Schools for the 70's and Beyond: A Call to Action. Greenleaf, Warren T.; Griffin, Gary A.

This is a comprehensive report to the teaching profession as one basis for a series of town meetings to improve America's schools. Beginning with a survey of the American scene in the 1960's, it considers the role played by the schools in producing a society in which technology has outdistanced humanity. The need to make schools humane institutions was the major goal recommended by NEA's Center for the Study of Instruction in 1969, and barriers to this goal are considered--the system, the instructional program, the teachers, the students, and school finance. The humanistic school calls for greater community involvement and political decentralization in spite of the problems involved. The curriculum should be reformed to develop the full range of human capacities, with evaluation which is designed to improve instruction rather than compare children. School organization should free the children and teacher to focus on learning, not the clock. Differentiated staffing should free teachers from administrative and housekeeping tasks and enable them to be more fully professional. Teacher education also needs to be reformed. The problems facing students includes cultural and ethnic differences, the wide variations between the states in educational expenditure, and the individual differences in learning styles. The report calls for a nationwide dialogue at all levels of the profession to prepare a set of principles and plans for action. (MBM)