ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the 1890s the National Council of Education of the National Education Association commissioned the Committee of Ten to define the nature and purpose of American secondary education. It did so against the background of the issues discussed in the previous chapters. The council asked the committee specifically to organize conferences “of school and college teachers of each principal subject which enters into the programmes of secondary schools…and into the requirements for admission to college.” It added that the committee was to limit its investigation to the principal subjects of the secondary school curriculum that were required for admission into colleges and universities. The chief questions the committee was to answer were whether the high school’s primary task was to prepare its students for life or for college, or whether high schools could accomplish both assignments at the same time. The puzzling issue of manual education was not placed on the agenda; neither was the suggestion, beginning to be made toward the close of the 1880s, to introduce vocational education.
