Cducato go~ UAt £e~U ~Mni

PAUL R HANNA

The part education has to play in bringing the technics of group living in line wuithscientific and tecbnological'advances is of vital concern to all educators, whose opinionsvary concerning the best way to accomplish this purpose. The following plan, as outlinedby Paul R. Hanna, professor of education, Stanford University, Calif. is presented forcareful review and reactions.

IT IS OBVIOUS to anyone who isthoughtful about modern society, thatwe live in a highly interdependent worldcommunity that exhibits all the neurotictendencies of a frustrated and confusedindividual. Upon further analysis, it isclear that much of this cultural frustra-tion and confusion is the result ofrapid advances in science and technol-ogy on the one hand, and on the otherhand, the relatively slow adjustments inthe laws and institutions and the adap-tation of old values to new conditions.We speak of this imbalance as culturallag.

This cultural lag is now accepted bymany leaders in public education as amajor concern of the schools. The less-ening of this lag or imbalance is listedas a major goal of education. Many pro-posals for curricular organization de-signed to contribute to such an objectiveare being seriously considered today.

But before we discuss the educationaltask of lessening cultural lag, we needfurther examination of the lag. itself.Only as the nature of the cultural im-balance is understood and the steps thatmust be taken to improve balance agreedupon, will the school possess the direc-tives for the curricular job ahead.

Our Evolving Community

To start the deeper examination, lookat two terms: community and commu-nication. Both words stem from the same

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Latin root, communis, meaning com-mon. When the tools and technics ofcommunication are largely confined tothe face-to-face conversations of familyand neighbors in the immediate environ-ment, then the term community defi-nitely refers to the limited social groupwho, through common vocal exchange,work and play together daily. For sucha community, narrowly confinedthrough primitive communication, thelaws and institutions are correspond-ingly simple and restricted to the samelocal community over which daily face-to-face contacts are made. Note theclose identity of the geographic areaand of the humans caught up in thesetwo terms when used in connectionwith a primitive culture.

Then notice what modern tools andtechnics have done to change commu-nication. By means of electronics it isnow possible for each of us in this na-tion, and for most of us throughout theworld to communicate with all otherhumans. The telephone, telegraph, air-mail, the press, radio, cinema, and ahost of available and projected commu-nication devices are breaking down thelimitations of distance and phvsical bar-rier. No one today need be isolatedfrom his two billion neighbors. Formost of this earth's population there isan eagerness to examine the commonnews and ideas that come to our sensesfrom the entire globe over the moderncommunication systems.

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While we have changed the geo-graphic bases of cormmunication, wehave at the same time been forced tochange the concept of com7rm7ity. Inturn we have come to think of widerand wider circles of human association:the state community, the regional com-munity, the national community, andfinally, the world community. As wehave become aware of these wideningcommunities, we have tried to createthe laws and the institutions whichwould regulate life for the vastly in-creased number of people in the en-larged geographic areas. When we de-veloped the motor car to replace thehorse-drawn vehicle, we widened thecommunity to encompass the new landarea upon which dwelt the people whocame together by automobiles for al-most daily business and amusement.

And within the boundaries of thisnew community we established trafficlaws, police, and courts to cope withthe emerging communication and trans-portation problems common to all. Like-wise, as we move outward with the air-plane as a means of communication, weonce more must draw a wider geo-graphic circle to include those who arenow neighbors in a national or conti-nental community. It must follow thatwe struggle to create a new set of insti-tutional controls, through such agenciesas the Civil Aeronautics Administration,to assure the smooth oDeration of thenew communication within the expand-ing community.

The lesson to be learned from thisanalysis of the mutual enlargement ofcomnmmication and community is asimple one: the advances of technologyin our time develop pressures upon mostof our economic, social, and politicalinstitutions, each of which was designed

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to cope with a prior set of simpler toolsand processes within a narrower com-munity. The problem confronting us isone of modifying old institutions andcreating new ones rapidly enough toprevent more and more serious malad-justments through lag or imbalance inthe cultural patterns. During the cur-rent century this process of rebuildinglaws and institutions has not kept pacewith material advances and thus we in-herit our current confusions.

The Schools and Cultural Balance

There are many forces which willoperate to bring about better balance inour culture: some of these forces willwork more or less independently ofhuman design while other forces willoperate in the direction of lessening ten-sion only if we humans collectively andwilfully set the forces in motion andcarefully direct them. One of the mostpowerful of these latter forces is public-school education.

