Archival issues of the ATA Magazine can be just as relevant now as they were when originally published,
or they can remind us how far we’ve come. You decide.
Check out these items from the April 1962 issue of the ATA Magazine, which examined, among other topics, how changes in education interact with societal shifts.
The biologist has had the problem of bringing his laboratory work to life. In a biology class he always tells students that “biology is the study of life" and then spends nine months trying to prove it with a parade of dead, dried, preserved, embalmed, pickled, pressed, embedded and otherwise immobilized and distorted specimens. There is seldom the use of frogs that jump, fish that swim, flowers that smell, worms that wiggle, birds that fly or humans that think. [… But] learning is truly accurate only insofar as students have opportunities for a true experience with the phenomenon or materials under study.
— Paul DeHart Hurd,
“Teaching Science in a Changing Society”
Education is like a capital investment; an educated people is more productive. In the cold war, both the economic and the military race depend upon scientific and technological advances. Our very survival may well depend on the level of education of our people. For all of these reasons, we regard education as of broader importance and concern than that of a unit of local government. Pot holes in the streets of a city are of local concern. Pot holes in the education of the youth of a city will, in the future, affect not only that city but, because of population mobility, the whole province and nation.
—“A special feature: ATA Submission Regarding Urban Counties”
The changing and evolving function of the teacher will bring about a revolution in the architectural design of the schools of the future. The interrelationship between the architect, trustee and teacher will become critical if new design is to keep pace with educational change.
— J. D. McFetridge
“School Design – Tool or Tyrant?”