The answer lies, not in extending the subjects of study, but in the orderly assimilation of fundamentals, in the awakening of the youthful mind, in the practical training to use well those tools which lie nearest to hand...
...The successive waves of newcomers, by the force of numbers, justly demanded the full and undivided attention of our teaching body...
...That teaching body has been largely recruited from the ranks of the prospering newcomers themselves, and the earlier tradition is forgotten...
...America is the only country which has ventured to interpose four years of cultural study between its day schools and its professional training...
...I suppose that no one familiar with college freshmen will contend that they come to college with awakened minds, except in rare and...
...Moreover, parents who, with little opportunity for education, have been materially successful, want vaguely that the schools shall give their sons and daughters something better than they had, and will pay—as the vulgar saying goes—through the nose to get it for them...
...The youth of the country goes on to college unfit for college...
...He will go directly from school to business and the glorious peculiarity of American education will disappear...
...In every city between the two oceans are men and women who, though not members of any profession, have, in passing through some college, acquired an interest in scholarly things and use their times of leisure for carrying this interest on...
...The movement . . . has become a! torrent...
...but they do not know what they want...
...He continues: Hitherto, in America, rather more than half our college graduates have gone into business...
...but in the solution of new problems in that period, even our teachers have forgotten that, prior to that time, there was a cultural condition among American Catholics of a high order and vastly promising...
...unchanging, because, as we believe, it is based upon practical rules of life laid down by the Divine Founder of Christianity...
...The reason for-being of Catholic schools is first, thorough education in Catholic doctrine...
...It is "mass production" idealized...
...Thereby an added burden is placed upon the already overburdened teacher...
Vol. 6 • June 1927 • No. 8
