of several subject-matter fields, and it is difficult for any teacher to be a specialist in more than one area on the high-school level.

Traditional subjects are logically organized, and they are the stock in trade of teachers already trained. It is difficult to turn aside from respectable content and to venture with materials which are scarce and often poorly organized.

Through the years the influence of the college has given prestige to traditional subjects and procedures. Sometimes this traditional influence has been planned. Often it has been inadvertent. The influence is felt wherever classical language is considered more respectable than the household arts or wherever a school, which by its smallness is limited to one curriculum, offers the college curriculum only because it has status. While this influence is a subtle and pervasive one and thus difficult to change, it should be stated that the recent activities of many college faculties indicate a sympathetic understanding of the secondary-school problem.

Effective teachers are enthusiastic about the subjects they teach, and they are greatly tempted to be more interested in securing greater enrollments for their subjects as they now exist than in adjusting subjects to meet the needs of boys and girls. This is not a particular indictment of classroom teachers; the same type of comment may be made of any group of specialists, such as welfare workers, health specialists, and educational administrators.

When school workers are properly equipped by study, experience and disposition, even with sufficient time for thinking and planning, it is a big task to outline units of work for pupils which aim directly at building better citizens, homemakers, and neighbors. It is a much bigger task actually to build such units of work and make them effective. Moreover, most teachers and administrators do not have sufficient time for thinking and planning. They are handicapped by heavy pupil loads, a lack of resources with which to work, and multitudinous extracurricular duties and community responsibilities.

A second type of difficulty exists in the unsystematized but persistent appraisal which the public makes of the schools. There are readily available criteria for judging the effectiveness of traditional courses. The school patrons and the public generally can easily determine whether or not students are being successfully prepared for college. Employers can judge readily the effectiveness of vocational departments in the high schools. It is not so simple to judge the effectiveness of schools in the more general areas of citizenship, family life, conservation, general occupational adjustment, consumer education, leisure time, or health. The total result is that there are enormous continuing pressures for teachers and principals to continue

doing the things they do well even though these practices fail to meet the needs of many pupils. Traditional programs often do fail to meet needs because both the character of the school population and conditions of living have changed since the programs were established.

The Commission recognizes these difficulties and it has no panacea for overcoming them. It has no single pattern for improvement. However, it is convinced that over the United States many effective efforts are being made. Some of these efforts are in traditional frameworks under traditional subject-matter labels. Other such efforts are included in core or common-learnings programs. Some are in the extracurriculum, and some are in community schools. Characteristic of all these endeavors in an emphasis on the influencing of behavior and the building of better personal and community living. The Commission plans to identify such practices and to encourage their wider use.

BRIEF FOR THE PROGRAM

The question may well be raised, Why should another effort be made at this time to effect major improvements in secondary education when so many significant attempts have already been made or are now in progress? The most obvious answer is that despite the significant progress made to this end during recent years, there is still so much to be done. American high schools do not attract and hold many boys and girls long enough to meet their life needs. As is shown in the accompanying table, over the country approximately 80 percent of youth enter the ninth grade; approximately 40 percent remain to be graduated from high schools. In 1940-41, the best year of our history as far as high-school enrollments are concerned, only 73 percent of our youth of high-school age were enrolled in high schools.

The school is one of the important institutions which exercise educational influence, and as such it must assume its full share of responsibility for the behavior of adults. Contemplation of current affairs in American life must convince even those who are most optimistic about the future that all possible means should be used to strengthen the Nation, both within and without. Particularly is strength needed in the areas with which life adjustment education is concerned. There are needs for improving the health of our people and for conserving our natural resources. There are needs for strengthening the family and stabilizing our practices for ethical living. There are needs for defining our foreign policy and governing ourselves in a more responsible fashion. There are needs for placing and keeping our economic machinery in balance and for making more recreative our use of leisure time.

It is apparent that American adults are sorely tried in their efforts

to solve the problems forced upon them by the conditions of modern living. Upon those who have a faith that schools can and do make a contribution to intelligent adult behavior, there rests an obligation for improving the schools.

There is no other nation in the world which has sent as large a proportion of its youth to secondary schools as has this Nation. But no other nation has had a similar need for an informed and intelligent citizenry, and no other nation has had comparable resources with which to meet the needs of youth. Many nations have given far more vigorous consideration to their educational programs and most nations have seen much more clearly than has this Nation that young people are a country's greatest asset. They must be taught efficiency and devotion to the Nation's peculiar ideals and ambitions. These facts are more easily comprehended during war than during peace, but they are equally true during either period.

While the evidence is overwhelming that the problems faced by secondary education are of crucial importance at the present time there are evidences that they will be even more critical in the future. In the years ahead are a certain increase in the total number of youth of secondary-school age and probable increases in the economic and social pressures which impel youth to attend school.

This effort to improve secondary education offers great promise because it is and is to be a joint enterprise of administrators, teachers and laymen from the areas of both vocational and general education. Leaders of these groups have already joined forces and built a platform of common understandings for a program of action.

Another reason for this attempt to improve secondary education lies in the need for a coordinating and implementing agency. The aims of secondary education in America have been clearly stated and the difficulties rather clearly perceived. Many professional individuals and groups are aware of the problems and ready to move ahead if leadership can be provided. There is a great need for action.

Two things are essential to meet the educational needs of all American youth. They are (1) a recognition by the general public of the inadequacies of the means existing for meeting youth problems, and (2) a determination by the faculty of each school that it will do its best with the resources which are available to meet the needs of all youth in the community. In the last analysis secondary education will be improved by teachers, parents, and civic leaders working together in local schools and communities. The Commission on Life Adjustment Education for Youth can and will perform the function of stimulating action, coordinating efforts, encouraging promising innovations, and bringing the issues more prominently to the attention of teachers and the general public.

955978°-51—2

Number continuing per 1,000 pupils enrolled in the fifth grade in the years indicated, by grade or year

1

Number continuing per 1,000 pupils in the fifth grade in—

89 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

High school:

1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948

Part II. Report of the National Conference on Life Adjustment Education (Prosser Resolution) Chicago, May 8-10, 1947

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of part II is to report the origin and activities of the National Conference on Life Adjustment Education. It includes (1) brief accounts of the events leading to the conference; (2) a description of what was recognized as the "principal purpose" of the conference; (3) an outline of how the conference was organized and of how the committees functioned in preparing definite action plans; and (4) a record of the actual committee proposals and conference recommendations.

This is a review of a series of highly significant achievements. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the actions taken by this conference-a conference composed of educational leaders representing all parts of the Nation, representing both vocational education and general education, and representing influential national organizations in the field of professional education. This conference has set the stage for what might well be the next great important development in secondary education-the achievement of educational provisions suited to the needs and abilities of each individual youth of high-school age. Its action heralds the beginning of a series of significant accomplishments designed to achieve in fact the ideal of universal secondary education for American youth. Its plan for action marks the inauguration of an enterprise that promises to involve the many segments and elements of secondary education in one of the most inclusive and cooperative endeavors ever undertaken in the name of the welfare of the Nation's youth. Its proposals provide machinery whereby secondary school administrators and teachers and vocational education leaders may work together to increase markedly the number of attempts being made in secondary schools to meet the need referred to in the resolution. Its proposals also provide machinery whereby the curriculum pronouncements made in recent years by various national educational committees and commissions may receive increased study and implementation.