PROGRAMS OF SECONDARY EDUCATION

HIDELISA G. OLEGARIO

The educational program of a high school is the sum and total of the learning experiences that the school provides for its students. Learning is the process of mastering new responses and adaptations of the individual gains from his experience in the school. It is essentially a process arising from the activity of the student, motivated by purposes real to that student; it is also a process of new experiences and understandings fitting new experiences and understandings into a present pattern of understanding.

The experiences provided in the school must be related to the needs and problems that arise in the environment of the school. The purpose of having schools and of trying to get pupils to learn is to help them become healthy, happy, and successful persons capable of maintaining and improving our type of democratic life. The youth school of today must therefore prepare youth to live in an industrial, urban, interdependent national and world-wide economy, to deal with an increasing body of knowledge in all fields, and to meet complex problems of a social and civic nature.

Two major areas must be provided in the total program: a program designed to meet common needs, or general education; and a program for specialized interest and individual needs. There is increasing evidence that conventional subject organization is not the most effective pattern for general education. Program reorganization, involving as a first step at least the reorganization of subjects and, in the more advanced programs, the organization of the study around the problems and needs of youth, has been definitely developing.

The single most important responsibility of the secondary school principal is that of providing leadership in program development. To it the good high school principal wants to give his personal time and attention. A comprehensive program of curriculum improvement must draw upon the resources of the total staff, must seek the aid of interest of the community, and must be continually, evolving and never ending program.

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The author is Head Teacher I at Becuran High School, Sta. Rita, Pampanga