Historically the curriculum of ourschools has always responded to socialpressures. When our Puritan forefathersdecided that more universal knowledgeof the Bible was essential for each hu-man to enter the Kingdom of God, theschools were made compulsory and eachchild was taught to read. Reading, as acurricular subject was a direct outcomeof the analysis of the leaders of thatday who deliberately set a curricularpattern to achieve their great objectives.

Another illustration of more recentdate will enforce the thesis that theschool curriculum has been used effec-tively to attain long-term ends. Morethan a generation ago, the city fathersof Chicago conceived a great plan forthe development of the Lake Michiganwaterfront. This plan was embodied

Educational Leadership

in a textbook and placed in the handsof Chicago high-school pupils. For sev-eral high-school generations the planwas studied, argued pro and con. Therein the schools the seeds of the WackerPlan took root, and as these young citi-zens came into political power in Chi-cago, increasingly they put into effectmore and improved features of the greatconcept of the front yard of the citybeautiful. One can point out that theplan failed to provide for an adequatebackyard for the city, but the lesson re-mains that the school curriculum hastremendous potentialities for achievinglong-term goals.

To return to the problem of lesseningour cultural lag: obviously during therest of this century most of our creativeenergy must be directed to the designingof institutional controls for our largercomnmunity. Those laws and customswhich operated well enough in our nar-rowly confined communities of lung-power communication are not suited tothe much more complex associationsbrought on in the larger community bh-electronic communication. Here, svm-bol;callv, is the maior task for the cur-riculum of our schools. During thispresent period we must give childrenand voulth the learning experiencesNwh;ch will eu;iD them for the creativetaskzs of qocial pioneering in the largercommunity.

Planning of Curriculum Essentialfor Assuring Goals

Learning experiences adequate to de-velop understanding of and loyalty tothe larger community -will not comewithout large-scale curricula planning.The naive idea that a child-centeredcurriculum will of itself assure suchmore universal ends has been under

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attack for a long time. There is a grow-ing conviction on the part of many edu-cators that a child-centered curriculummay even develop self-centerednesswhich may be the antithesis of selflessinterest in the larger community. Andsurely, a child progressing from gradeto grade in a school where there hasbeen no overall agreement on the cur-ricular pattern for building the largercommunity, has no more than a chanceopportunity to be exposed to the experi-ences out of uwhich the desired behaviormight emerge.

The Method Is Pupil Interest

It must be stated emphatically, how-ever, that the psychological case forinterest and effort in education has beenproved beyond a doubt. The learnerwill acquire such behavior as is mean-ingful to him and seems to him toachieve his purposes. Any teacher whohas been alert to the effect of pupil in-terest on learning is fullyv aware of theskill pupils attain in passive resistance totasks for which the learners can see nopurpose: and on the other hand. allteachers who know the art of teachinghave seen how eagerly effort is put forthand hotw great is the learner's retentionwvhen interest directs learning activity.

The quarrel is not with the importantplace of child interest in learning, butwith the idea that the curriculum of ourtime can be left to chance overall de-sign. The task of building the largercommunity is so crucial that we dare notleave its achievement to the emerging-whims of children, or the caprice of in-dividual teachers. The task of so greatimportance calls for an overall frame-work which will be the product of thecombined judgment of the leaders in

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our culture. Once such a frameworkhas been agreed upon in broad outline,then the particular thread and color ofthe subpattern of daily classroom experi-ences, must for obvious psychologicalreasons, be left to the interests of thelearners. The teacher, working withinthe curricular pattern agreed on, setsthe stage and creates an environment towhich the child responds with interestsand purposes which are directed by theartful teacher toward understanding ofand loyalty to the larger community.

Many Practical Curricular Plans

Assuming that there is, momentarily,agreement with the analysis so far, andthat the school curriculum is to be as-signed the task of providing much of thelearned behavior essential to regainingour cultural balance, the question arisesas to what the design or pattern of theexperiences shall be. There are manygood designs in operation today thatcontribute to such objectives. The au-thor holds no particular brief for theone which follows. The particulars ofthe proposal herewith are not signifi-cant; only the way of approaching acurricular pattern is important in thisdiscussion.

An Overall Theme for the Curriculum

We start with an integrative themefor the twelve grades of the publicschool. This overall theme will givemeaning and direction to the educationof the various divisions of the school, tothe emphasis for each grade, and even tomost of the experiences which pupilshave from day to day.

