Source Document

School District of Kansas City. Forty-Fifth Annual Report. (1916): 28-29.

Interpretation

The text should be read in conjunction with the discussion of the origins of Missouri's Kansas City Junior College. This section of the 1916 board report is intended to provide an overview and rationale for the organization of the city's junior college in 1915. The basic themes reflected in this document were repeated in several hundred other communities, although rarely with such clarity and comprehensiveness. The first is that the city lacked a college of its own, and so any young person who earned a high school diploma (and 18% was a remarkably high percentage by national standards) was forced to leave home. This was bad enough for the boys, but was intolerable for girls, since residential colleges and universities were frequently regarded as havens of sin (one could learn to smoke, drink and even dance, particularly at schools that had been organized around Greek societies).

The second, and now generally overlooked theme, is that an established postgraduate program was breaking down. Kansas City was far from alone in permitting students to enroll for a fifth and even sixth year of high school work, even if they had earned a diploma after the conventional four years of study, just as it followed the normal practice the time and concurrently enrolled these postgraduates in courses with high school students. In the 1880s and 1890s, state universities generally did not have a problem with granting college credit for such work (this is apparent from an accreditation report prepared by the University of Michigan's Professor Palmer for Joliet's Central High Schools prostgraduate courses in 1895.) But by the second decade of this century, with "standardization" the call-word of the day, such lax practices were no longer tolerated by university registrars, and especially the University of Missouri's nationally-prominent registrar, Jesse H. Coursault. Rather than risk the wrath of parents, whose children found their postgraduate credits rejected, Kansas City, like Joliet and such large-city school districts as\ Newark, Detroit, and Chicago, formally reorganized their large postgraduate programs into junior colleges. The "problem" of some high school students electing to put off taking the high school diploma after four years of study, so as to remain eligible for high school extracurricular activities, appears to have been unique to Kansas City, but it is likely that this practice only hastened the demise of the city's postgraduate program in favor of a largely independent junior college.

Text

p. 28 BOARD OF EDUCATION.

The Junior College.

Few cities of the United States give more cordial and loyal support to their public schools than does Kansas City. Our latest reports show that fifty-five percent of the students complete the elementary schools and eighteen percent the high schools. Statistics are not available concerning the number of high school graduates who attend college. The number, however, is large and the question of extending education beyond the high school is a vital one for our city.

As there is no institution of college or university rank within the city, it is necessary, therefore, for our boys and girls who wish a college education to leave home for this purpose. As the elementary and high school period is covered in eleven years instead of twelve, the usual number, many of these high school graduates are of an age when parents dislike to have them leave the home. The result has been that Kansas City high schools have offered many courses of semi-collegiate nature and students have remained after graduating for additional work in the home school. Last year one hundred fifty students were enrolled in our schools who had graduated the preceding year. Because of the fact that post-graduates were barred from participating in many of the student activities of the school, many students with sufficient credits for graduation, deliberately postponed taking their diplomas in order to avail themselves of the privileges of the under-graduates. The Kansas City high schools, therefore, contain many fifth year pupils. Many students who expected later to take a college course used this fifth year to do work for which credit should be asked in college. As fifth year students were in classes with under-graduates it was impossible to place the work on the same plane as college work. Our universities were obliged, therefore, to discount the work given to our fifth year pupils because of the conditions under which it was given.

In cooperation with our State University it was proposed to segregate our fifth year pupils into separate classes and organize a new institution, a Junior College where work of the same character and covering the same subjects as that which is given in the first two years of college, should be given. No movement in the public schools has received more enthusiastic endorsement.

p. 29 SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT.

On May 20, 1915, in establishing a policy for the high school, the idea of the Junior College was approved by the Board of Education and plans were made for the opening of the school in September, 1915. The following bulletin, in addition to containing the courses offered in the school district’s Polytechnic Institute, explains in some detail the plans for the inauguration of the junior college.

Contributor: R. Pedersen

Last Updated: December 15, 1999

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