Jón Bjarnason Academy - 01.05.1935, Blaðsíða 21

Adolescent Education—The Curriculum
and the Teacher
Bij Prof. I). S. WOODS, M.A., Ph. I).
(The University of Manitoba)
The region of secondary education may he defined roughly
as that area of growth bounded on the one hand by the depend-
ence of childhood and on the other by the self-reliance of adult-
hood. As distinguished from the habit-forming period of pri-
mary education, it is also one during which supervision, rather
than compulsion, is required to guide the new intellectual and
social interests of the maturing mind and emotions to worthy
abiding interests and attitudes. Worthy abiding interests and
attitudes in turn beget the finer finish of good craftmanship.
These are the fundamental objectives of adolescent education
and of the secondary school no matter what legal boundaries
may be set up for administrative purposes. The curriculum,
physical provisions and teacher are but instruments to aid the
home and community in achieving these aims.
Today, because almost the total adolescent population of
urban centres and an increasing proportion in rural parts is
in the secondary school, the problem of public education at that
level has become the most serious confronting both community
and teacher. Under any conditions adolescence is a period of
ever-widening interests, intellectual, aesthetic, recreational,
social and vocational. It is also a period of significant physical
and physiological change accompanied by great emotional dis-
turbance. Moving from a selective to a non-selective secondary
school has extended the range of pupil interests and learning
capacities. Furthermore, modern facilities for out-of-school
education have greatly extended the range of adolescent ideas
and activities. It is a new secondary school that calls. The
bright practical minded individual, who would otherwise have
a job, sits side by side with the studious minded and infects
the school atmosphere with a new vigour. Mental and physical
restlessness, the products of modern awareness, challenge the
school for a wide programme and practical teaching. To culti-
vate worthy abiding interests and attitudes is the same objec-
tive as of old but the problem of arriving is different. Curriculum
extension has been necessary hut the problem of discovering in-
dividual interests and aptitudes and of adapting methods of
instruction to the interests and outlook of the many aggressive
young people of today has become still more difficult and im-
portant. To find a combination or series of combination pro-
grammes that will harmonize mental, physical and social inter-
ests with pupil aptitudes and provide the activity programme
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