The Junior High School Idea (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1922 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XX TEACHER PARTICIPATION IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION There is no real need in a discussion of junior high school problems to add to the natural complications of our study, the great problem of Teacher Participation-in School Government. Yet if we are to make progress in all lines of school work as the result of our unique position as the newest and best type of all American schools, we must be ready to meet all the newer problems of education that may be presented to us for our consideration. Surely an efficient, progressive, forward-facing junior high school can be organized and maintained today without involving ourselves in this problem of teacher selfgovernment that the next generation will surely be forced to consider. However, as pioneers of modern times, we may nevertheless be losing an opportunity that because of our newness we are best fitted to grasp, if we fail at least to look over the territory that the next generation will surely open up for settlement. So then if we decide to work-over this new field together, let it be with the full understanding that we need not do so for the success of our present junior high school administration, but rather because such an added survey may put us, or our successors, in a position to profit by our explorations and discoveries in meeting and settling difficulties that surely lie not so very far ahead. There has been a great deal of discussion and some rancorous comment on the need of democracy in education. It has been claimed that most school systems are an autocracy of the least considerate type. The superintendent, or the principal, lays down the law and the teachers are supposed to emulate the spirit of the Six Hundred--"Theirs not to reason why--theirs but to do or die." Yet we find f...