Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education

The 1918 report by the National Education Association's Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education (CRSE) was published as a bulletin by the U.S. Bureau of Education and titled Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education. The CRSE's seven main objectives have become a classic statement of curriculum aims. In light of an analysis of the typical adult activities of a citizen in a democracy, the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education identified seven principal objectives of education: (1) health, (2) command of fundamental processes, (3) worthy home membership, (4) vocation, (5) citizenship, (6) worthy use of leisure, and (7) ethical character. The CRSE maintained that all subjects at all levels of education should contribute as appropriate to the achievement of each of these seven objectives for all students. The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education suggested ways that high school subjects could achieve these objectives and intended for the objectives to unify an otherwise fragmented secondary curriculum.

Over time, the CRSE's seven objectives of education became conflated with the title of its report. Why this happened remains unclear. Perhaps the perception that the CRSE's seven objectives elaborated and clarified Herbert Spencer's well-known classification of five areas of life activities—direct self-preservation, indirect self-preservation, parenthood, citizenship, refinements of life—lent the seven objectives their appeal to educators. Historians also have tended to focus on the seven objectives, homing in on them as a manifestation of social efficiency–social control ideology and as part of a wider trend to deemphasize the traditional academic subjects in the secondary curriculum. The CRSE's recommendations, however, were a far cry from contemporary social efficiency–social control proposals, and the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education endorsed the traditional academic subjects. In any event, to this day, some curriculum textbooks continue to use the term cardinal principles of education or even seven cardinal principles of education to refer to the CRSE's seven objectives.

What is clear is that the preoccupation with the seven objectives has distracted readers from the other 18 principles of secondary education presented in the 1918 report. These principles addressed matters such as the goal of education in a democracy, education as a process of growth, the division of education into elementary and secondary, the articulation of higher education with secondary education, the specializing and unifying functions of secondary education, the comprehensive high school as the standard secondary school, and secondary education as essential for all youth. Taken together, these principles represent the blueprint for the U.S. comprehensive high school.

The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education represents the efforts of progressive educators to respond to emerging conditions in school and society. By calling for greater participation in culture of all youth through secondary education, for the application of new educational research and theory to educational practice, for differentiation of curriculum and instruction according to student needs and interests, and for the expansion of the secondary curriculum to include academic and vocational education, the cardinal principles sought to accommodate the expanding secondary school population. As such, these principles can be viewed as a quintessential manifestation of progressivism in education. The Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education also had a profound influence on curriculum reforms through the middle of the 20th century. As such, the significance of the 18 cardinal principles of secondary education proposed by the CRSE is much greater than its identification of seven main objectives of education.

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