TAPERS ON PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 443 



guarded and guided, should become an increasingly wide 

 custom in the American secondary school system. More 

 experimental schools should be created for the specific 

 purpose of testing out the most satisfactory curricula. 

 And, again, the plan of curriculum formulation which 

 enlists the interests and efforts of a whole teaching staff 

 in cooperation with an educational expert should be 

 encouraged. 



"Within the last decade, it has become the custom here 

 and there for school boards and superintendents to in- 

 vite in educational experts to cooperate with the regular 

 teaching staff in making over the total program of stud- 

 ies offered. Obviously, one sensible procedure in such a 

 situation is to make a survey of the activities, indus- 

 tries, enterprises, interests, and needs of the commun- 

 ity involved. This includes the interests of patrons as 

 well as of pupils. Another aspect of this procedure is 

 the analysis and re-study by the teaching staff of all the 

 materials offered by them in the light of widely accepted 

 general objectives and corresponding specific sub-ob- 

 jectives in harmony with the psychological and social 

 needs of pupils in respective communities. The presen- 

 tation of such material will be superior to that which is 

 ready made, handed down from too many generations 

 back. TXe have now come to the time when we can well 

 afford to committeeize the persons who are masters in 

 one field or another throughout the country, and who 

 are competent to work out the different courses of study 

 to be offered within the program of studies and in the 

 curricula of our secondary schools, and delegate to them 

 the power to outline representative curriculum materials. 

 Each community in the main must work out its own 

 curriculum salvation. Only those aspects of the cur- 

 riculum will be uniformly standardized which apply to 

 common and universal objectives. Toward the end of 

 the secondary school period, considerable leeway icill 

 be necessary, both for the adaptation of subject matter 

 to meet individual differences in terms of capacities and 

 aptitudes of pupils, as well as leeway in the adoption 

 of curricula differentiated enough to apply to all of the 

 varied interests of different communities. 



