Conant II

After having set the U.S. high school world aflutter last year with his well-reasoned criticisms, former Harvard President James B. Conant last week took on Education in the Junior High School Years (Educational Testing Service; 50-c-). Addressed to school boards, Conant's new study is a "purposely conservative" pamphlet of 46 pages--the work of a critic who spurs progress by shunning polemics.

Transition. In visiting 237 schools in 23 states, Conant found wide disagreement over where to fit grades 7-9 in a school system. Some communities keep grades 7 and 8 in elementary school, some plump for a six-year high school, and still others hold that the separate three-year junior high school gives combustible half-adolescents a chance to grow at their own pace. In reality, says Conant, the junior high often becomes "a replica of the senior high school with its attendant social pressures." Hitting hard at pretentious commencements, big-time football and marching bands that "serve merely as public entertainment," Conant snorts that all such status seeking is utterly without "sound educational reason."

What interests Conant is effective schooling in these baffling grades, not organizational juggling. Academically, he prescribes sanely taught solids (60% to 70% of classroom time), aimed at preparing youngsters aged 12 to 15 for their biggest hurdle--transition from the "child-centered" elementary school to the subject-centered high school. For Conant's money, the key solid is reading. "Pupils will not succeed in high school." he comments dryly, ''unless they can read at least at the sixth-grade level ... To my mind, the minimum goal for almost all pupils at the end of grade 9 is that these future voters should be able to read with comprehension the front page of a newspaper at a rate of about 200 words a minute."

Time for Mastery. Toward fancy new ideas, from teaching machines to team teaching, Conant has a show-me attitude. His 14 recommendations are designed to make many schools catch up with the old ideas. Items:

P: Arithmetic should be the main math diet for grades 7-8. Only the very able (3% to 5% nationally) should begin algebra in the eighth grade in order to tackle college math in the twelfth grade. P: Science should be a fulltime subject beginning in the-seventh grade. Biology (now usually taught in tenth grade) might well begin in ninth grade--but only if lab facilities can be provided. P: Foreign language should begin in seventh grade for "some, if not all, pupils." But the school must follow through with continuing instruction in the same language through twelfth grade. P: Homework should increase from one hour a day in seventh grade to two hours in ninth grade. But it should be "meaningful" homework, carefully explained in advance, and not mere "drudgery."P: Since "mastery of basic skills" is the task at hand, the unskilled should repeat grades. But because of the "social and psychological problems involved with overage pupils," Conant suggests that no child repeat more than two years in the first eight grades.

Conant is especially worried that so many teachers regard junior highs as mere training grounds for senior high school. Arguing that grades 7 and 8 require specialized teachers, he advocates a minimum of 50 teachers per 1,000 students, plus one full-time guidance counselor for every 250 to 300 students. He also believes that for this difficult period, children should find their best teachers, whereas, in fact, they usually get the least experienced, the worst paid and the fewest.

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