ABSTRACT
In the common elementary school American boys and girls should assimilate the literature, history and biography that will bind them together with a common background of tradition and emotional experience. The mindless togetherness induced by this 'rope of sand' curriculum presents the seamy side of the formative period of the high school, one which many educated Americans would gladly forget. For education cannot easily or wisely be divided into separate parts. The colleges depend on the work of the schools; the schools depend on the colleges for teachers; vocational and technical education is not separate from general education. Equality of educational opportunity did not square with type or program or quality of offering. New curricula would have to be brought in line with social goals and educational realities as well as with advances in knowledge and psychological theories of learning.
