There is clearly an administrative and curriculum problem
involved here in the sense that not a few of the failures seem to
represent the cost at which the machinery operates. This is in no sense
intended as a challenge to any subject to defend its place in the high
school curriculum, but it is meant to challenge the policy of the
indiscriminate requirement of any subject for all pupils, allowing only
that English of some kind will usually be a required subject for the
great majority of the pupils. It is simply demanded that Latin and
mathematics shall stand on their own merits, and that the same shall
apply to history and science or other subjects of the curriculum. So
far as they are taught each should be taught as earnestly and as
efficiently as possible; but it should not be asked that any teacher
take the responsibility for the unwilling and unfitted members of a
class who are forced into the subject by an arbitrary ruling which
regards neither the motive, the interest or the fitness of the
individual.
This indictment extends likewise to the teaching method or purpose
which focalizes the teachers' attention and energy chiefly on the
subject. Certain basic assumptions, now pretty much discredited, have
led to the avowed teaching of the subject for its own sake, and often
without much regard to any definite social utility served by it. This
charge seems to find an instance in the handling of the subject of
English so that 16.
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