For this integrative theme for the en-tire school, we propose: "Helping chil-dren and youth develop understandingand behavior essential to survival and

progress in our world cowmnmmity." Itshould be clear that this theme requiresconcepts, skills, and attitudes that aredrawn from the disciplines of history,philosophy, geography, political science,sociology, anthropology, economics,science and technology, mathematics,and the arts-communicative and fine.In pointing to these traditional subjectdisciplines, however, it is not intended toimply that the mere addition of isolatedexperiences in the traditional schoolsense will achieve the objective.

It is also clear that the theme encom-passes all the human activities whichcan be classified in less formal termsthan the disciplines aforementioned. Asimple listing of universally importantclusters of human activities would in-clude: (I) protecting and conservinghuman and non-human resources, (2)

producing, distributing, and consuminggoods and services, (3~ transportinggoods and people, (4) communicatingthoughts and feelings, (5) expressing aes-thetic and religious impulses, (6) pro-viding recreation, (7) providing educa-tion, (8) organizing and governing.Use of such a listing of basic human ac-tivities will serve to assure that everypupil experience will be viewed by theteacher as a part of a larger scheme ofracial experiences.

Emphases in the Elementary Grades

Consider how the elementary schoolcurriculum, taking its cue from theoverall theme, assumes responsibility foranalysis of one important aspect of thecultural imbalance-namely, the scien-tific and technological. Let us say thatthe curriculum of the elementary gradeswill stress: "Helping children under-stand and improve their participation inhuman groups and their control over

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their environmem by comparison andcontrast of those cultures using mech-anical power and complex machineswith those cultures using muscle powerand simple tools."

Breaking this elementary schooltheme down still further, we could as-sign to the first and second grades thetasks of providing children with learn-ing experiences which would help thembetter to carry on the human activitiesin their contemporary and immediateenvironment. Such an emphasis is al-ready widely used in the primary gradesof American schools and takes the formof units of work organized around suchconcepts as home life, school life, neigh-borhood, and local community. Forsuch possible units of experience thepupil is dealing primarily with situationsin which mechanical energy and com-plex machines are used by his family andneighbors to carry on the basic humanactivities: driving the family car onshopping trips, turning on the radio forthe weather report, or calling the doctorwhen an accident occurs.

Moving along with the pupil into thethird and fourth grades, the subthemefor emphasis could be providing experi-ences for children which would aidthem in fuller control over their envir-onment by comparison of the meansof carrying on the human activities incontrasting communities where peopleadjust to nature as they find it. Here thedaily experiences of the pupils wouldgrow out of their interest in primitives,and in local history. In either case, prim-itives or local history, the methods oftravel or food production or recreation,without machinery, would contrastsharply with the ways the child islearning in his everyday living in mod-ern America. The child who has ob-

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served the story of a loaf of bread fromhis grocerymen to the baker and evento the miller or farmer, is in a better po-sition to understand and appreciate theintangible elements of bread productionif he is allowed to grind corn with sim-ple tools, bake it over an open fire, andgenerally contrast the role of the humanwith and without machinery.

Following the pupil into the fifth andsixth grades the subtheme of our pro-posed school curriculum might be pro-viding experiences for children whichwould help them understand and par-ticipate in carrying out the human ac-tivities in our contemporary world com-munity. Here the emphasis is on themodern technological controls whichmake the food we consume, the musicwe sing, or the news we hear, the com-bined result of the entire human familyand the full range of the earth's re-sources. Units of work could be organ-ized around such interests as a budget ofgoods and services to keep the pupil (orthe two billion humans) supplied for ayear; the quantity and location of theearth's resources for satisfying thisbudget of need; the earth patterns of in-dustrial productive plant for processingthe raw earth materials (forests, min-erals, animals) into useful goods andservices; and the story of modern world-wide distribution-retailer, wholesaler,advertiser, financial expert, warehouser,and transporter. The experiences ofthese two grades are sharply in contrastwith the work of grades three and four,where simple technics limited the rangeof possibilities to the immediate localcommunity. Here in the fifth and sixthgrades the pupil is beginning to get thebasic experiences on which he can builda concept of changes in technology.

He can begin to sense that as modern

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men use more mechanical energy andmore ingenious machines, it must fol-low that the common interests widenuntil they encompass the world com-munity. Referring again to our openinganalyses that the present crisis is in largemeasure caused by the rapid develop-ment of science and technology and thelack of corresponding advance in the in-stitutional controls, we have in the ele-mentary grades an emphasis on the greatshifts in the technological. Obviously, itis impossible and wholly undesirable toexclude in the elementary school thesocial, economic, or political counter-part of technological shifts. To illus-trate: in grade four the oxcart as ameans of travel in our great-grand-fathers' day would surely be studied interms of the rules of the highway trafficwhich citizens of our historical com-munity observed. Later in grades fiveor six when we study the airplane as onenew means of transportation in contrastwith the oxen, it would be natural tolook at the Civil Aeronautics Adminis-tration and its efforts to create new airtraffic rules to regulate modem air-planes. But it is important to note thatthe emphases in the six grades of theelementary school are on the contrastingtechnics men use to carry on the basichuman activities-without machineryand with machinery.

