F OR a quarter-century, educators sought pedagogical talismans with which to banish from the classroom the last vestiges of drill, drudgery, and drab application. Learning was transformed into beguiling projects, the disciplines yielded to studies of social significance, and the yardstick of vocational utility was applied to all the traditional curricular bulwarks. Prescribed courses of study were superseded by the elective system, and students acquired smatterings of knowledge from curricular offerings as variegated as they often were bizarre. Teacher training was excessively preoccupied with instructional techniques, in the conviction that adroitness of presentation and ingenuity of expedient were more essential than liberal education. The excesses of educational philosophy brought reaction, accentuated in the years immediately before the war. The need for more thorough education of teachers in the arts and sciences was recognized. Partial reversion to the classical tradition, notably at St. John's College, challenged the interest of educators throughout the country, as did the earlier, more comprehensive program at the University of Chicago. Shocking revelations of ignorance of the commonplace facts of American history among high-school and college students led to insistent demands for reform that already have culminated in curricular readjustments and shifting emphasis in the social studies. Two of our greatest universities have recently modified the elective system by prescribing certain basic liberal-arts subjects for the Bachelor's degree. Some educators have discovered a new dispensation in the vast educational program of the armed forces. With the same zeal that heralded earlier pedagogical innovations, admirers of the Army schools point to the miraculous curtailment of the length of the educational process that presumably was effected. Languages allegedly were mastered in a few weeks of intensive instruction, without the inhibitions of grammars and lexicons. The full potentialities of visual education, first fully exploited by the military, resulted in economy of time and superiority of educational outcomes. The Army educational program had victory as its ultimate aim and efficiency in combat as its immediate objective. No one can deny that its purposes were achieved, and with a minimum expenditure of time. Schools were set up to train bakers and tank drivers, bomber pilots, and clerks. Hundreds of specialized skills were required to operate the gigantic, almost unbelievably complex machinery ot a modern army, and delay or inadequacy in the attainment of these skills
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May 1, 1974
W H Patrick + 2
