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TOMORROW'S EDUCATION

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ous, so rapid, and so extensive as to inhibit and in some ways nullify the role of tradition.

They have done so with amazing success. Other social institutions also have made important contributions to the education of our citizenry, of course, but it is the schools that have had the basic responsibility. In carrying out that responsibility they have taken the lead in building and maintaining a dynamic and yet stable political and social order. They have been at the heart of the development of a labor force possessing those levels of flexibility, intelligence, and skill necessary to undergird the remarkable advances that have been made in agriculture, industry, and commerce. They have helped to induct into the common life of the Nation millions of newcomers from diverse cultures, speaking different languages and having different customs and folkways. They have been primarily responsible for creating an environment in which, during the last gen

Dr. Tyler is Director Emeritus of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

BY RALPH W. TYLER

eration, about half of the population moved up to higher levels of affluence and responsibility than those attained by their parents, while only about a fourth moved down. And while serving the needs of society as a whole, they have also sought to serve Americans as individuals, offering them opportunities to develop their own special talents, pursue their own particular interests, and achieve their own personal goals.

The common characteristic in these enterprises has been responsiveness to society's evolving demands and expecta tions. Tomorrow's education can thus be expected to be shaped by tomorrow's society, and the new demands, new problems, and new aspirations it is heir to. Along the way, of course, it will be necessary to take care of some unfinished business, prominently including the challenge of educating all the Nation's children. We speak glibly of having universal elementary education in America, and statistically the statement is accurate, with 95 percent or more of the Nation's children enrolled in school. Results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate, however, that about 20 percent of these children do not in fact acquire the skills and knowledge taught in the primary grades and are left unprepared to progress either in school or toward responsible adulthood.

Characteristically coming from homes of poverty where their parents have had little education, they are confronted when they

enter school by formidable barriers. They encounter, for example, a curriculum (and a way of presenting it) developed to serve children from homes where the parents have already built a ground-work for schooling - by having books in the home, by reading aloud from them, by engaging the children in conversations that express orderly thought and draw on ideas, and by instilling confidence in their sons and daughters that they can handle school work. Boys and girls who have not received this kind of stimulation are likely to perceive school learning not only as overwhelmingly difficult but irrelevant to their lives. To enable them to absorb what the school seeks to teach requires the construction of a new kind of curriculum, the use of new kinds of teaching methods, and the development of approaches that engage these particular children at a level where they actually are and help them move forward in terms of their individual abilities and interests.

Another frustrating barrier standing in the way of such children is the continued use in many places of practices geared to an earlier time when the school's function was fully as much to sort students as to educate them. When the Nation was new, nearly 80 percent of the labor force was en gaged in unskilled labor, less than three percent in professional and managerial occupations. Even so much as an elemen tary education was not necessary to be productive in primitive agriculture, manufacturing, and construction, and only a very few men (and no women) needed preparation for the professions. It seemed sensible, then, to ration education so that the numbers of people receiving different amounts of schooling would correspond roughly to the available opportunities. This sorting process was turned over to the schools, and it was accomplished by the classroom grades given out to the pupils. Marks of "excellent" or "good" served to encourage further education, while "poor" and "failure" signaled the advisability of trying something else. For the purpose at hand, this weeding out process was effective. In 1910, for example, about half of America's children had stopped their schooling by the age of 12 but still managed to find jobs of one kind or another. Only ten percent went on through high school, and only three percent graduated from college.

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Societal demands today are of course vastly different. In 1970 less than five percent of the men and women making up the labor force were engaged in nonfarm un skilled labor, while more than 40 percent were engaged in professional, technical. and other occupations requiring more than a high school education. Toward meeting the needs both of the individual and of society at large, the schools are now expected to help every child achieve the full limit of his or her potential – a goal at odds with the continued use of a marking system

that in effect tells many children to give up. Since 1965 national attention has been focused on finding ways of educating these youngsters, and progress slowly is being made. Significant improvements are nonetheless reported in only about one-third of the classrooms where there are concentrations of children from homes of poverty. The schools of tomorrow will be more fully responsive to this challenge, and we can expect the number of American children who are truly gaining a primary education to increase from the present 80 percent to at least 95 percent.

