Of all the carry-overs from the last century which vex and frustrate educators, there is perhaps none more inefficient than the legacy of a school calendar built around an agricultural life which demanded time off for summer work on the farms.

Traditional Barriers

Pressed today as never before by the rising costs of buildings, a shortage of competent teachers, and inability to pay those who are available a decent wage, schools have sought almost desperately to break through the barriers imposed by the traditional school year. Starting with summer sessions in schools and colleges, the last two decades have seen a series of imaginative studies of the entire problem of the academic schedule. Somewhat to the disappointment of professional educators, many of the experiments have failed, and many of the study reports have been essentially negative in their recommendations.

The failures, however, have not been complete: while helping to destroy the myth that all school boards and trustees were negligent in failing to institute revised schedules, they provided a far clearer understanding of the potential, as well as of the inherent difficulties, of trying to modify the academic year.

Twenty-five years ago, in the midst of the depression, two Pennsylvania towns, Ambridge and Aliquippa, tried one of the first serious experiments in applying new ideas about the school year. Both towns were operating under the pressure of necessity--they did not have sufficient funds to handle the school-age population using conventional methods.

In the Ambridge and Aliquippa experiment, known as the four-quarter plan, the year is divided into quarters, and vacations are distributed equally among four terms. Three-quarters of the student body is always in school.

Ten years later, during World War II, Fort Worth, Texas, instituted a similar program to take care of a flood of new students. But, as soon as they had a chance, all three communities abandoned it.

Parental Opposition

The difficulty was not the program itself--educationally it "worked well," according to Dr. L. M. Wilson, superintendent of schools in Aliquippa at the time. But parental opposition to the staggered vacations and to summer work was overwhelming. Wilson explained that the school-board had "promised" to return to the old program when sufficient money was available, but strong community pressure was an important factor.

In the last three years, there has been a strong rebirth of interest in full-year educational systems. A public school have each undertaken a major study. Although the recommendations were strikingly different, the findings had a great deal in common.

In 1957, Thomas B. Stanley, governor of Virginia, proposed that the entire Virginia public school system should be put on a four-quarter program much like that which had been tried with little success in Aliquippa, Ambridge, and Fort Worth. The plan, which had met with great parental disapproval, was shelved when the segregation crisis occurred, and there is little prospect that it will be revived. Despite its failure, the Virginia proposal represents one of the first serious moves by a state system toward the full year school, and is memorable for that reason alone.

Two other studies have been made, however, which promise to have far greater effects: one because it is almost a definitive case against the four-quarter program; the other because it led to concrete action which represents a step toward full-time use of a college.

Phillips Exeter Academy made its study at the suggestion of a member of the Board of Trustees. A committee of four faculty members and the treasurer of the school worked full-time during the summer of 1957. Their conclusion, that Exeter should not go on a full-year schedule, was supported by a rebuttal of some of the favorite arguments of supporters of the four-quarter proposal. Their report is, however, an extraordinarily persuasive statement of the appeal of a full-year program if applied somewhere more suited to it than Exeter.

Full-time use of the school plant is only the first advantage of the four-quarter program. This argument appeals especially to a business-minded board of trustees, but it represents a distinctly one-sided view.

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