Fifty years of growth; They live in different worlds

I am. Whether you call it the grill on the corner or the student loans. It is still a part of the campus community part of the American educational heritage educational institutions so near the greater community and yet they live in different worlds. Her I am. No necessary for a doctor. It's getting sold to that given specialty so many branches that are specialised lessons. And you know constitutional law probably cannot discuss problems intelligently with a specialist and tax law because they live in different worlds. And this is a result of the increased specialization of knowledge and it is a very very difficult problem. Reaching for in spite of urban life confusion reaching out even

though people press upon us searching ever for answers Yeah answers that will fill our needs. I definite desire for ideas for information for greater knowledge for freedom to choose what is good what is better and what is best. Education you agents for acquiring answers that are needed. This document of major changes in American education was produced and recorded by the University of Southern California under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasting. Complex tensions and demands of mid-century urban life a life more current than before. A life confused requiring skill and power to relate. A life that needs relating to ideas within the

minds of men. A conscious effort is being made to allow the student to develop agreeable to his own mental. Spiritual characteristics in other words there are so many influences which tended to place students in an expected position or a group of procedure that we have consciously and the university to. Arrange areas of choice on the part of the student. Let him put good better and best choices in

their various categories and fit his particular activity to his particular equip it whether be metal or spiritual equipment. Looking back upon a simpler life a time of warmness and human close relationships a loss of meaning in the burdened urban life. Desires for why's and how's of doing things. The drive to define the terms of living means that means something to the searcher crapware brought. Last day that you will bow to. Hard such understanding for the creation of such understanding when we have eliminated from our programs such courses for instance as word analysis.

We have a feeling that those processes required by the grammar school and the high school are pretty simple and to be discarded as the student comes on through the grades the fact of the matter is that there is a content to the term freedom of the term justice to the term equality that a student will not understand until some experience of life presents him with the necessity of evaluating. The content of both of the experience and the symbol for instance freedom to a student who has never known anything other than freedom means one thing.

Freedom to a student who comes from an environment in which his personality as well as little regarded as is another thing. The person who is never observed or experienced injustice thinks of the term largely as a symbol merely its real content unknown to him and out of the area of necessity. So we attempt to place students within their experiences or let us say provide experiences for students which require analysis and choice showing why it's

desirable for him to select the best even when the good is present to elect or to select the good wind and the bad is present. In other words experience to him is the best teacher and it's the only teacher in the presence of such obstructions as freedom and justice equality. Or rather less. In other words unless he does experience a situation in which these qualities have meaning he will never quite understand them. Skilled people demanding specialized training. Institutions of

education struggling to train for urban living and for urban work. Demands for specialized and for liberal education straining against the abilities of universities. This is the basic one of the basic curriculum problems of higher institutions no matter what kind of talking. How much should everybody have in common. And then what you can do about the person these are in a specialized. This has a number of effect. For instance engineering programs are moving into a five year program. Part of this is new engineering Arjen fighters due to the fact that the engineering curriculum got so tight with engineering subjects before that little of what you might call cultural liberal or general education subjects that are not open are struck five years they can reintroduce some of these so-called cultural or surveyed subjects whatever humanities social sciences one might but then along comes more

knowledge and puts the squeeze on the five year program and then another decade then you're back where you were and you have to extend the program to six years and this is essentially the history of our specialized curriculum. Look at the training necessary in whites for a doctor. It's getting so true that. Within a given specialty there are so many branches that a specialist for instance in constitutional law probably cannot discuss problems intelligently with a specialist in the tax law because they live in different worlds and this is another result of the increased specialization of knowledge and it is a very very difficult problem there. This happens to be a sort of a hobby and so. For instance. There are other places that are fine. Our librarian here Tony a few years ago that if he continued to acquire

materials for the university library at the rate he's going now. Live twenty five years and will get a room for students on a campus only for books and pamphlets and periodicals. Within. Three months period amount of new material reaching the Library of Congress is utterly fantastic. All we have to devise technical means of handling less than how do you locate this information how do you make sense out of it and how do you communicate it to others or let's say a practitioner in a field. These are all some of the problems with the advance of knowledge raises. They're not easy to solve. The minute you give any specialized instruction in order to give general instruction you in effect make the student was able to question a lot of people say that this isn't true. But if you read the ads in the papers the. Industries want to hire. Train and they don't ask them questions at least the beginning as to whether or not they read Plato.