Going beyond education's unfinished business, a second major responsibility facing tomorrow's education is the orderly and effective transition of youth from childhood to constructive participation in adult life. As American society has become specialized and urbanized, young people have increasingly become more isolated from it. There are fewer responsibilities assigned to children as their contribution to maintaining the family, and fewer oppor tunities for them to help with their parents' occupations, to participate in adult social affairs, to try out adult roles, even to obtain part-time jobs. For earlier generations these were significant ways in which young people were aided in their progress to adulthood. Meanwhile, however, work left the home and farm to be carried on in factory and shop, and as it did so, concern

arose for the safety and welfare of the youth drawn to it. Among other things, that concern stimulated the enactment of

laws strictly regulating child labor, raising the compulsory age of school attendence, and establishing minimum wages. Useful and even necessary though these statutes and regulations have been, they have coincidentally greatly limited the opportunity for young people to learn what work and adult life are all about. The net result of this forced isolation has been to alienate young people from the adult society, to delay personal and social maturation, sometimes to inhibit permanently the development of responsibility because of over-protection from the consequence of personal actions.

American society cannot long endure without a means for a peaceful and effective transition of youth into adulthood. As arrangements of the past have dissolved, new provisions must be constructed. In the Communist countries, this transition is largely the task of the Communist youth organizations that take over the activities of young people for several hours at the end of each school day and on holidays. A roughly similar function was performed in the United States during the Depression of the 1930s by the National Youth Adminis tration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, established as emergency measures to provide work for young people at a time of massive unemployment. Although these agencies aided great numbers of American youth, they were not well integrated either into the schools or the overall society, serving only low-income families and providing only a limited range of work experience. The needs of the future call for a more permanent, more carefully planned approach that involves all youth in a variety of constructive adult activities in which they take increasing initiative and responsibility.

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Many community institutions and organizations need to participate in endeavors of this sort, but the school is in the best position to serve as coordinator, to take the lead in drawing up appropriate plans, to help young people determine the particular programs best suited to their needs and aspirations, and to monitor these programs toward assuring their educative effectiveness.

Tomorrow's schools also can be expected to be deeply involved in the related issue of occupational education. Until the present century the number of different occupations was small, and the professions aside, most required very little training. Particularly during the past few decades, however, advances in science and technology have created thousands of jobs unknown to previous generations and requiring specialized knowledge and technical preparation. Thus the traditional usefulness of apprenticeship, which depends heavily on observing the master and emulating his example, has been significantly narrowed. One cannot easily observe what the master is thinking, and in any case new technology is likely to render his procedures obsolete. For a number of reasons, then, apprenticeship and on-the-job training have become inadequate to serve a large sector of young people.

The high schools face some critical difficulties in providing occupational education. A recent public opinion survey, to cite one example, showed that more than 90 percent of the parents wanted their children to go to college and that more than 70 percent expected them to do so. In most high schools, however, enrollment in vocational education programs means skipping the courses commonly required for college admission, and in this circumstance many parents insist that their children avoid vocational training. Many other parents do not raise that barrier, of course, but here too the situation is unsatisfactory, since the schools have difficulty in providing instruction and working laboratories that realistically respond to the range of jobs that are likely to be opening up. Communities that have a large fraction of young people wanting vocational education are typically those that can offer only limited employment opportunities. In rural areas, for example, more than 80 percent of the youth must go into the cities if they are to find jobs, but few if any rural high schools have personnel or facilities capable of providing education for most urban occupations, much less the time and opportunity to keep pace with the constantly changing character and re

quirements of those occupations.

Within the cities and in rural areas alike there remains a problem pointed out in the 1962 report of the Panel of Consultants on Vocational Education-that the youngsters most in need of vocational education in order to gain a permanent place in the labor force are those from low-income homes-the same youngsters that the

schools have not been reaching. And there is the problem also of adults who need retraining because their jobs have been eliminated or sharply changed by technological innovations, a situation that few schools are really prepared to deal with.

