College Students to Help Revise History Course for High School

A group of College students will help set up a revised American History program for juniors at Newton High School who do not plan to attend college. The group, composed of Honors candidates in History and Government, met last night to discuss plans with Wayne Altree, chairman of the social studies department at Newton High, and Edward Martin, a history teacher there.

As outlined by Martin, the new program involves arranging the course material in topics and illustrating it with anecdotes from original sources. The topics, such as "the growth and purpose of political parties," will be set up to dovetail with the required "Problems of Democracy" course for seniors. The anecdotes will make the material more vivid for the students, Martin said.

Standard textbooks will be used as little as possible. "We have found no satisfactory text for teaching less intellectual kids," Martin declared.

While observing the classes at Newton and conferring with a number of teachers, the College participants in the program will compile "cases": contemporary accounts of incidents such as the Salem witch trial, which illustrate a particular topic. They will rewrite these anecdotes in simpler language and provide an explanatory introduction. In addition, they may do some informal teaching.

The new method, he stated, is designed to make the problems in American history more meaningful to less intelligent youths. "You have to produce a more personal identification with the material for this group than for intellectual kids," he said. I.Q.'s of most students in the group range from 70 to around 110.