Book Description

Excerpt from The Course of Study in the Work of the Modern School The first requisite in any undertaking is determining and defining the results sought. This is true whether the task be a simple one, such as purchasing a suit of clothes, or a complex one, such as developing a city water system or drafting a state constitution. In an institution so complex as the public school system, it is fundamentally important to conceive clearly the results to be sought through the elaborate process of education. It is a complex and difficult process in the work of each day; yes, in the teaching of each lesson and in the direction of each exercise. Not only so, but it is rendered further complex and difficult by reason of the fact that it extends over many years of the child's life. Not alone is the process complex because of the long time it occupies, but it is further complicated by the growth changes and by changes from other causes which take place in the child during the period of his school training. Then, too, because several different teachers will help in the child's education before it is completed, it is very necessary that each have a clear understanding of the results public education should secure so that every teacher who tries to aid in the child's education may be aiming for the same results. It is evident that any fundamental attack in developing a course of study must first define clearly both the general and specific aims of the school system in which it is to be used, in order that all of its details may be planned and, shaped to the end that the course of study may be uniquely adapted, to the accomplishment in the most direct and economic fashion of the projected aims. The truth of this general proposition will become evident to any one who will recall his history of education sufficiently to note how curricula have been modified and reshaped with each succeeding aim or purpose of public education which has been proposed. A brief survey of the aims of education and of the moulding effect of each aim on the curricula of the time will afford a needed perspective in approaching our task. Early Aims of Education. There have been many changes in the conception of the purpose of the public schools during historic times. As the time when the amount of knowledge possessed by the race was very meager - so meager that it was all necessary as a means of eking out a mere scant existence - the function of the school was to fit each individual to earn his living, or to earn his "bread and butter." Living, then, was merely a food, clothing, and shelter problem, and so the aim of the school was correspondingly limited and narrow. 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.