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The strengthening of occupational education thus must rank high on education's agenda for the future, and moves now under way in this direction can be expected to accelerate. One such move is the concept of "career education," advanced by Sidney P. Marland, Jr., when he was U.S. Commissioner of Education and now being pursued - with continuing stimulus from the Office of Education - in number of States. Typically, the schools in these States follow a pattern by which, as part of the regular academic program, children explore the world of work in the elementary grades, systematically examine various possible careers in the junior high school years, and at the high school and post-high school levels are afforded opportunities to prepare for initial employment. Another move is the development in some high schools of a core of educational offerings for all students which assures that those who devote some of their time to vocational training are not thereby made ineligible for college. Meanwhile there is increasing interest in the expansion, both at the secondary and postsecondary levels, of "cooperative education," by which the student combines school and on-the-job experience.

Useful though such developments may be, however, it seems clear that for many young people, the problems of occupational education cannot be solved by the schools and colleges alone. Indeed, until industry, commerce, and public agencies join with our educational institutions in working out more effective ways for young people to gain initial employment and move ahead as they demonstrate greater competence and initiative, more than a third of the Nation's youth will never have a real career. As for the schools, they also will have to make considerable adjustments, not only by changes in the curriculum but by capitalizing on the resources represented by people and facilities outside the school. Toward that end, the schools will among other things establish flexible schedules so that young people may attend school part time while working full time, or perhaps drop out for a semester or two and then return, and so that adults may enroll at various periods in their lives to learn new or broader skills.

n equally compelling challenge to tomorrow's schools is that of char

acter development. The schools

have always played a part in this complex process, of course, but the more traditional sources of influence have been the home, religious institutions, and the neighborhood. In earlier periods of American life, newspapers and other publications gave wide circulation to prevailing concepts of integrity and moral conduct, and persons seen as being exemplars of strong character were pointed to as models for young people to emulate. In combination, these various forces helped young people expand their behavioral horizons beyond an impulsive, childlike concentration on the gratification of immediate needs. Together they promoted conduct guided by a more mature concern for what is good and proper, a perception of long range goals and accomplishments, a devotion to certain beliefs and ideals, and the courage to follow them in the face of conflicting pressures. As a reflection of the larger society, the role of the schools was to reinforce these concepts.

As America has become a more open, multicultural society, however, the values and influences of yesteryear have tended to lose their potence. Many parents no longer insist on a particular code of conduct. Both within the community and more especially through the mass media, young people are confronted by varied and sometimes conflicting views of acceptable behavior and standards of right and wrong. The religious institutions no longer exert great influence on the mass of children and youth. Recognition and respect are given to persons for kinds of achievements that have no

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connection with moral values, and devotion to ethical standards and the courage to adhere to them seem no longer to be newsworthy. The result is a gap in young people's development that commands priority attention if our society is to remain stable.

Tomorrow's schools will of necessity play a vital role in filling that gap. More than any other contemporary social institution, the school lends itself to providing young people firsthand contact with a community in which each person is respected as an individual without regard to color or family income or religious or ethnic background, in which people sincerely care for one another, in which everyone is encouraged to participate and to share in the rewards of accomplishing, and in which justice and fair play are the norm. The schools of today are much more like this than were the schools of the past, and more of those of tomorrow are likely to thus exemplify the nature of a truly democratic society. In doing so they will also be called upon to encourage young people to identify the values involved in the situations they encounter and the actions they take, helping them learn how to anticipate the consequences of those actions and become sensitive to their effects on others. In these and other ways, the schools will be expected to make important contributions to character development.

Not just in this connection but as regards the learning process in general, tomorrow's education will begin early in the child's life. Self-motivation, attitudes toward others, the length of time that immediate gratification is postponed for more distant rewards, perceptions of complex phenomena, the ability to focus attention-all these are markedly influenced by the child's experiences in the period from birth to age five. Preliminary responses to this important fact have come in the establishment of Head Start programs and in the adoption by several States of legislation authorizing public funds for this purpose. The future will see a broadening of the effort and a refinement of it, so as to accommodate the variables involved. Some of the more obvious of these variables are the availability or unavailability of the mother in the home, family income, the amount of the mother's education, and the number of young children in the family.

It is unlikely that the schools of tomorrow will take over the early education of children whose mothers are able to be with them for most or all of the day, who interact with them in a coherent and logical fashion, and who give them encouragement and support while at the same time setting educational tasks that require concentration and effort. Where mothers are

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