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 third of those that entered the ninth grade finished the twelfth grade.

 Getting back to the present time, if you cut out vocational education, cut out
 special education, cut out remedial work, and that sort of thing and go to a strict
 academic curriculum, you are going to do the same thing. You repeat the
 dropout pattern instead of getting that improvement. The development of
 curriculum is based entirely on those who are academically gifted. So I believe
 that children should be given a chance to go to school, to go through high school,
 no matter their level of ability. You can give them some type of education that
 would be useful to them: vocational education, job training, citizenship, art,
 music, and various things that would enrich their lives.

C: Meet the needs of the individuals.

J: Meet the needs of that individual. Now, you may have a certain curriculum that
 would be college preparatory. I have no objection to that, provided that was not
 the only curriculum offered. The only thing we had when I [was the principal of
 this] high school was a college preparatory curriculum. That is all I had. But I
 did put in vocational education, business education, and some other things to
 change the curriculum of the school. I made quite a few changes that way.
 After being there three years, in 1926 my school was rated the best school in the
 state of Missouri for adjusting the needs of the curriculum to the needs of the
 students, for my size of school. I had also introduced extra-curricular activities.
 I put in band, music, and art. I coached the football team and the basketball
 team. We had both boys and girls basketball.

 Then the students came to school; they did not quit school. I had students come
 to school wearing mustaches; students twenty-four and twenty-five years of age
 came back to high school and completed high school because of these various
 types of programs.

 The board of education was a very conservative board in an old southern town.
 Bloomfield, Missouri was very conservative. Well, they thought that I had ruined
 the curriculum because I had taken the emphasis [on classics] away. I had cut
 out two years of Latin; instead of having four years of Latin, I required two years.
 [That was necessary] in order to have teachers for these other things. At the
 end of the third year, they were not going to rehire me. I would have been fired,
 but the board let the word out to me. So I resigned and went to Columbia to do
 graduate work. But that shows the sort of a thing that you get into if you change
 the curriculum.

C: What was the reaction here in Florida when the curriculum changed?

J: Well, you get that reaction now. They think that the schools [are offering] a "soft