Comprehensive High School

The comprehensive high school is a unique U.S. concept, developed in the 20th century to meet the challenges of a changing society by designing programs to correspond to the educational needs of all youth. A confluence of forces influenced the rethinking of U.S. secondary education: industrialization, immigration, progressive educational theory, and the rise of vocational education. To [Page 134]provide for equal opportunity and status of U.S. youth, public schools needed to provide general education for all citizens to help them contribute to and be part of the growing democracy; integrate new immigrants into the wider U.S. culture; ensure that students, upon graduation, were employable in an industrial age; and to provide for those students with abilities and talents to continue their education in the colleges and universities. Unlike the thinking in many European countries, reformers of education did not want to develop a dual educational system, but favored a unique unified system that would serve as a model of U.S. thinking and ingenuity that would meet U.S. needs, not European traditions. Thus, the new secondary schools not only needed to meet the academic needs of the students, but also as importantly, needed to meet the social and democratic needs of the country. Students of different backgrounds and abilities needed to learn how to function together to ensure that they had the skills necessary to keep the democracy moving forward.

The comprehensive high school had two major thrusts upon which to build their programs: a unifying aspect and a specialized aspect. Unification meant students would work together regardless of race, ability, ethnicity, gender, or skill to build school and community spirit. Specialization meant that programs would be provided to meet the various academic needs of the students, whether those needs were vocational, college preparatory, or special. Given these goals, the development and growth of the U.S. comprehensive high school was both exciting and fraught with many challenges.

John Dewey was one of the staunch supporters of the concept of the comprehensive high school. In Democracy and Education, Dewey recognized that the growing diversity of U.S. society due to massive waves of immigration demanded a restructuring of the schools to unite the internationalism of the population to one of nationalism, to maintain the integrity of the individual while facilitating social unity. He saw the public school system as the best means of unifying a diverse, heterogeneous population. He perceived that the structure of the comprehensive high school would allow the development of common understandings through various school activities and common academic curriculum while the specialized programs could meet the individual needs of each student.

In 1918, The Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, a composition of several National Education Association committees examining secondary education, published the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education. This report prefaced its recommendations with a summary of the key changes in U.S. society, in the high school population, and in educational theory. The report acknowledged that education in a democracy needed to take place within and outside of school and should ensure that individuals acquire the knowledge, skills, habits, interests, and powers to find their place in U.S. society. The report identified seven main goals of education: (1) health, (2) command of fundamental processes, (3) worthy home membership, (4) vocation, (5) citizenship, (6) worthy use of leisure time, and (7) ethical character.

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