Chemical Digest THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL Before the American high school can become the people's college it hopes to be, before it can serve practically.al1 young people of high-school age, there are at least three major conditions which must be met. First, the process of changing the curriculum, administration, and teaching method must continue apace with the times. The typical high school is still keyed up to the highest third of its students, thougli not nearly so much so as in the past. The curriculum is still too narrow for twentieth century life and is aimed too much a t college preparation. Teaching method is still too rigid and lacking in variety and adaptation. The greater the number that come to school the greater the variety of ability and interest that must be served and the more the high school must exert itself to spread its service effectively. Second, there must be fiscal changes. The maintenance of the American high school today runs around five hundred million dollars annually. If practically all students shokld come to school the annual cost would be doubled and hundreds of additional buildings and equipment would need c to be provided. Throughout America practically all the taxation burden falls a t present upon real property, until holders of property are crying out for mercy. If America is to continue and expand its policy of providing secondary education for all, the base of taxation must be widened to include other types of property. And there must be a political change. That is, the unit for the levying and distributing of taxes must be enlarged. The district is too small a territorial unit for the support of the high school. It should bear part of the burden but not nearly all of it; the county and state should give substantial help. Third, and most important, there must be a deeper sense of appreciation. Even high-school teachers do not realize the type of institution they are working in and do not appreciate the opportunity that is theirs. The general tax-paying public does not stop to think-in its hnny and bustle, does not see the high school in all its magnitude and glory. This institution has just grown up in America; i t hasn't heen consciously planned. The American people do not realize what a giant they have raised. Even parents of high-school students are often blind to the purposes of the high school. Some of them seem to think it just a social institution, just a place where the child should go as a matter of course. Some one asked
Mr. Dooley if he should send his boy to high school and Mr. Dooley answered, "Sure, you don't want him around the house at his age, do you?" High-school students are notoriously blind to their opportunities. Too many of them think high school is just a pleasant place to loaf, a nice warm place to spend the winter. It is that, of course, but not that mainly. I t is a place where life in both its pleasant and its serious aspects is lived and where there is serious preparation for a more complicated sort of life to he experienced later.-The Flathead Messenger
