SCHOOLS IN AMERICA
By W. G. HUMPHREY (Headmaster of the Leys)
IT is rather surprising that in the course of the recent widespread discussions stimulated by the White Paper on Educational Reconstruction, very few references have been made to the system that has been evolved in the United States, where elementary edu- cation has been free since the earliest days of the Union and where free secondary education for all up to the age of 18 has been available in the more progressive States for over a generation. The principles and methods of educational administration employed by this great democracy, whose public expenditure on elementary and secondary schools per head of the population is so per cent. greater than in this country, will clearly repay careful study. That those who have some knowledge of American education have been so reluctant to put forward their views is probably due to the fact that they realise how difficult and dangerous it is to generalise about anything American and particularly about American education which is controlled, not by the Federal Government, but by the 48 individual States. In consequence of this decentralisation, essential in a vast country, conditions differ greatly from one locality to another—a fact that is most clearly shown by the wide range of annual public expenditure in 1938 between the extreme limits of £4 per pupil in average daily attendance in Mississippi and £60 in New York, the corresponding figure for Great Britain being about £17.
In spite of this wide diversity, we can derive a great deal of useful and helpful information from American experience. In considering how far their methods of administration and organisation could be usefully applied in this country, it is reasonable to ignore both the educationally backward Southern States (in two of which the negroes are in the majority), and the very sparsely populated States, and confine our attention to those States where the density and general distribution of population into urban and rural areas bear some resemblance to Great Britain. If we do this, two main principles emerge, one concerned with administration and the other with the secondary curriculum.
The most striking fact about the administration of American elementary and secondary education is that in spite of the general tendency in all democratic societies towards amalgamation and centralisation of administrative, executive and fiscal authority, the American people have for the most part resolutely refused to allow their schools to come under the control of local government authori- ties. The State Legislature decides and controls the general edu- cational policy of the State in much the same way as our policy is decided by Parliament and controlled centrally through the Board of Education. The cost of education is also met partly by local taxation and partly by State taxation, with a steady increase in the Proportion contributed by the States, which, in the country as a whole, rose from 17 per cent. in 1930 to 3o per cent. in 1938, and in some States is now as high as so per cent. The main difference from administration in this country lies in the fact that the local School Boards—which are the American equivalent of our Local Education Authorities—are separately elected by the people and are consti- tutionally and financially independent of the other local government authorities. In other words, the American people regard their system of free education as much too important to be administered by a sub-committee of a municipal or county council. Those who serve on an American School Board are elected by the residents of a locality for the specific purpose of administering the Schools in that locality ; they are not persons who have been elected to supervise a miscellaneous collection of public utilities which happens to include the Schools. American School Boards remain independent simply because the American people believe that this is the most certain way of ensuring that their children shall receive the best education that their community can afford to provide. This belief is well expressed in the words of Willard E. Givens, the executive secretary of the National Education Association :
" Wise public policy demands the retention of separate control of our public schools. No convincing evidence has come to my attention indicating that a school board subordinate to municipal government is more economical or efficient than a board which derives its powers• directly from the people. . . . Everyone will agree that our school* can serve our society best if kept free from partisan politics. Separation of education from general municipal government is helpful in doing that. There is no other public service where partisan interference is more disastrous than in education. Control of the budget is an essentil function of the local school board. A budget is a statement of edu- cational policy in financial terms. Those who control the budget. have the last word regarding educational policy. The culminating argument in favour of a separate school board rests on the unique function of education in American Democracy. That function is to help our citizens, young and old, to evaluate intelligently the social, economic and political arrangements which serve us. . . . The school cannot carry out this function if it is subordinate to any of the units which it must fearlessly and impartially evaluate."
Although there are many localities where the School Boards do not enjoy complete constitutional and financial freedom, that inde- pendence is the general rule is shown by the following figures for 1940 collected by the U.S. Office of Education from about 300 cities having populations over 30,000. School Boards were elected by popular vote in 74 per cent. of these cities. In 86 per cent. of the cities holding School Board elections, candidates represented the city as a whole (the method of election by city wards or districts going steadily out of favour), and the elections took place at the same time as the general municipal elections. A Board very rarely has more than nine members, the average number being seven, and the average term of office is between four and five years, with a tendency in the direction of longer tenure. In 64 per cent. the municipal government exercised no control over educational finance. In cities where the School Boards do not possess complete constitutional and fiscal independence, almost every possible phase between voluntary inter- dependence and complete amalgamation exists. Comparison of the percentages for 1940 with those for 1917 and 1927 shows no tendency whatever towards increased municipal control.
The other feature of the American system that deserves considera- tion is the nature of the secondary curriculum. The American High School is multilateral in the fullest and widest meaning of the term. The proposal contained in paragraph 31 of the White Paper that there shall be three main types of secondary school, known as gram-
mar, modern and technical schools, is a clear reflection of our class- conscious society. The White Paper admittedly qualifies the proposal by stating that " different types of school may be combined in one building or on one site as considerations of convenience and efficiency may suggest." This, however, is no answer to the American criticism that apart from any consideration of convenience or efficiency, the allocation of boys and girls to different types of school according to their possible or probable vocations is both educationally and socially undesirable from every point of view. The American High School is perhaps the greatest contribution of America to modern edu- cational practice. One appreciates the practical difficulties of con- verting many of our existing grammar schools into multilateral schools, but before we commit ourselves to a future development of secondary education along the lines suggested in the White Paper, a much more thorough and searching study of educational principles is necessary. Here again we can learn a great deal from American experience in a field of social development in which she is in many States far ahead of us.
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