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CHAPTER IMPROVEMENT OF CONTENT OF- EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENTOF ABILITY

In the United States of America, many senior high schools and four-year high schools provide a great variety of elective subjects as well as the required subjects to give the students the opportunity for an education commensurate with their abilities and aptitudes. There is also an increasing number of schools which practice an ability grouping system. Another development of recent years is the Advanced Placement Program system aiming at the abolition of duplication of the educational contents in senior courses of high schools and in colleges. The Advanced Placement Program gives able high school students who have accomplished required tasks in an abbreviated time, an opportunity to pursue college-level courses in their own secondary schools and awards them credit, advanced placement (enter colleges as sophomore) or both on condition that they have obtained a satisfactory score on the examinations provided by the College Entrance Examination Board. Moreover, there is also a recent increase in the number of elementary schools practicing ability grouping, which is, in part, a sort of special education for the talented.

Judging from the standpoint of education suited to abilities and aptitudes, the guidance system has made the system of elective subjects and the ability grouping actually effective. Secondary schools in America pro-vide counselors who have the responsibility of helping the students to make wise choice of courses best suited to their abilities and aptitudes, or helping them to be transferred to the most appropriate classes by using the Achievement Tests administered by independent test agencies such as the Educational Testing Service. Pupi1s graduating from elementary schools often are given pre-secondary school counseling by secondary school counselors in the elementary schools, based on tests of scholastic ability, vocational aptitudes and intelligence. Guidance and counseling programs are also conducted in the secondary schools to enable students to transfer from one type of course (or class) to another.

Counselors have many responsibilities, not only of educational and vocational guidance, but also on such matters as students health, attendance, behavior, learning habits, psychological adaptation, and human relations(family, friends etc.).

One of the major objectives of the National Defense Education Act is to encourage and develop programs of guidance, counseling and testing for high school students. In 1958, when the NDEA was enacted, the national ratio of full-time counselors to high school students was about 1 to 750;in 1960 it had decreased to about l to 540. Efforts are now being made toward a desirable ratio of about one full-time counselor to every 250 high school students.