The work of this Seminar will address this question through an examination of the work of James Bryant Conant in relation to current efforts at reforming secondary education, especially in the United States. In this short paper, I want to lay out my understanding of the essential components of Conant's thinking and identify what I think are important lines of analysis that need to be explored in the Seminar's work. My intention here is not to be prescriptive or limiting in any way. Rather, this effort is aimed at providing a basis for further exploration and a stimulus to our work.
First, I will briefly describe The American High School Today, and tie it to Conant's understanding of American society. I then turn, also briefly, to describing efforts at secondary education reform, especially in the last fifteen years or so. I want here to highlight how current reforms seem to lead in directions away from Conant's vision, and raise the question whether in our current efforts to reform, we have also lost sight of other valuable goals.
In this 1959 report, Conant starts off with comparative history, briefly tracing the expansion of secondary education in the US, relating it to the growth and development of higher education and throughout the discussion, comparing these patterns with those of European schools and universities. In particular, Conant asserts that what sets the U.S. apart from European countries is our commitment to equality, initially the political equality Jefferson championed, but later, as a result of the frontier, the concept widened. By the late nineteenth century, for Americans, "equality became, above all, equality of opportunity--an equal start in a competitive struggle" (1959: 5) .
By 1900, Conant argues, "the power of the twin ideals of equality of opportunity and equality of status" had led the American people to "believe that more education provided the means by which these ideals were to be realized" (1959: 7). As a result, along with institutional expansion among colleges and a declining need for child labor, enrollments in secondary schools expanded greatly. He cites the figure of 17 year-olds enrolled in school, from 35% in 1910 to over 70% at the time of his book, 1959. During the same period, the percentage of youth attending college jumped from 4% to 35%.
In Europe, by contrast, common schools either never really existed or stopped at elementary levels, when adolescents were sorted, often on the basis of a national examination, and sent off to entirely different schools depending on the outcome of their examination. Some of these schools led immediately to apprenticeship or other forms of employment, while the most prestigious, and smallest segment, prepared students for the university entrance examinations. Secondary schools that tried to serve all of a community's children simply did not exist. He notes that at the time of his book, "three-quarters or more of the youth go to work at fourteen or fifteen years of age" (1959: 7).
The U.S., responding to far more democratic forces, evolved a secondary school where vocational, and college preparatory education took place under the same roof. The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education report, issued in 1918 by the U.S. Office of Education and under the sponsorship of the National Education Association, strongly influenced thinking about our high schools. This report saw secondary education serving:
One other aspect of his thinking needs to be identified before we can proceed. Conant clearly had a sense that "academic talent" was a finite quantity among any cohort of youth. Though he cited, with approval, the expansion of secondary and collegiate enrollments, he thought that truly democratic schools would offer a variety of curricula, leading to different occupational careers. Students would be sorted among these courses and programs according to their performance, inclinations, and ambitions. The problem for our society was to provide the means to reduce the barriers to talent, wherever it was. When president of Harvard, Conant sponsored the founding of Harvard's National Scholarships, which sought to provide educational opportunities to the best and brightest. For others, he advocated expanded vocational education. He sought the elimination of "artificial barriers" to education, which he defined as geographical and financial. Embracing the efficiency and efficacy of the SAT and IQ tests, Conant believed about 15-20% of youth fell into the "academically talented" group who should prepare for college. He became very concerned about the process by which these talented youth were identified.. In 1934 he was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and in 1947, became chairman of the board of the Educational Testing Service. Although he acknowledged the complaints of blacks and others about possible discrimination in the tests, Conant thought they helped move toward more objective identification of talent and thus helped to remove the "artificial barriers" to equal opportunity for educational achievement. Combined with better developed educational guidance, the identification of talent and the improved provision of educational options for all students as appropriate (e.g., academic and vocational) could be achieved.
Conant's faith in the objective measurement of "talent" or "ability" was firm. Not all students were to be expected to want to pursue a college preparatory curriculum. However, the school had an explicit responsibility of keeping open lines of mobility and of reducing the barriers to mobility. Moreover, the school had an explicit mission to ensure that students destined for different careers developed an appreciation for each other and were integrated onto a whole. The school was to offer opportunity for individual success, but was also obliged to encourage social solidarity. Much later, toward the end of his career, Conant stated, "The comprehensive high school has been defended on social and political grounds as an instrument of democracy, a way of mitigating the social stratification of society. Such has always been my argument (1970: 8)."
