NEW COLLEGE STUDY PLAN

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22270, 8 December 1937, Page 6

NEW COLLEGE STUDY PLAN

REORGANISING OF SCHOOL SCHEDULE The Hiram study plan, after three years of expcrimiGn'tation, lias Deon. weighed and found worthy by a committee of evaluation and by the student body and faculty of Hiram College, Ohio, itself. The plan—undertaken in January, 1934 —is a reorganisation of the schedule of college study, whereby a student is enabled to give practically his full attention to a single course at a time. J Under the Hiram study plan, the year is divided into four quarters of nine weeks each. During each of these nine-week periods a student has an intensive course —the equivalent of six hours of credit. In addition, and continuing through the year, there is a “running course” which meets at eight in the morning, three times a week, and, like courses offered in the former regular college plans, carries three hours of credit a semester. The normal study plan, as formerly used in the college, was five courses running concurrently, and if successfully finished earning a student 30 hours of academic credit. The Hiram study plan, therefore, gives a student four of his year’s courses intensively—that is, one at a time in blocks of nine weeks each —and in addition a running course taking one-fifth of his study time——which continues throughout the year. NON-PROMOTION OF PUPILS TEACHERS’ ATTITUDE IN UNITED STATES A continued attitude of rebellion on the part of educators toward nonpromotion of pupils or a system which brands certain children as “educational outcasts,” featured one session of an educational conference being held in New York and attended by about 600 personnel specialists from many parts of the country. Dr. William S. Gray, professor of education at the University of Chicago, told of the great number of children who pass yearly from elementary to high schools without having mastered what many educators consider the most important of the “three R’s”— reading. This was closely related to the general progress of youth in other fields than reading, he held. “But the cure does not lie in nonpromotion,” Dr. Gray declared. “It lies in identifying the nature and causes of the difficulty and then providing adjustments. Treating children as educational outcasts is in conflict with the ideals of American education in a democracy.”

He recommended a vigorous, sympathetic, constructive attitude of the school toward “poor reading.” A necessarily broader programme would emphasise the social advantage of reading with understanding, or teaching the pupil to think, instead of merely recognising words, he said.