The Plan for the Secondary GradesWe turn now to the subtheme for the

secondary grades: "Helping youth buildunderstanding and behavior essential toparticipate in the elimination of culturallag in democratic, social, economic, andpolitical institutions, and in values in ourcontemporary world community."

Examination of this phrasing will dis-close that the pupil is now to have his

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interest stimulated and directed towardthe institutional changes which shouldgo hand in hand with technological ad-vances if the cultural is to remain fairlystable. The emphases shift from techno-logical advances to social pioneering.

Junior High-School Experiences

In the seventh, eighth, and ninthgrades, the subtheme might be as fol-lows: "Providing the pupils with ex-periences which will help them developthe concept of changes in institutionswhich follow changes in technics, andan appreciation of democracy as themost perfect instrument men have de-vised for controlling changes throughevolutionary and peaceful means." Ingrade seven the units of work could beorganized around the concept of an-cient man and his slow and unscientificadvances from prehistory to the indus-trial revolution. In grade eight, the em-phasis could be on modern scientific manin his rapid technological advances fromthe beginning of the industrial revolu-tion to the present with great attentionto the developing cultural lag. For gradenine the story of democracy would beunfolded and the experiences so shapedthat the pupils would develop an appre-ciation of and a loyalty to the demo-cratic concept and processes. Out ofthese three years would emerge theunderstanding of the nature of ourworldwide cultural frustration and con-fusion, and a sense of our great fortuneto have at hand the democratic faith andprocesses for the elimination or theeasing of our frustrations.

On the surface it would appear thatthe grade emphases for the iunior highschool depart from the possible interestmaturations pattern of adolescence. Thisobservation no doubt is partially true,

Educational Leadership

but not until we have experimentedwith the psychological aspects of such asocially-determined curricular patternwill we be able to say with certaintyhow much or how little interest and ef-fort youth can generate in such objec-tives. For the moment, we may have toimpose some experiences on youth thatmay be justified by the seriousness ofthe cultural crisis and hope that our ex-perimentation will disclose the properpedagogical methods later.

Senior High-School Directives

The capstone of this curricular designis rightfully in the senior high school.Here the emphases might be: "Helpingyouth participate effectively in improv-ing human relations through strengthen-ing, modifying, or creating social, eco-nomic, or political arrangements andvalues in the local cormnunity and state(grade lo), in the region and nations(grade I), and in the world cornmrunity(grade Iz). The pupils' interests in andcapacity for improving institutional fa-cilities and controls can be developed bysuccessful participation in the work ofpublic and private groups whose effortsare directed at progress. The .work ofadult groups in recreational commis-sions, soil conservation districts, regi-onal planning commissions, world fed-erations for scientific advance and ex-change-these and many more regularlyfunctioning bodies provide the oppor-tunity for youth to join with their eld-ers in the challenging tasks of studyingshortages and building programs of ac-tion for improvement. Typically, theaction will be in modifying the institu-tional controls in order to take advan-tage of the technical facilities available.

Thus, on their maturity level, youngpeople see that the cultural lag can begradually and peacefully eliminatedthrough social modification. They cometo see that the institutions now lackingon the larger community level can andmust be fashioned if we are to surviveand progress. A world bank, world avia-tion rules, world atomic warfare con-trol, a security council on world basis-these and many more institutional con-trols of a democratic character must becreated and made strong if we are tokeep and profit from our recent ad-vances in technology.

Relation of This Design toTotal Learning

Space does not permit fuller discus-sion of the design herein proposed, butone point must be made before closing.This design does not direct the totallearning that goes on in the school. Afair estimate of the percentage of learn-ing experiences caught up under such adesign might be: elementary grades,fifty per cent of the school dav devotedto the integrative core; junior and seniorhigh school, thirty per cent of the timledirected by such a theme. The balanceof the day would provide ample timefor the development of individual in-terest and aptitude or for pursuing agroup interest outside of the commoncore.

What we have proposed is an overallpattern of emphases in which all pupilsfrom grades one through twelve willhave common experiences which arethought essential for building the insti-tutions and value system of our largercommunity.

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Copyright © 1946 by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. All rights reserved.