Commission on the Secondary School Curriculum Reports

Although the Eight Year Study is typically remembered as the work of the Commission on the [Page 123]Relation of School and College and the academic comparison of 1,475 pairs of students in college, the reports of the Commission on the Secondary School Curriculum (more commonly known as the Thayer Commission) made a significant contribution to the field of curriculum studies and served to define the study's conception of progressive education curriculum at the secondary school level.

With the official formation of the Aikin Commission (the Commission/Committee on the Relation of School and College) by the Progressive Education Association in April 1930, the need for assistance in curriculum development to support the study became apparent. Accordingly, in May of 1932 the Commission on Secondary School Curriculum was formed with V. T. Thayer as chair. With General Education Board funding, the Thayer Commission sponsored two complementary types of activities; the first was the Study of Adolescents chaired by Caroline Zachry that sought to describe in rich detail the development of adolescents, while the second involved formation of five subject-area committees charged with formulating the functions of each area in general education and making recommendations for curriculum and instruction. After working from 1932 until 1940, eight volumes were published relating to the commission's subject area work. Of these, Science in General Education written by the Committee on the Function of Science in General Education, chaired by Harold Alberty and including Thayer among its members, is considered the most significant. This volume, published in 1938, presented a conception of the place of science in general education, centering on the ways in which the science school curriculum could meet the fundamental needs of adolescents—understood as both personal and social in origin—so that not only would the fullest potential of the individual be achieved, but also effective democratic citizenship be promoted. Drawing on the Study of Adolescents, needs were identified in four areas of living: personal, immediate personal–social relationships, social–civic relationships, and economic relationships. This conception of needs underpinned much of the other subject area committees' work, explicitly grounding two volumes, The Social Studies in General Education and Mathematics in General Education, both published in 1940, and Reorganizing Secondary Education, the summary of the commission's position on curriculum development and revision.

In addition to these four volumes, the commission published works on the visual arts and language in general education. These two books also are concerned with meeting student needs, but represent slightly different emphases. The Visual Arts in General Education is primarily concerned with the place of art education in personal development and with living creatively and richly. The authors argue that art expression is a human right to be cultivated as means for enriching shared living. Language in General Education is mostly concerned with the place of language as a means for relating to the world and as a tool for expressing and realizing the self and gaining control over experience. Effective communication, the authors argue, is not only essential to personal development, but foundational to democratic citizenship. To assist English teachers in their task of redesigning the curriculum, the commission sponsored two additional books. A methods book, Teaching Creative Writing, was published in 1937. The second, published in 1940, Reader's Guide to Prose Fiction, written by Elbert Lenrow, included bibliographies of 1,500 novels organized around a set of concerns thought common to adolescents. From this volume, teachers could easily select relevant and appropriate pieces of literature for classroom study.

...