Evaluation of their High School Curriculum by Prospective Teachers

Abstract

IN ALL PROBABILITY the most widely accepted statement of the goals of secondary education in the United States is the one which appeared in Educa tion for All American Youth, prepared by the Educational Policies Commission and published in 1938. This statement of goals was presented in terms of ten imperative needs of secondary school students. How effectively the schools are coping with these needs has been the subject of many studies reported in numerous articles and books. Altogether too infrequently, however, have there been inquiries directed to high school graduates themselves to discover their judgments concerning the adequacy of the curriculum they have experienced. It would seem, therefore, that the evaluations of the consumers of the secondary school program have been neglected and that greater attention should be given to their appraisals . Extent to which needs were met in high school?In this article there are re ported the responses made by three hundred prospective teachers enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, in evaluation of the curriculum in the high school which they had attended. The UCLA students were enrolled in an introductory education course and were, in the main, graduates from high schools located in Southern California. Since they had expressed the intention to become teachers, it was assumed that their opinions concerning the high school curriculum would be discriminating and possibly more favorable than opinions from other groups of high school graduates. First of all the UCLA students were asked to read carefully the list of im perative needs as stated by the Educational Policies Commission and then to indicate to what extent they believed their own high school curriculum had been useful in helping them meet each of the needs. They were asked to us e num bers from 0 through 10, the number 0 to be used if it was believed that no help whatsoever was given them in meeting the stated need and the num ber 10 if great help was believed to have been given. Table I shows the mean average rating given by the 300 students with regard to each of the ten needs. As shown in Table I, the prospective teachers considered their high school curriculum to be most effective in meeting their needs for (1) citizenship ed ucation, (2) health education, and (3) aesthetic appreciation. Other needs be lieved by these students to be rather well met in the high school were (4) ethi cal and human-relations education, (5) science education, and (6) 3 R edu cation. A mediocre rating was given the high school's contribution to meeting