What Shall We Do With the Dullards?

by CASPAR D. GREEN

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ABOUT a generation ago, attendance at school in America ceased to be limited to a few years OR to the more fortunate children and became in reality what it had been in theory, an almost universal fact. This change has, on the one hand, caused traditional ideas of the immediate purpose and function of the schools to be regarded as out of date; and, on the other hand, it now has profoundly altered the frame of attitudes, ideals, and prestige within which the schools work. As long as schooling was a privilege — that is, limited to a sector of the population which knew itself to be especially fortunate, and which was so considered by others — and as long as the pupils were children of parents who had grown up with this attitude, one psychological climate prevailed. But a new atmosphere gradually replaced the old one as pupils and parents came to realize that schooling is not a privilege for the few but is something that nearly everybody experiences, and moreover that it is not even a voluntary experience or of voluntary duration. This change of atmosphere has worked profound alterations in the forces which operate in the classroom, in the school in general, and in the community-school relationships.

The teachers I know agree almost unanimously in preferring to teach what may be called the advanced academic subjects: second-year algebra, plane and solid geometry, trigonometry; beginning and second-year Latin, French, and Spanish; biology, chemistry, and physics. These courses are not required for graduation from high school. The pupil takes these subjects because of some intellectual spark of his own, because his parents want him to, or because he wants to go to college and knows that he needs them as preparation for his college course. In these subjects the wise teacher demands a considerable amount of work and a fairly high level of accomplishment.

When it comes to the pinch and the parents request that the amount, of work be reduced to 15 or 20 minutes a day instead of 45 to 90 minutes, and that grades be raised from D to C, from C to B, from B to A, or even from C to A, the teacher knows himself to be on firm ground in making some such reply as this: “When I pass a student in this course I am certifying to his next instructor that he has covered the material of the course, and that if he works reasonably hard he is capable of continuing with the next course in this field at at least approximately the level indicated by his letter grade. In the first place, I will not give a fraudulent certification. In the second place, it would be no kindness to your child to let him get into college or onto a job only to find out that he is not prepared to do good work. Moreover, if I lower the standards, the result is a disservice to your children and your community, handicapping all future students by making colleges and universities reluctant to accept them or give them scholarships, and prospective employers mistrustful of them.”

The classes composed of selected students are rewarding to teach, and the teaching-learningmoral atmosphere in such classes is wholesome.

A sharply contrasting situation prevails in the courses required for nearly all pupils: ninth-, tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-grade English, world history, American history, general science, first-year algebra or general mathematics. I have taught in a high school of which the community is rightly proud and where the elementary school training of the pupils has been above average. Among the classes I had a chance to observe closely, a usual one might be described as follows: A tenth-grade English class of twenty-six pupils taught by a well-prepared and conscientious teacher. Of the twenty-six, three might be outstanding students who will probably go on to college on substantial scholarships. These three may be put onto individual reading lists and schedules, which is a fairly satisfactory procedure, though it gives them little or no training in composition, for instance. Of the twenty-three remaining, probably thirteen might range from a rough classification of medium to poor; they would be able by consistent effort and application to read with fair to poor comprehension the material in a simple tenth-grade anthology and to reproduce in reasonably intelligible sentences the facts learned. Of the ten still remaining, four or five might be very poor students, and five would be incapable of doing anything that could properly be labeled tenthgrade English. They do not write a sentence; they do not know or care about capitals at the beginning or periods at the end. Such spellings as reive for relieve, tomo for tomato, rote for road, mis pi for Mississippi, angere for engineer, goe or gow for go, will not be exceptional. For reading, few twosyllable words are within their grasp, and many of one syllable are beyond them. Their attitude toward school will vary from total passivity to active protest.

Though the teacher may struggle against it with the ulmost Conscientiousness and much skill, in such a situation the most incompetent students wilt tend to set the standard and the tone of the class. Unless they are insolent or obstreperous, they cannot be removed from the class. They cannot bo invited to leave school: the school will not permit it, the community would not approve, and the parents would strenuously object — but it is precisely what the pupils most wish for, so that the threat of that eventuality is no inducement to them to make any effort.

It is not unusual at this point in a discussion of the matter for a voice to suggest that what the school needs is a larger and better shop for the boys and fuller commercial and domestic science curricula Ibr the girls. Cnfortunately, this is no help. The correlation between English and shop is surprisingly high. There will be one exception, perhaps, in twenty students — one boy out of twenty who does badly in English and well in shop. But the other nineteen who get F in English also flunk shop. If they raise Cain in algebra, they break tools and bore holes in workbenches and cut off fingers in shop. The shop teacher’s problem differs little from the English teacher’s. Similarly with the girls in domestic science and commercial courses.

Although those poor students are learning little or nothing in the way of knowledge or skills, perhaps they are having a valuable social experience — absorbing social attitudes, learning to work with others, acquiring background for citizenship. But upon examination, the values which are inculcated turn out to be largely these: a firm conviction that one can get by without working; an idea that quality of workmanship is of slight importance; a confirmed habit of disregarding instructions; a systematically cultivated indolence; a habitual feeling that the day’s work is an annoying intrusion upon one’s private somnolence; and a whole mass of bad attitudes and bad habits.

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WHAT are we to do, then? The sensible program would be to fail them as soon as they do not do the work on a reasonable standard; this would separate those who merely neglect to do the work from those who are unable or unwilling to do it. As many as possible of the latter group should be induced to leave school early; they should be seriously, sympathetically, and humanely helped to find permanent and gainful jobs suitable for youngsters.

