WITH the school year 1934-35 Northwestern High School in Detroit, Michigan, finished the second year of general language. We feel that this subject has now passed the experimental stage and is well established as a two-year subject for the general curriculum. The need for such a course has grown out of changing social and economic conditions in the city. The character of the school population has become very different from what it was twenty years ago, or even ten years ago. Formerly the pupils for whom general language is designed would have left school after completing Grade VI or VII. Only the children of wellto-do families or of ambitious parents went to high school. This selection meant that the pupils of those days had more ability and a better background on which to build an education than have the high-school pupils of today. Now children enter high school with all kinds of preparation or lack of it, with a wide range of intelligence quotients, and with every degree of culture. At the present time the college-preparatory group in Northwestern High School includes only one-third of the pupils, although the percentage of college entrants is as high as that of any school in the city. The remaining two-thirds of the pupils in Northwestern High School are divided equally between commercial and general courses. With such a large number to take the general curriculum, changes must be made to enrich the program for these new pupils. From the standpoint of worthwhile content, variety, and interest, general language has a fine contribution to make to these boys and girls. It is our policy to exclude from the general-language classes all who are capable of studying foreign language in a regular class. (In the course of the two years three pupils have been assigned to general language who were misplaced, and they were transferred to the foreign language of their choice at the end of the first semester.) This policy leaves in the generallanguage classes only pupils who have an ability range from lower Y to the bottom of the Z's in our X-Y-Z grouping. A large percentage of the pupils are colored. General language is in no sense a substitute for any other language course; it is rather an innovation. Moreover, at the end of the second semester with each class, I have considered it advisable to recommend for work in Latin, French, German, or Spanish from three to six pupils who could not possibly have succeeded before they had received a background in grammar in general language. Several of these pupils have elected to continue the second year of general language along with the foreign language selected. All these pupils are doing creditable work, even good work, in the foreign-language class. The aim of general language in high school is to improve the pupil's understanding of English and to help him in its use, both oral and written, and to give him a cultural background for the greater appreciation of life and literature. The course, then, is an end in itself and is not'meant to be mainly diagnostic, as it is in the intermediate schools. Most of the pupils in the course are poor readers, spell badly, and have limited vocabularies. Few of them care to read. They are a hopeless-looking lot, indifferent, restless, and little interested in preparing assignments or in learning. The chief problem during the first weeks is the stimulating of interest. When the pupils have been aroused, have been brought to forget themselves and to feel at home in the class, they begin to want to express some of their experiences. Soon they show a willingness to read-in easy books-and to report on interesting topics. From then on they move ahead. If nothing more than this stimulation is gained during the first two weeks, the time has been economically spent. During the first semester the class studies the purpose of language and the development of language, using Lindquist's textbook.' At the end of the first six weeks I ask whether any
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Aug 3, 2022
Alena Cicholewski 
Open Access
