Book Description

Excerpt from Curriculum-Making in Los Angeles The practical school man wants to know how to draw up courses of study which look in the direction of current progress, and which he can have ready for next year's work. He knows the value of scientific method in curriculum-making; but he further knows that the.necessary science is not likely to be sufficiently developed in this generation. He wants to use that nearest approximation to science which is available for his practical purposes. The work which is now going on in Los Angeles in the re-examination of current courses of study in junior and senior high schools presents a method of procedure. It is one which takes full account of the practical situation as it is. It attempts only to find the next possible and desirable steps of progress; to take those and to go no farther until conditions are ripe for going farther. Yet at the same time, the method looks to the fundamentals of the curriculum. It plows as deeply in preparation for the work as if it intended a rather complete reformulation of the curriculum without regard to the present situation. The major problem was thus how to provide for only the immediate "next steps of progress," and yet do it all on the basis of fundamentals. Experience with the method has proceeded far enough to demonstrate its value. The purpose of this monograph is to present the method for two purposes: (1) for securing discussion of the method by way of improving it; (2) to make a contribution to the formulation of a technique of practical curriculum re-examination and reformulation which can be employed to supplant the admittedly primitive method frequently employed. The initiative for the work naturally originated with the city superintendent of schools. General direction has been provided by the two assistant superintendents of schools in charge of junior high schools and senior high schools. Leadership in the detailed labors has been intrusted to the Department of Educational Research and to a series of committees composed of high-school principals, heads of departments, and teachers. There is one committee for each high-school department, composed of twenty-five members, or one representative from each junior and senior high school. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.