How to "Keep Them in Their Place"

Abstract

APPARENTLY it is not enough that the school, in a period of less than a generation, has been faced with the gigantic task of assimilating a whole new section of the population. Now we have, in increasing volume, a clamor that these new students be mixed with the old; that a new curriculum, indeed, be constructed to meet the needs of all pupils. Moreover, well-meaning sentimentalists advocate that within this curriculum students be thrown together indiscriminately for the dubious benefits of interaction. For schools under attack by minority or other militant groups, it may be well to review at this time some of the ways that have been evolved during the past generation to preserve, as well as may be, the standards of learning that once obtained in all secondary schools, to look again at school practices that can serve to keep apart-for we might as well be blunt about itthose pupils whose habits of behavior are not the kind which the parents of our ablest students would care to have their children pick up. Of course, none of the devices discussed here is new. A review of them will be most useful in making the choice among them more deliberate. How may we legitimately separate the academic from the nonacademic students?