Periodically, I read historic publications about education, and sometimes, the past seems far too familiar.
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SCHOOLS FOR TOMORROW’S CITIZENS (Public Affairs Pamphlets, circa, 1939)
After two years of extensive study of youth in and out of school, of teachers and their problems, of the communities and their needs, and the State Education Department, the Inquiry concluded that there were six fundamental weaknesses in New York’s program for public education:
- The schoolwork for boys and girls has not been redesigned sufficiently to fit them for the new and changing work opportunities which they must face in modern life.
- The schools have not yet adjusted their program to carry the new load created by the coming into the schools, particularly the high schools, of all the children of all the people, with their many new and different needs.
- The school program does not sufficiently recognize the increased difficulties upcoming and being a good citizen.
- The education system has not caught up with the flood of new scientific knowledge about the natural and social world which has been made part of life in recent years.
- Education has not been replanned to meet the new conditions of modern life in the new ways of living.
- The citizens and school leaders of the state did not have a specific agreed-upon goal.