Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1948-10-07

ASNoNA o''OuS shS dACliIo ACnBu NC
for Curriculum Improvement that
the general public is confused.
What do they want?" a great
many people have asked THE SEN
| TINEL.
The most sensible explanation of
what they want is contained in a
letter from Mrs. Robert Sherwin
of Silver Spring, a member of the
group. Her letter follows:
eve feel no personal ill-will to-
ward any member of the educa-
tional staff in our county, and l
! personally have nothing but praise
for the teachers with whom have
come in contact in my school. But
we do oppose most vigorously the
philosophy of education and meth
cd of teaching that is the policy in
our county, and I would like to
take this opportunity to clear up
some of the Misrepresentation
that have appeared in the press,
more by accident than by design, l
am sure. They have probably been
due in some measure to our not
making clear to the average par
ent and to the press exactly what
we are asking for. The school au-
thorities, am sure, understand
our point of view.
''Basically what we are attacking
are not the flaws and weak spots
that might be present in any school
4 system, and are comparatively
easy to correct by simply apply
ing thought and effort to that par
ticular point. We are attacking a
whole philosophy of education and
its approach to teaching. In other
words, school system has to have
an overall policy behind it which
dictates the aims it, will try to
achieve and the teaching methods
that must be used. That policy in
our schools is termed Progressive
Education 1t was considered pro-
gressive, the latest thing, when it
first came out of Columbia Uni
versity some 20 or rs years ago.
Its theory of education is this !:
that the primary function of edu-
cation is to teach children a way
of life = how to live together =
group living as they call it. And
to this aim all else in the school
curriculum is subordinated. To
them the acquisition of knowl-
edge-facts and skills-in elemen-
tary education especially, is sec
ondary. In other words, if some
thing is TO be sighted, let it be the
fundamentals of learning and not
their philosophy of life.
"Now we, too, want our children
to be acceptable members of soci-
ETY.. We want them to be tolerant,
cooperative, clean-living citizens.
But we feel that the teaching of
such way of life is the three-fold
responsibility of the home, the
school, and the church, and not the
primary function of the school =
that child can learn a good way
of life while he is performing his
normal functions at home, at
school, and in church. A good way
of life is one of the necessary by
products of good schooling just as
good craftsmanship and teamwork
are the by-products Of athletic
competition.
"In their zeal to make sure that
the child become an effective mem
her of group. the Progressive
Educators arrange their curricu-
lum so that group activities and
group planning by the children de-
termine to large extent what
shall be studied and how intensive
ly. The net result is that there is
no acceptable standard for teach
ers to use throughout the county.
The material studied for any one
subject can be as different as there
are classes studying that subject,
and can vary as much from year
to year. True, there is supposed to
be teacher direction, and a basic
outline is provided this year of the
important points to be covered in
each subject. But with children
planning their own activities to a
large extent, there is no assurance
that the outline of study will be
covered or even followed. Conse-
quently we get such things as chill
dren spending most of each day
for a week making posters for
Social Studies, or taking several
hours out of day making soup,
supposedly learning their arithme-
tic by adding up the amount of in
gradients that went into the soup.
"Extra-curricular activities like
these are fine when they are occa-
sional and recognized as such by