A few years later they may ask these questions and we have a conflict. Well she's one of the. Machinery work demanding more and more of the people who operate. Burdens upon schools making it more difficult to train effectively man's natural limitations as an earner serving as a basis for the conflict demands for education and training. Searching for means to teach affectively. And efficiently. Well there's something new all the time. The new process is now on. We're going to have to take special training before September I think a schooling starts 30 days on that to keep up with the trade latest developments. You know the specialization of mid-century America finding its way into the

schools and they're finding conflict with traditional ways of education changes in education education for life and for work in American institutions teaching people how to live how to relate themselves to the culture about run our education in this country is based on several European philosophers that the people bowed over in their own philosophies the Pilgrims in the New England states predominately Democratic type education in the Middle Atlantic States was predominantly religious and Quakers and so forth and in the southern states was quite. Aristocratic. Three different types in America three three main things have sprung up and that is different I think from any other school system that it would be. Compulsory education. A new concept

that all children must go to school and to a certain age. Now I think more than 40 some countries that have compulsory of us not however not many of them have laws that force a child to go to school until they're almost 17 that's in the United States and other. Concept American education that it was new in the world more or less is state supported public so free schools for everyone that talking go to school for 18 years for nothing supposedly have cunning tower fees. And third one that is quite important is it's a local function and it's not run by the government even though it's use a state supported it. Not as much government support this is local support by the taxpayers this was comes. We started with very strict schools churches schools in the all time make about Crane type schoolmasters have progressed

all the way to. As progressive a school as you can think of. John Dewey and found that in work and we've settled back we've gone backwards not to an in-between time where we still have we set our interest in the child but we still teach fundamental changes in attitudes toward education changes in methods of teaching the ever specialized community demanding more skill of its members and the schools attempting to integrate learning for life with learning for a trade can the elementary school do this and they educate for work for business for industry for a profession. Yes. Absolutely I mean a person. If person is a social being they have to live in a social world they have to get along with people from the time. From the time they're able to take care of themselves they're going to have to be they are born an

individual with individual needs and they're there and not caring about the world if they grew up in a vacuum and at 18 years old we're not in the world they would be a failure with all the knowledge in the world. Possibly I mean in facts if they weren't able to get along on a salesman. And I think that's probably one of the brightest fields that I could pick that there most people takes more social. Background than it does actual knowledge of arithmetic or something I mean the salesman goes in and you ask him how much as products are how much the discount he looks at the chart. He doesn't have that all in his head. But his age his ability to get along with people meet people who work with people is quite important. And we try to teach that from elementary school and up with the basics and educating for work. Then in a social way teaching basic skills and yet group centered arithmetic by practice and yet forces practice does not make perfection. Learning by integration

learning facts and fundamentals with others. The elementary school is set up for the any other day for an integrated person. And because we are giving everything where your high schools and junior highs are specializing you have a special and we have a special writing class you have a special arithmetic class whereas in the elementary classroom and it's a social thing for everything. You know I went to school to take a child that has been spoiled by his parents and grandparents and so forth. But is everything center in the child in kindergarten or first grade. And we try to draw him in first grade into little groups of two possibly. Can you work with your neighbor. And then as we go on through the grades to the upper elementary grades we work in groups of five or six or seven so that they work on a project together. Now this project might be studying one field and reading could be

studying a field in social studies working together. But the idea is to get this child to understand that he's working with people that he isn't going to be able to. That's right. Respecting other people as individuals and as members of a group. It's not an easy thing to take a person who thinks that the whole world's rise and set themselves and they find through the school that they're going to have to work with other people and the child that won't work with groups usually is quite a problem. Training for life changes in teaching in the functions of the school during the past 50 years. The purposes of education attempts to integrate life and knowledge attempts to bring the student closer to the community in which he lives. Something of the organization and procedure that obtained in the grade schools and in the high schools.

It was in the earlier decade of this century practiced in institutions of higher learning. That is this school was presumed to perform a function. For childhood and for use rather separate from that which was performed by other institutions of the community. A good teacher did her job or his job. Parents radically here in the century it was largely her job in the grades and in the high school without too much reference to the home environment or to the home interests or to the interests of the parents of these students whom she was attempting to teach. However gradually the. Area of human interest outside of the school has been explored by the

schools of all grades. The high school and. Consequently the university. Research in the university has become a function of that in Steve Dushan beyond what was realized in the earlier days of the university and institutions beyond the institution of the university. Outside of university was. Have become very much better acquainted in other words the operation is a co-operative experience. Cooperation. Industry and education working together to prepare more skilled workers executives technicians

industry realizing the need education. Discovering the pressures of increased use. While urban growth has had a lot of effects on irons solutions. By that I mean anything in high school. I think the general public is pretty familiar of what the growth has done to the public school system from the high school. One of the things is the tendency for. Large institutions to get larger. And as they get larger to become more less of a residential college like as the students do not live then they commute very often quite great distances. This in turn has an effect of. This integration. So this. Attempt to run a college in a way to be a unifying influence in the culture.