In the section of the Report named, "The Question to be Answered," Conant states, "one can raise the question whether, under one roof and under the same management, is it possible for a school to fulfill satisfactorily three functions: Can a school at one and the same time provide a good general education for all the pupils as future citizens of a democracy, provide elective programs for the majority to develop useful skills, and educate adequately those with a talent for handling advanced academic subjects--particularly foreign languages and advanced mathematics" (1959: 15)?
This is the animating question of the book, and the one Conant sought to answer by visiting schools around the country with the support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In essence, his "Report" represents an attempt to assess whether the comprehensive high school really does a good job of the three tasks he had identified. Whether, in fact, under one roof it is realistic to expect students to be well-prepared for life and citizenship, for immediate employment, and for college. He developed criteria for assessing the degree to which each of these goals was being accomplished and sought quantitative and qualitative information relevant to judging the criteria. Using data from 22 highly comprehensive secondary schools studied in detail and 28 others he visited, he answers his question with a with a resounding "Yes." There were problems, especially the low level of academic expectations schools held for their "academically talented" students. In general, they were not asked to work "hard enough." He also lamented the tendency for male students to emphasize math and science electives while their female counterparts were likely to avoid those subjects. He was also unhappy with the foreign language offerings of the schools studied: there were too few options with at least three years of study available.
Conant's report offers 21 recommendations to improve the comprehensive high school's ability to achieve all of the criteria he set forth. These recommendations cover a wide range of issues, but rest on the need for an adequate counseling system to create individual programs for all students that include a required set of studies in basic subjects, and that are grouped by ability. Other recommendations concern, for example, the provision of summer schools, special courses and programs for academically talented, highly gifted, and the very slow readers, the time devoted to English composition, and the pupil load for English teachers. They all concern issues relating to student diversity and to enhancing academic rigor.
Relevant to the concerns of this Seminar, there seem to me to be three areas where our current reform efforts depart from Conant's vision of the comprehensive high school. The first regards the size of the school; the second concerns comprehensiveness itself, as opposed to a more specialized focus; and third, the use of ability grouping within courses (though he is explicitly against curriculum tracking).
Conant was especially concerned that many high schools were too small to be truly comprehensive. He states, "the prevalence of such schools--those with graduating classes of less that one hundred students--constitutes one of the serious obstacles to good secondary education throughout most of the United States. I believe that such schools are not in a position to provide a satisfactory education for any group of their students--the academically talented, the vocationally oriented, or the slow reader" (1959: 80). He details the sources of this opinion, stressing the lack of comprehensiveness in course offerings, especially for the "academically talented" at advanced levels, and those seeking locally relevant vocational courses. Small schools are forced to include all students in the same classes which "tends to affect adversely the tone of instruction and to encourage a lowering of grading standards" (1959: 78).
Regarding comprehensiveness, Conant acknowledges the existence of specialized academic high schools (often admitting students on the basis of an examination) and focused vocational high schools. He lists examples from New York City, such as the Bronx High School of Science, the High School of Printing, and the High School of Performing Arts. Although he does not call these schools anti-American, the implication of linking them with his discussion of European examples (1959: 89-90) juxtaposed with his depiction of the comprehensive high school as a uniquely American invention (1959: 7) resulting from our commitment to democracy and to equality of opportunity, lend support for that supposition. While he does not support the closing of existing specialized schools, he does not support starting new ones. His research, he argues, supports the conclusion that comprehensive high schools can do the jobs of college preparation, vocational education, and citizenship/preparation for life in ways that are simply not possible in specialized schools.
Interestingly, Conant makes only rare, and then usually indirect, reference to the debates about the quality of American secondary education that arose during the late forties and increased in the fifties, especially with the launching of Sputnik. Criticism of "life adjustment" education, and of the general lack of rigor of secondary education trumpeted by Bestor, Rickover, and others, received wide publicity at the time. Conant's defense of comprehensiveness can be seen as a response to their critique, while acknowledging that higher expectations need to be put in place for college bound students. At the same time, he clearly sees the mission of creating and maintaining social solidarity among students and their families as best achieved through comprehensiveness. He recommends, for example, that senior social studies classes not be ability grouped. Rather, he asserts: "each class in this course should be a cross section of the school: the class should be heterogeneously grouped. This course should develop not only an understanding of the American form of government and of the economic basis of our free society, but also mutual respect and understanding between different types of students. Current topics should be included; free discussion of controversial issues should be encouraged. This approach is one significant way in which our schools distinguish themselves from those in totalitarian nations" (1959: 75). Combined with well-organized home rooms and various student activities, "the course can contribute a great deal to the development of future citizens of our democracy who will be intelligent voters, stand firm under trying national conditions, and not to be beguiled by the oratory of those who appeal to special interests" (1959: 75-76). To Rickover and Bestor, among others, such ideas would sound soft-headed, would not help the U.S. catch up to our international competitors.
