Lifelong Education Administration and Policy

Faculty

Implementing the Unifying Function of the Comprehensive High School

In order for the comprehensive high school model to contribute to present-day priorities of fostering multicultural understanding and mitigating the miseducative effects of tracking, the neglected unifying function must be rehabilitated. What are some ways in which the unifying function of the comprehensive high school can be effectively implemented?

Too often common graduation requirements, originally intended as curriculum constants serving the unifying function, are grouped homogeneously and contribute instead to the segregation of students. To avoid the miseducative effects of tracking and to capitalize on the unifying potential of common graduation requirements as curriculum constants, all courses required for graduation should be grouped heterogeneously.
Students can develop a sense of common responsibility by collaborating on the examination and resolution of common problems and issues in a full-year common learnings course that is heterogeneously grouped, interdisciplinary, and problem focused and required, at best, each year for all students. Problem- and issue-focused courses like the Problems of Democracy course can contribute significantly to the desirable mind set for citizens in a diverse democratic society.
A rich program of extraclass student activities, available to all students, including peer leadership programs, student government, sports, musical and dramatic productions, clubs, and so on can serve students' personal interests and act as purposeful unifying forces in the high school program.
Daily operations of the school can be exploited as opportunities to model the value of democratic community. This can be accomplished when the principal and other school leaders--including student government--regularly communicate a visible commitment to community as a prized value of the school through such vehicles as the school philosophy or mission statement, assemblies, parent meetings, back-to-school- nights, student orientations, and other ceremonies. Public areas in the building, such as lobbies, cafeterias, and courtyards, can be made available and promoted as vehicles for student association. Participatory forms of decision making should pervade school life.
The establishment of one common high school diploma rather than separate designations for academic, tech prep/vocational, and general can broadcast a powerful message of unity. Such a practice could be tied expressly to the notion that in a democracy all citizens are expected to contribute to the common good and all work is regarded as dignified--thus labels reflecting occupational paths are unwarranted. Legitimate concerns about the impression such student records give to college admissions officials can be allayed through recognition of the fact that colleges are ultimately concerned with the courses a student took more than with the label a high school attaches to a program.
While many of these suggestions certainly are not new, neither are they typically implemented for the express purpose of unifying a diverse student population. Their purposeful implementation in concert with each other in the name of social integration and unification would likely involve a significant departure from business-as-usual in many high schools. Together, these provisions can contribute to fostering "those common ideas, common ideals, and common modes of thought, feeling, and action that make for cooperation, social cohesion, and social solidarity" (Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, 1918, p. 21). Given the historic and contemporary neglect of the unifying function, successful efforts to enact it could result in a profound transformation of the educational experiences of American youth.

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