But if it becomes a subway attack a huge mammoth factory kind of institution. The students tend to come and go. Justice you know small residential idyllic famous college of the past. There have been of various attempts to do something about this but this one of the problems the problems are universities. Compounding with the knowledge they communicate demands by industry. Demands by more people designing college education. Demands by the community and ever increasing burden upon the school. Well I think what we have fun first of all is the cost of everything. And education has gone up just the way the cost of everything and in daily life has gone out. The purchasing agent for the university. Is asked to buy hundreds of items all the time. Everything from.

Lowly chalk for black marks on classrooms to various. Let's say in nuclear and tag and atomic products for use in science research laboratories we have to buy rabbits for a project in the medical school where we are studying high blood pressure particularly among a strain of Australian rabbits that are born with hypertension. And we buy mice from back in the laboratory in Maine for use in cancer research projects in connection with smog in Los Angeles and the price of all these items the price of. From everything from Chalk to. The furniture that we buy for dinner and turn to the. Textbooks that we need for the libraries in the reference books. And the furnishings of the buildings the chemicals that we use in the chemistry department. Price of every single item goes out practically all the

time. Intense and unceasing demands for education universities re-evaluating their methods of teaching respecting the specialist and yet integrating a broader view of learning preparing for life in a complex community. Celebrating how you feel present in the training will enable people to make life meaningful. Knowing their responsibilities are far more clear cut today than they used to be. Let me be specific about this. In 1945 the Harvard faculty presented to the president of Harvard a book which they had composed and titled general education in a free society. That's only 1945 this was done. And in this book the Harvard faculty in effect said this is where this country's going in for so much specialization in education on the collegiate level

on university level. We've got to stop and take a second look. Our job is to give a far broader frame of reference as a base for specialization so when the Harvard faculty recommended two four years of general courses teaching general ideas in different areas of life all sorts of areas of life for example the physical sciences the life sciences literature art music so forth. Now Harvard just didn't discover that until 1945 but Universe I mean they came up with it formally then but other university have been working on it and I would say this just very quickly. That probably at least 2000 colleges in universities in America today consciously build their programs that way. In other words we're aware of the danger of over specialization and of not providing a broad enough general base. This university for example in the year 1900 had only ninety six courses in its letters Arts and Science catalog. We had over 900

last year. Now obviously this indicates a tremendous degree of specialization. But we're only one of some 2000 universities today which say you're if you're going to have a degree from a higher institution such as ours. You must be something more than an engineer. If you want to just to be an engineer you can go to an engineering school. But if you want to degree from the university it implies a background of something besides engineering. And this means a knowledge of the arts sciences humanities and so forth on a general basis that the layman can appreciate not a technical basis. For example the big the big tail that wags the dog today is science but not everybody's going to be as kind of scientists. We require every university student here who's going to be a non-scientist is going to be a scientist we don't require it to take a body courses in science. We call them 100 l courses their introductory their principles

will take one example one Physics 101 all scientific principles such as atomic energy in the layman's language Geology 101 all so he knows a little bit about the land he's looking at when he travels across the country. He's aware of the shape of the earth and what it is without having to be a technical. This gives him we're traveling a lot. Every American travels we have magazines such as holiday published on this basis every American travels why they may hardly ever sees anything we travels and we feel. And this isn't just be cuter to us is peculiar to 2000 colleges universities we feel that people ought to know what they're looking at when they travel. We're not just teaching them for example an American civilization course. You know all the presidents in their administrations. We're teaching them to to get the feeling of America through some association with the past as they travel through America to be able where a bit appreciative of what they see physically and otherwise.

All right. Somehow lost in mid-century American education. Somehow forgotten amidst the tense pressures of people and things the yearning for personal relationships for warm understanding. The university. A place for beginnings the ideals and values of knowledge ideas controversies. The campus community a beginning for the re-evaluation of education in terms of work play and a meaningful life. Educational institutions so near the greater community and yet they live in a different world. People cooperating in the production of this program were teachers from the Santa Anna school system and the faculty and administration of the University of Southern California.

This program was written by Donald price directed and rated by Edward D roof and produced by Stuart Coney. They live in different worlds was recorded by the University of Southern California under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center. This program is distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. Me Radio Network.