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Show ABBOTT TELLS MILFORD LIONS OF EDUCATION SYSTEM SHORTCOMINGS By MAX G. ABBOTT Principal, Milford High School (The following article includes the major features of an address delivered by Principal Abbott before the Milford Lions Clnb. We were so favorably impressed with Mr. Abbott's talk, and his obvious sincerity, that we reprint his article in full. Editor). Education, which has often been the object of severe criticism criti-cism in the past, has undergone a particularly severe si:g"e' of fault-finding and antagonism recently. Critics have ranged all the way from those who feel our schools are no longer democratic and should be completely revised to those who feel that Johnnie and Suzy are not being treated fairly and shouid be given a better bet-ter break. I do not want to say that we should not have criticism, criti-cism, for good constructive criticism is what has kept America type of training for the students. One of the saddest things about some of our present schools is that the buildings into which we have put thousands thous-ands of dollars are used about 5Vi hours a day for 172 days a year and then are shut up for the rest of the time. The school, particularly in the rural community, com-munity, should become the cen ter of activity. We spend hundreds hun-dreds of thousands of dollars building good" gymnasiums and use them for semi-professional athletic contests and the townspeople towns-people never have the opportunity opportun-ity to use those facilities even when they are made available. The school and the community should work closely together in the problem of educating the children. I believe an adequate program of adult .education is one of the most vital and pressing needs of our times. The following are a few of the adult education classes which might be valuable in our community: 1. A year-round recreation program for people of all ages. 2. Classes in English for those who haye graduated from high school and found their knowl- I edge to be inadequate (and all j of us could use help here). ' 3. Classes in industrial arts, hobbies and crafts. 4. : Vocational homemaking and vocational agriculture. 5. Commercial classes, both for personal improvement and for vocational value. 6. Courses in music and music appreciation, and in art. 7. Courses in child development develop-ment and human growth and care. society which we have in this country today. The picture is not all rosy however. During World War II the army rejected for military serviec a shocking number of men because they did not have the rudimentary knowledge which would enable them to read and write, skills which were felt necessary to the training of a good soldier. Each year hundreds of students are, leaving the schools for one reason rea-son or another. Some leave to get married, others to take a job and others just to loaf, and yet I feel sure that if these reasons were all analyzed carefully and the students questioned extensively extens-ively it would be found that most of the students left school because the schools did not have to offer the things they felt were important. There could be two reasons for this: (1) The students themselves have a poor set f values, the responsibility for which falls at least partly on the schools, and (2) they have not, either for lack of money or for lack of wise and intelligent leadership, or for both, provided those things which are really 1 vital to the students who are dropping out. I believe that at least part of the answer to the problem that faces our schools is a continued and extensive study of our curricular materials mater-ials and an elimination of those things that are not contributing to the welfare of the students and the adding of those things which are necessary. I do not mean by this that we should go back to the Three R's. a thing that is advocated by many of our parents. We are living in a world that is too complex and is moving too fast to allow us to be satisfied with teaching only these things. I firmly believe that one of the greatest needs facing the country coun-try at this time is the development develop-ment in our people of the ability abil-ity to properly use leisure time. While in college I took a course in opera appreciation because I had to fill some group requirements require-ments and thought that would help. I soon began to enjoy some of the music we had to listen to, and now some of the most enjoyment I receive from life is the enjoyment of listening listen-ing to grand opera. I believe that an appreciation for good music and good literature is as vital to our over-all welfare and full enjoyment of life as anything any-thing we can learn, and thus I feel that the schools have a responsibility re-sponsibility to provide thai and all her institutions progres-' sive and keenly alert to the wants and desires of the people they serve. I want to make it clear that I believe that the school is first and foremost a servant of the people. It was organized by the people to serve them and their children and to help to maintain and improve the institutions which were set up in an organized society. As 1 have implied however, and want to emphasize now, there are two types of criticism, and mean fault-finding and gossiping gossip-ing never did anyone any good and could probably be blamed for many of the world's ills today. to-day. Honest, sincere criticism has served to keep school administrators adminis-trators sensitive to the will of the people and has served to keep the schools the servants of the people, which they should be. However, stupid, neurotic and subversive criticism has forced many schools into a quirkly shifting and unstable program which was geared to the desires of certain pressure groups and which changed as the pressure groups changed. Such a program is, at the best, worthless to the students involved in-volved and at the worst can be . . damaging to the eventual welfare wel-fare of those young people who will leave our schools and become be-come the adults of the community. com-munity. There are many evidences that public schools are, at the present, doing an admirable job in completing the task the people peo-ple have asked them to do. Among these evidences are the following: 1. American education has , contributed to economic prosperity. pros-perity. The U S Chamber of Commerce has shown by research re-search that there exists a high positive correlation between the money spent for schools and the standard of living. 2. World achievement is more and more the work of educated men. Government, industry and the military are vieing for the- services of our college graduates. grad-uates. The recent controversy which focused in Beaver County in the State of Utah over the deferment of men for college training is evidence of this fact. Although all people are not agreed upon the advisability of deferring men from military service to obtain college training, train-ing, the fact remains that the military felt college training important im-portant enough that they initiated initiat-ed the policy and are adhering to it. The total earnings of college col-lege graduates are seven times greater than those of common school graduates and whenever the earnings of the people go up our entire economy benefits. 3. Rumor to the contrary, we are teaching the skills effectively. effective-ly. Publishers of achievement I tests are constantly finding it necessary to raise the norms of I their tests because students are 1 gradually achieving greater and greater efficiency in the skill subjects that are being taught in the schools. Tests which I were given to students of a gen-I gen-I eration ago have been given to ' today's students, and the stu- dents of today have excelled. This is even the more remarkable remark-able when you consider that today to-day we are teaching 90 of the people while a generation ago they were teaching only the select se-lect 15 of the high school age youth who wanted to prepare for college training. 4. Today we are doing everything every-thing in our power to prepare materials to suit the abilities of the pupils and to reduce the need for failure. Our teachers are trained concerning the nature na-ture of child growth and development devel-opment and are more concerned : than ever before over the welfare wel-fare of the whole child. 5. We are improving the training for citizenship. Our concept of citizenship has been broadened to include the home, the community and the entire world. We are no longer con tent to teach facts concerning ancient history merely for the , accumulation of facts, but rath-i rath-i er do we search the past to find j clues which will he'p us to im- prove the present and the fu-I fu-I ture. It would not be hard to find other evidences that the schools are doing a pretty good job of training students to live and to . take their place in the dynamic |