Stories of the Eight-Year Study: Reexamining Secondary Education in America

Vignette: Harold Alberty (1890-1971) and the Quest for Core

161 Vignette Harold Alberty (1890–1971) and the Quest for Core Harold Alberty’s participation in the Eight-Year Study decisively affected his career, and in many ways he helped determine the direction of the project. After the completion of the Study and for the rest of his life, he championed an adolescent needs-based and problemcentered core curriculum, a form of general education that he was instrumental in developing during his tenure as director of the Ohio State University School and as a curriculum associate with the Aikin Commission. He could not have known that his name would become so intimately connected to core. This association was strengthened by his extensive consulting work and through the three editions of Reorganizing the High School Curriculum, the final edition coauthored with his wife, Elise Alberty.1 Originally Alberty had not intended to become an educator. Perhaps stimulated by his father’s love of Sherlock Holmes, from an early age he wanted to become a lawyer. In 1913, having simultaneously completed his undergraduate studies at Baldwin University and legal studies at Cleveland Law School, he was admitted to the Ohio Bar and planned to join the firm of one of his law instructors. His future seemed assured when suddenly his teacher died, and he found himself searching for employment. Since he had previously taught eighth grade, he decided to return to teaching and to his surprise became increasingly interested in education and in the problems of learning. Promotions Harold Alberty, photograph, 1940, Ohio State University Photo Archives 162 Stories of the Eight-Year Study came quickly, and soon Alberty was appointed superintendent of the village schools (assistant county superintendent of the Cuyahoga County School District in northern Ohio). Although he did not plan to abandon his law career, he began graduate studies in school administration at Ohio State University in 1920. While working on his master’s thesis, he enrolled in a course taught by Boyd Bode. Up until this time, Alberty had been deeply influenced by activity analysis and the writings of W. W. Charters, whose book, Curriculum Construction, became his “bible.” Bode’s course proved an “upsetting” experience, one that affected him profoundly : “Each day I would climb out on a limb—only to have it sawed off by my beloved professor.”2 Bode’s influence grew as Alberty gave up his dream of practicing law and decided to devote himself to the study of educational issues. Yet diverting his legal career did not mean that he set aside his considerable analytic skills. In education, these abilities were put to good use, particularly in seeking to make sense of the confusion surrounding the concept and practice of core curriculum. I Students sometimes referred to Alberty in his presence as the father or perhaps the grandfather of the core program. “If so,” he would retort with some levity, “it is an illegitimate child.” (Victor B. Lawhead 1996)3 Curricular integration was becoming an important theme for the Aikin Commission schools as early as 1933, when Robert Leigh first categorized the various approaches to program development. Unlike Leigh, however, Alberty wanted not only to map current practice but to develop a logical scheme that would assist educators to clarify their thoughts about the purposes of core curriculum. Eventually, he settled on five general education designs that appeared in Reorganizing the High School Curriculum. Each curriculum represented a different approach to the problem of general education, those educational programs “specifically geared to the task of providing educational experiences to meet the common problems and needs of the student, and to develop the values, understandings, and skills needed by all for effective democratic citizenship.” Alberty contrasted general education with specialized education, which focused on the “cultivation of the uniqueness of each citizen.”4 General education was seen as that portion of the secondary school curriculum that would engage all students; core curriculum in one of many forms came to represent general education. Integration became the ultimate quest of general education, unlike specialized education, which emerged “at the point where special inter- 163 Vignette: Harold Alberty (1890–1971) ests can no longer be effectively dealt with in groups organized primarily in terms of common concerns.”5 These two concepts—general and specialized education—provided a starting point for Alberty to respond to a set of persistent issues in curriculum reform: Which is more important , content breadth or depth? How does...