Horace's Compromise

A highpoint in U.S. concern over education, the 1980s was a decade awash in reports lamenting the fundamental unpreparedness of the schools for new global economic challenges. 1984 saw the publication of a rather different, if equally fundamental, rethinking of schooling: Theodore (Ted) Sizer's Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School. The first fruit of the 5-year, collaborative Study of High Schools, Horace's Compromise signaled a new era in curriculum studies and school reform. Sizer vividly illustrated how the cart of school structure had gotten in front of the horse of curriculum and pedagogy, reminding us to begin with the essential questions: What needs to be learned, and how can we support teachers and students to do this work?

Sizer introduces his critique of the high school through composite portraits of teachers and students. Horace Smith is a 28-year veteran English teacher whose inescapable compromise points to the inadequacies of high schools. Daily, Horace juggles five classes, 120 students, responsibilities as faculty advisor for the drama department, and a second job to make ends meet. Horace, like the U.S. high school, is stretched too thin, and this leads to compromises in the most crucial areas of his teaching. He has too many students to give detailed feedback on writing assignments: He is lucky if he can devote 5 minutes per paper. He has no time for thorough class preparation, let alone deep study: He must settle for a meager 10 minutes per lesson.

As Sizer shows, high school teachers find themselves in the paradoxical position of being too overburdened and underpaid to realize the fundamental aims of teaching and learning while simultaneously being held responsible for the problems of the system that weakens their agency.

In his portraits of students, Sizer captures both the vulnerability and the potency of adolescence. We meet Will, a preppy and somewhat insecure senior, and Louella, a 15-year-old former prostitute and new student at an inner-city, Catholic high school. We see students like them shuffled from class to class—bells ringing every 50 minutes—passive recipients of an incoherent curriculum. Sizer reminds us that after school these same young people will come alive in bustling worlds of social interaction and self-driven activity. Sizer wants to see this initiative present in the classroom.

Such portraits bring the problems of the U.S. educational system down to a human scale. And this is no mere writerly device. Returning to the human dimensions of teaching and learning is the heart of Sizer's plea for curricular reform. Public [Page 453]education has become a massive bureaucracy, which loses sight of the essentials of teaching and learning and the people who drive the process.

Sizer's return to essentials begins with a look at the classic instructional triangle of student, teacher, and subject matter. He emphasizes the active role of the student in learning, denying that a teacher can give an education. The teacher is thus recast from information dispenser to coach. Because student motivation is so crucial to the educational process, Sizer boldly asserts that compulsory education should cease when students have exhibited proficiency in literacy, numeracy, and civic understanding. Once these essential skills have been mastered, high school should be viewed as an opportunity, not an obligation.

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