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Show School Courses Found at Fault Survey Finds They Fail to Fit the Pupil to Live in Democratic Society. NEW YORK. Ninety per cent of the courses of study now offered in the American public schools are inadequate in-adequate and do not prepare the students stu-dents to live in a democratic society, Dr. Herbert B. Bruner of Teachers college charged in a report of a five-year five-year investigation. A staff of research workers and assistants co-operated in the study, which sampled -85,000 courses in use in schools throughout the country. Only 10 per cent of them have kept pace with the tempo of American life, according to Dr. Bruner. For the most part, the courses have not been changed in a quarter of a century. cen-tury. Such subjects as advertising, advertis-ing, housing, consumer education and an improved standard of living have been almost neglected, the report re-port noted. Overhauling Urged. A "decided overhauling" of the school curriculum is essential, in the opinion of Dr. Bruner. This is particularly true today, he added, with the emphasis placed upon democratic way of living and the defense program. In examining the courses, the educator found that while Europe was mentioned 15,000 times, South America was referred to fewer than 100 times. "Ninety per cent of our schools are not teaching the kind of things that will enable the children to live in a democratic society," Dr. Bruner Bru-ner said. "The schools deal with academic topics, which for the most part have not been changed or revised re-vised for numbers of years. They have not kept pace with the rapid tempo of present-day society." A much-neglected field, Dr. Bruner Bru-ner reported, is that of gifted pupils, for whom not a single course is offered. of-fered. Also there are relatively few courses for the kindergarten. On the other hand, topics treated at great length in the social science courses are industries, transportation, transporta-tion, communication, international and peace relations, education, finance, race problems, production and labor and capital. Lack Timely New Content.- "One of the major findings emerging emerg-ing from the examination of these courses of study is that there is a great dearth of the kind of new content con-tent which is needed in our times," the report observes. "The new material that does appear, however, is. in the main, better suited to current cur-rent needs, and may be the forerunner fore-runner of increased volume of similar simi-lar content in the future." "Glaring" shortages exist in certain cer-tain fields, such as science, Dr. Bruner Bru-ner said, where there is "almost no mention of practical science in industry, in the home, or with reference ref-erence to the consumer." "The underlying philosophy of many of these courses prevents the content from assuming full significance," signif-icance," he wrote. "For example, the idea that science should remain 'pure' stultified the social emphasis that might otherwise be present." |