4. A heavy emphasis on formal class work in the traditional educational program is not likely to be harmonious with extraclass activities. 5. A pronounced emphasis on marks, grades, credits as most important to pupils may be a handicap to extraclass activities. 6. Participation in extraclass activities is more difficult to measure than participation in formal class work. 7. Pre-service and in-service teacher training for the sponsorship of extraclass activities is often inadequate. 8. Good practices in extraclass activities in other high schools have been insufficiently described. 9. The faculty may endorse the idea of democratic practice, yet feel that pupils may not be ready for democracy because they are likely to make many mistakes. 10. Sponsorship of extraclass activities before or after school requires time and attention of the teacher over and above regular class duties; such additional work is tiring and difficult; without additional compensation, sponsorship is to be avoided, if at all possible. These typical reasons for the lag between principle and practice are concerned with attitudes. The need for change may be seen, but until the need for change is felt and attitudes are affected, principals and teachers are not likely to press for needed change. Early Development of Extraclass Activities It is difficult to review accurately the origin and early progress of extraclass activities in public high schools. Few records of such activities in the early years of this century are available. At that time school officers made little attempt to record information about pupil participation in the various activities. This is in contrast to the school records of pupils' attendance and scholastic standing, which were recorded accurately. It has been pointed out that pupil activities then lacked the respectability of the formal educational program. From the few data available, it appears that interscholastic athletics comprised a sizable part of pupil activities prior to 1910. Nonathletic activities in high schools usually including a group in dramatics, debate, and music, had made only a modest beginning. In general, they represented selective activities that appealed to a relatively small segment of the student body, usually boys and girls of higher scholastic achievement who were preparing for college. Interscholastic athletics, on the other hand, often attracted youth whose school standing indicated indifferent performance. Some readers may recall the suspicious attitudes of many teachers toward high-school 3For an authoritative account of the initiation and development of pupil activities in 269 representative public high schools, see Jones, Galen, Extra-curricular Activities in Relation to the Curriculum. New York, Teachers College Contributions to Education, No. 667, 1935. 113 p. V athletes. The boys on the football or basketball team frequently faced adversaries on the gridiron or court and they had to put up with the likelihood of academic censure in the classroom as well. So it happened that the selective high-school offerings of athletic and nonathletic activities in the early years of this century were very likely to attract pupils of widely differing purposes. Enrollments Increase From 1910 on, extraclass activities in public high schools seemed to gain momentum. This expansion occurred at the time that total highschool enrollments were increasing, but increasing enrollments were not solely responsible for the trend in pupil activities. Other factors, such as the genuine pupil desire for the extracurriculum, the realization by faculties that pupil activities were educationally and socially desirable for youth, and the tendency of the community to regard these activities as a measure of the high-school's effectiveness, had some part in influencing the trend. Table 1.-Enrollment in public high-school grades, by sex, for 10-year intervals, 1910 to 19401 1 Statistics of State School Systems, 1945-46. Washington, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1949. 2 Does not include junior high schools. 3 Estimated. The growth of the total secondary school enrollments from 1910 to 1940 is characterized by a steadiness, whereas the growth of pupil activities during the same period reveals intervals of spasmodic increase, as will be shown later. To set the background of enrollment statistics in those years, with which statistics of pupil activities may be compared, table 1 cites enrollment figures, as revealed by Biennial Survey of Education, 1944-46. 4 In the National Survey of Secondary Education, Reavis and Van Dyke wrote a monograph on Nonathletic Extracurriculum Activities, now out of print and therefore no longer available to the profession generally. They traced the development of pupil activities from 1910 to 1930 in four high schools in or near Chicago. Each of these schools had maintained somewhat complete records of extraclass activities during the two decades. Reavis and Van Dyke found that nonathletic activities in these schools gained 60 percent from 1910 to 1920, and 340 percent from 1920 to 1930. In the 18-year period, 1913-30, the number of nonathletic activities. for girls increased one and one-half times faster than activities for boys. As to type of activity, the greatest increase was noted in "civic, moral, and honorary" groups, and "avocational" clubs. Though pupil enrollment in: creased as activities grew, by 1930 the pupils were provided a wider variety of activities. For the four schools, a total of 391 athletic and nonathletic activities for boys and girls existed at one time or another during this period. The average and median life of these activities was 6.8 and 4.4 years, respectively. For two graduating classes (1921 and 1928), participation of boys Office of Education Bulletin 1932, No. 17, Monograph No. 26. Washington, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1933. slightly exceeded that of the girls in 1921 and was considerably less than the girls' participation in 1928. Total participation, however, was slightly greater in 1928 than in 1921. The trend in 1928 toward participation in activities, as reported by Reavis and Van Dyke, is reflected in the findings of many secondary schools in 1948-49; percentage of girls' participation is somewhat greater than percentage of boys' participation. Reports From Other Schools Since data for the National Survey of Secondary Education do not extend beyond 1930, it might be interesting to note the trend during the past three decades in extraclass activities offered at regular intervals by a selected number of public high schools. The Senior High School at Appleton, Wis. (enrollment, 1,250), has published records of its athletic and nonathletic pupil activities in the Student Handbook, which has been issued annually since 1925 and is now in its twenty-second edition. The information in table 2, taken from the student handbooks, shows how extraclass activities have developed at specified intervals in the period from 1925 to 1950. A plus (+) mark indicates that the activity began or has continued, a minus (−) mark that it was dropped, a zero (0) that as the time it did not exist. Table 2.-Offerings in pupil athletic and nonathletic activities in Appleton Senior High School at specified intervals, 1925 to 19501 |