Standards (1890-1920)
Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education
The Tradition that a particular type of education, and that exclusively nonvocational in character, is the only acceptable preparation for advanced education, must therefore give way to a specific evaluation of all types of secondary education as preparation for continued study...[P]upils who, during the secondary period, devote a considerable time to courses having vocational content should be permitted to pursue whatever form of higher education, either liberal or vocational, they are able to undertake with profit to themselves and to society.
Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education
The 1918 report of the National Education Association's Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education is commonly referred to as the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education. The report provided justification for the transformation of traditional humanistic studies but did not suggest the elimination of traditional subjects.
Commission members believed that secondary education should be practical for the majority of students enrolled and insisted that the aims of education should be functional. In its report, the Commission defined the aims of the curriculum as vocation, citizenship, the worthy use of leisure and home membership, health, ethical character, and the command of fundamental processes (the 3 R's).
One of the most significant things that emerged from the report was that it abandoned any semblance of maintaining curricular uniformity at the secondary level. The report justified the existence of different curricula for different people and purposes. The only uniform element to a high school following these designs was the high school experience itself.