The schools have given this group such exaggerated attention as actually to lose sight of their main function — namely, education and training in the elementary branches of learning and the primary skills. Almost anything else can be obtained elsewhere in our society — social experience, vocational training, particular skills with the tools of all the myriad productive and commercial processes of an industrial age. Most of these things, indeed, are more quickly and more efficiently acquired on the job than in the best-equipped shop or commercial course ever dreamed of. But it is no empty generalization to note that the so-called academic skills—reading, writing, arithmetic — and the elements of science, history, and politics must be acquired at school. The school’s central function is academic training. Though the other activities are not to be spoken of slightingly, they are but frills in comparison with the central significance of the academic disciplines.

First, there is the matter of all those who are going to need academic facts and skills for their further training and for the exercise of their occupations — roughly, all those who go on to occupations which require a college education. This includes, of course, all of the recognized professions and quasi-professions and many other jobs as well. About these people there is no debate: they need to be skillful and experienced readers; they must have the elements of arithmetic at their fingertips.

From the second point of view, an examination of the skilled trades and semi-skilled occupations affords extensive evidence of the importance in them of the academic elements. Plumbers report that it is hard to find young men who can understand written instructions, calculate lengths, sizes, capacities, and rates, make out bills, or keep accounts. These are not deficiencies in practical training, in shop education, but lacks in academic preparation: arithmetic, geometry, writing, reading. Carpenters’ and contractors’ comments are similar. They can’t find help that knows how to figure a bill of lumber or to calculate a roof slant.

A good secretary is distinguished from a poor one largely on the basis of English. A good file clerk is marked by competence in reading. A general clerk will, in addition, require arithmetic. A receptionist and telephone operator will find her advancement to be conditional on her satisfactory use and reasonably wide comprehension of oral English. The particular problems, subject matter, and skills of the job have to be learned on the job; but the employee will be more or less successful according to the measure of his mastery of the academic elements. Whether the student belongs to the pre-college or to the pre-trade and commercial group, academic subjects are the pivots upon which his career will turn.

The school building, organization, curriculum, and staff represent a community enterprise. All sorts of community services may be introduced into the framework of the school, so long as they do not prevent the school from being an effective school. These may include baby-sitting (now practiced on an overwhelming scale), dental clinics, dietary and nutritional subsidies, penal administration, and dozens of others, ranging from the most commendable to the most trivial and ludicrous. If these are services which the community desires, and if the school is a convenient center for their administration, there can be no serious objection until the point is reached where they begin to usurp the time which must be given to schooling.

Few communities would approve closing school for a week in order to give the building over for a firemen’s carnival. However, most communities have in effect turned over their classrooms permanently to a relatively small group who cannot or will not appreciate the serious, constant, inescapable, and profound importance of learning — learning from the first grade right on up. When at least It) to 15 per cent, and possibly as high as 25 to 50 per cent, of the students in a class cannot or will not learn; and when these students cannot be removed from the class or from the school; and when only the smallest portion of them, either as a matter of policy or as a practical matter, can be failed — in such a situation it is difficult to find any method of encouraging, let alone requiring, those who could learn, to work at it consistently. Every teacher to some extent resorts to a double standard, but this device is not consistently effective in the classroom and can never be defended in the real pinch — for example, when a parent comes in and says, “You can’t flunk my child with a grade of 50 when you have passed others whose grades were only 35.” The worst of the situation is not promotion day, however, but all the school days of the year, when the class knows it doesn’t have to work, knows that slipshod work will be accepted, is satisfied that English, arithmetic, writing, civics, and history are not really important.

One effort to meet this problem has backfired and aggravated it. This has consisted in trying to motivate learning by presenting it as fun. Now if learning should be fun — which the children are told officially, and informally as well — it is a sufficient explanation of the non-performance of an assignment or of refusal to study a given type of subject matter to say that it was no fun, not amusing. The teacher is put in the position of an entertainer. He must amuse and entertain his audience; if he can also teach, fine. But he can’t teach unless his subject is entertaining.

Fun, of course, is a flexible idea. There is no doubt that algebra, geography, English composition, civics, history, and literature are fun. But they are not fun like dancing, basketball, tiddlywinks, or tag; they are fun like algebra, geography, English composition, civics, history, and literature. Their kind of fun, for those who master them, is much more satisfying than the recreational, pastime sorts of fun. But it is not to be come by without sustained and serious application which may be, but also may not be, fun. The indispensable thing is that we should be in dead earnest about these serious things. The fun will take care of itself. Also, unless we are in earnest the schools are crippled in all their efforts to make a contribution toward developing in their pupils self-discipline, responsibility, and the other invaluable moral qualities.

One final point should be mentioned. The strong implication of the foregoing is that those who do not learn (whether by inability or by disinclination) must not be allowed to prevent the school from performing its service to the community and to the students who can and wish to benefit by it. This implies what school administrations in recent decades would probably have characterized as a hardboiled, even a narrow, attitude toward those who don’t want academic training. If the attitude is hard-boiled or narrow, it is so on sound bases. Everyone needs all the academic training that he can absorb; whatever his walk of life or occupation, his success and his happiness will be to a remarkable degree conditioned by what we call academic training. Any individual may of course judge that he does not need such training. Such a decision is within the right of the individual to make; but there is no right to interfere with or prevent such training for those who want it and for whom the preservation of our civilization requires it. When any individual reaches the stage of interfering with the good workmanship of others, he should be withdrawn from school. He may be a social problem or a problem of some other kind, but he has ceased to be a school problem. For a school should not be diverted from great constructive ends to picayune, sentimental, and retrogressive side-issues; it should not sacrifice a major quality of civilization to an unrealistic concern for an unfortunate group which, although a real social problem, is not an educational one.

In brief, we need less concern with making the schools practical and much more awareness of the practicality of the scholastic.