Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-02-01
SCHOOLS OF CITY
KEPT UP TO DATE
Many of Education Asso-
cations Advices Already
i'm Practice
SUPT. CARRIER EXPLAINS
Official in Sympathy With
Recommendations Made
in Last Report

Superintendent OF Schools CARRIER
said today that for some time he had
been organizing the school system here
on the lines suggested in a report just
made public by the National Education
Association.
"For example" he observed. "we al
ready have several elementary and high
schools in which the term is six years
as suggested for all schools in the report,
with which I am heartily in sympathy
"In the elementary schools we try to
place in the hands of the pupils the tools
of knowledge, and in the six-year high
school term we endeavor to inculcate In
the student the proper way to use those
tools so as to enable him to take his
proper and useful place in society.
Preaching Applied Education
"T've been preaching applied educa-
ton for a long time. I thoroughly be-
lieve in a more comprehensive develop
ment of the school systems and more
emphatic emphasizing OF the uniting OF
vocational training with preparation to
enable the young person to live in the
world around him with better sense of
the higher social values and obligations.
We have been fighting for understanding
the ability TO use education appreciation
and vision among the students of our
schools.
"Such questions as that of health will
undoubtedly play a larger part in the
schools than ever before. a wider
curriculum will develop, as 1t has al
ready been doing in philadelphia. This
suggestion of the commission has AL
ready begun to be worked out in o'ir
own schools
"The student can find a wider range
than heretofore in our junior hlgh
schools We are trying to put more
meaning into the pupils occupational
life. In the latter years of the senior
high school we want our boys and girls
to get training out under actual shop
conditions, and this is now in opera-
ton in some of our schools.
such a thing as compulsory contin-
uation school until the child has reached
the age of eighteen years will come in
time. If the age of compulsory school
ing is ever raised from fourteen years,
as at present, to sixteen years, Inc
continuation school age limit now is
sixteen, so that we could look for a
corresponding increase here of two
years. But l do not think we are ready
for 1t at the present time"
Represents six Years Work
The commissions report represents the
work of six years devoted to the varied
problems in the elementary and second
ary educational fields. The central prob
lem of secondary education in America,
the report states, can be embodied in
this question: Can the American high
school offer the many kinds of training
needed by different groups of young peo-
pie and at the same time instill in them
those common ideas. common ideals and
common modes of thought, feeling and
action essential for national solidarity?
The report laid stress on the impor-
tance of health, citizenship and vocation
and preparation for the use of the leisure
and the ethical character of the indl-
vidual. It advised changes which would
meet the needs of all children under
eighteen years of age, urging compul-
sorry part-time education for those who
leave school before they are eighteen.
1t maintained that high schools should
provide special instruction for retarded
pupils now in the elementary schools
and that the wider. more comprehensive
high school should supplant the school
of moro specialized tendencies. 1t would
shorten the term of all elementary
schools to six years and would divide a
six-year high school term into two
periods corresponding 10 junior and
senior high schools.