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Committee
of Ten's Recommendations, 1892
From the time of the Civil
War until the last decade of the nineteenth century, the high school
curriculum had "grown like Topsy." With no precedent after which to pattern itself, this entire
novel education institution had simply retained old subjects and added
new ones as the demand arose.
Most significant in number and importance of the additions
were the sciences, which included botany, zoology, physiology, anatomy,
physics, astronomy, and geology.
But many subjects demanded by students not planning to attend
college were also added, among them commercial arithmetic, business
correspondence, banking, stenography, and typewriting.
In short, the high school curriculum represented a disordered
array of courses; students, in an attempt to cover as many as possible,
were studying large numbers of subjects for relatively short periods
of time. The curriculum, obviously, was in need of some degree of order
and standardization. The conditions described
above eventuated in 1892 in the appointment of the Committee on Secondary
School Studies (commonly called the Committee of Ten) under the chairmanship
of Charles Eliot, president of Harvard.r[1] In its report issued the following year,
the committee acknowledged the terminal as well as the college preparatory
function of the high school, but proceeded to recommend a curriculum
entirely oriented towards the college-bound student. Declaring that fewer subjects should be
studied over a longer period of time for "strong and effective
mental training,"the committee plotted out for alternative courses
of study: the Classical,
the Latin-Scientific, the Modern Language, and the English. In
every course except one, a third of the students' time would be devoted
to foreign languages, and three courses called for the study of no
fewer than eight sciences. The
committee recommend that the terminal students be given the same program
as those who were headed for college.
Although the report helped to bring order out of near chaos,
its domination by the conservative spirit of mental discipline[2] was clear. By and large, the report of the Committee
of Ten established college domination over the high school curriculum
and "determined the course of American secondary education for
a generation following its publication"(Butts and Cremin 1952,
p. 390.).
[1] This was a committee
set up by the National Education Association. [2]
"Mental discipline" is the now debunked learning theory
that minds can be exercised in the same way muscles are exercised. Thus, 19th century curriculum discussions
were full of a lot of drill exercises and lots of discussion of certain
courses, such as Latin and Greek, being good for mental growth.
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