In describing what his saw on his visits, Conant said, "I was impressed with the success of the home-room in promoting an understanding between students of different vocational aims. One of the highly important objectives of a good comprehensive high school is surely developing a democratic spirit" (1959: 27). In this respect, Conant was embracing a main tenant of the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education Report. It stated, "through friendships formed with pupils pursuing other curriculums and having vocational and educational goals widely different from their own, pupils realize that the interests which they hold in common with other are, after all, far more important than the differences that would tend to make them antagonistic to others" (1918: .24).
Consistent with his notions about the distribution of academic talent, and certainly reflecting his legacy as a university professor and president of Harvard, Conant had a strong interest in the preparation of college-going youth. His sympathies toward this group of students are evident, and the curriculum made available to them was of particular interest. He wanted to assure that advanced courses in academic subjects were available and that individual classes in most subjects be homogeneously grouped. In the required subjects, and those electives selected by students with diverse prior educational achievements, he thought that "there should be a least three types of classes--one for the most able in the subject, another for the large group whose ability is about average, and another for the very slow readers who should be handled by special teachers" (1959: 49).
He did not, however, encourage the creation of tracks--but rather emphasized individual programming of students into appropriate levels of classes. The individual focus on course programming is also reflected in the fact that his first recommendation for improving comprehensive high schools centered on its counseling system. He argued for a maximum ratio of 250 to 300 students for each counselor, affording the opportunity for counselors to get to know their students and parents. That every student should be offered an "individualized program" was the second recommendation. "There would be no classification of students according to clearly defined and labeled programs or tracks such as 'college preparatory,' 'vocational,' or 'commercial'" (1959: 48). Student diversity should be accommodated in a fashion that encouraged mobility across tracks. "It will turn out that many students of similar ability and vocational interests will have almost identical programs, but a student who has selected an academic sequence may shift to a vocational sequence and vice versa" (1959: 46).
A common theme of the reform efforts dating from A Nation at Risk, has been that the very idea of a comprehensive secondary school was flawed. The ideas reformers have been promoting stress smaller size, and greater curricular focus for all students within a school, thus de-emphasizing internal differentiation and ability grouping. These ideas have developed in an effort to enhance the academic performance of all students. Especially in urban centers, where the "achievement gap" between majority and minority students is very wide, reform has been motivated by the commitment to improve the performance of all students and improve the labor market options of youth.
Smaller size has been identified as important so that students "don't fall through the cracks." So that academic problems can be more easily identified and addressed by teachers and administrators who personally know the student and are known by the student. The career related focus of the curriculum has been identified as important as students are more likely to be motivated by work related to their own interests, not just the academic subjects required for college admissions. The specific reforms and their rationale is beyond the scope of this essay, and will be addressed in a number of commissioned papers. But their divergence from Conant's vision of the comprehensive high school is clear.
The citizenship mission that attempts to enhance social solidarity/integration across all segments of a community through wide enrollment, the heterogeneous home-room, the heterogeneously grouped senior social studies course, emphasizing the problems of American democracy, are little spoken of by today's reformers. There are some, such as Deborah Meier (1996), who do give voice to this mission, but they are often outnumbered by those who define the school's democratic mission strictly in terms of affording greater individual opportunity or enhancing our nation's economic competitiveness.
To what degree, then, can today's secondary schools serve this integrating function? If they no longer enroll a cross-section of the children from the community, but rather concentrate on particular interests students have, are the schools still able to be an "instrument of democracy?" If the ends of education are primarily identified as providing individuals with employment opportunity, how can the collective needs of the society be served? Or, can the collective needs now only be served by addressing the individual, social mobility, function?
This discussion highlights the dual, perhaps contradictory, nature of
the comprehensive ideal as articulated by Conant: the school was to serve
both individual and collective ends. The individual interests served through
providing equality of opportunity also were seen to strengthen the loyalty
and commitment of students to the group/society providing them with educational
opportunities. As we explore the relevance of his work, the questions that
arise concern its usefulness for understanding whether and how education
serves both individual and collective purposes.
Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education. 1918. Cardinal Principles of
Secondary Education. U.S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin No. 35.
Conant, James B. 1945. "Public Education and the Structure of American Society." Teachers
College Record. Dec. 1945: 145-194.
_______________1959. The American High School Today: A First Report to Interested Citizens. New York: McGraw Hill.
_______________. 1970. My Several Lives: Memoirs of a Social Inventor. New York:
Harper and Row.
Meier, Deborah. 1996 "Supposing That...." Phi Delta Kappan 78, 4 (December), 271-276.