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Show Technician To carry on the war to a successful success-ful completion industry is requiring more and more youth with technical training. This young lady, intently studying an object through a high-powered high-powered microscope, will be well prepared to take one of the thousands thou-sands of jobs which will be open to her when she leaves high school. "hurry the preparation of men" is a logical demand. It has been proposed pro-posed that high schools continue during the summer, on Saturdays and holidays, that the school terms be reduced in length in order to give those who will soon be under arms as much education as possible. In general, educators have strongly strong-ly opposed universal acceleration of high school pupils. The attitude of the Wartime commission of the United States Office of Education may be taken tak-en as typical. Its recent report - points out that hastening the progress of students through school will enable them to "go into defense jobs, defense training train-ing classes, non-defense jobs to replace persons who have left for defense jobs, or into the armed forces ... or to enter college earlier." These purposes pur-poses are commendable, thinks the commission, but it rules against general acceleration in favor of stepping up the rate of progress only for pupils who are physically and intellectually able to speed up with profit to the war effort and no damage to the pupils themselves. Because this opinion is so widely held by educators, there is little likelihood that the school year 1942-43 1942-43 will . be shorter than the years preceding it. Another policy will be followed by colleges and higher institutions in-stitutions where the maturity of students stu-dents and the exigencies of war make acceleration feasible and profitable. prof-itable. - Different Courses Emphasized. The students who are entering school this month will find some outstanding out-standing shifts of emphasis in the courses of study since September, 1941. These do not represent radical radi-cal changes. Only a few of these changes can be offered by way of illustration. Geography is an excellent subject with which to begin since, unlike current events and history, it is usually thought of as not changing much from day to day. The continents and oceans, the mountains and rivers are more or less constant in size and position. These physical facts, however, are not of great importance except as they affect the lives of men. The geography ge-ography textbook, therefore, which includes a chapter on the -rubber plantations of Sumatra and the Malay peninsula, is due for some revision. War has considerably altered al-tered the political status of great portions of the map, world commerce com-merce has found new trade routes, and trade itself is heavily in commodities com-modities little sought a few years ago. Methods of travel are changing chang-ing the character of the maps which today's students will use. Aviation has made the "flat map" or Mer-cator Mer-cator projection of secondary importance. impor-tance. The globe is taking its place. Those of us who visualize Japan due west of the United Slates find it difficult to realize that airplanes on their shortest route from Tokyo to the Panama canal would first strike the United States somewhere on the Canadian border. . The Need for Mathematics. Mathematics, another study that is often thought of as fixed in nature since the same two numbers always add up to the same total, will see its change also. For many years the schools have been adjusting arithmetic to the daily needs of a people at peace. The textbook problems, prob-lems, therefore, have had to do with matters like life insurance, income taxes, budget making, home management man-agement and bookkeeping. Suddenly Sudden-ly there comes a demand for skill in the use of the mathematics needed need-ed by the bombardier and gunner. The reason for the lack of these skills is the same reason which prompted our government to sell scrap iron and gasoline to Japan. We were a peaceful people and hoped to remain so. The mathem.itics of navigation naviga-tion and ballistics, the chemistry chemis-try of the munitions worker, the physics of the military engineer will most certainly find their way into school and college cur-riculums cur-riculums and Trill stay there until un-til the minds and hearts of men are set once more on the arts of peace. |