Practices in Curricular Guidance

Abstract

A pressing problem in many large high schools is that of aiding and directing pupils in their choice of subjects. The increasing extent and variation of the curricular offering, the heterogeneity of the present-day student body, and the growing concern over rates of failure and elimination are factors which lend urgency to the quest for a solution of the problem. It is the purpose of this paper to show how the problem is being met in large high schools. To make this survey of practices, the writers submitted a check list to the heads of the departments of mathematics in five hundred of the larger senior and four-year high schools in eastern, middle western, and Pacific coast states. Usable replies were received from 51 high schools enrolling from 500 to 999 pupils and from 8i schools enrolling i,ooo pupils or more. As the data reported in this article indicate, the inquiry called for information concerning general practices in curricular guidance and concerning special practices in guiding elections of mathematics in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. The problem of guiding elections of mathematics may be considered as typifying the larger problem of curricular guidance because the courses in mathematics have generally been dropped from the core curriculum and given an elective status and because the need for guidance is attested to by the high rate of failure in mathematics. A recent summary' of subject failures in nineteen large high schools in the vicinity of Chicago shows that, in the percentage of pupils failing, mathematics exceeded all other subjects.