EDUCATION IN EUROPE AND AMERICA.

Tabular and graphic presentations of the ratio of the entire population enrolled in the schools.

The accompanying presentation is an attempt at a systematic comparison of the efforts in behalf of public education on the part of the different nations in Europe and America. While it is instructive in a certain sense to hear of the educational efforts of this, that, or the other country, it will not suffice to depend on isolated facts. They have their value only when compared with many or all facts of similar nature.

If there is anything within the well-defined field of national activity which deserves great attention, profound study, and affectionate care, it is public education. A young, vigorous, growing nation like America finds itself impelled to institute a comparison with the remarkably active nations of the Old World, to see that it will not fall behind them in what is considered the noblest national activity; partly also to give the educational forces of the nation a fresh impulse in showing what has been done in the past and what ought to be done in future. It is to be hoped that this attempt at comparison by means of graphic presentation will induce the school authorities of other countries to take up the question and thus institute a reciprocal action on the part of the different nations of the world.

There are various lines of inquiry pointed out by the different standards of comparison. A fruitful comparison would needs be in regard to internal as well as external conditions. Among the various subjects of inquiry the following may seem the most external: (1) What is the number of children and the ratio of the population in school? (2) What is the aggregate cost of maintaining the schools and the sum per capita (3) The number of teachers and the number of pupils per capita? (4) The ratio of professional teachers? and many other interesting and instructive inquiries. The field of inquiry is so vast, the information so far gathered so scanty and fragmentary, that much searching and extensive correspondence will be necessary to obtain the desired material.

Hence it is that this presentation begins with one question only, the one which seems to lie nearest, namely: "What ratio of the population of each nation in Europe and America is under school influence?" This seems a simple question, but it is most difficult to answer, because the statistical material collected is defective or fragmentary, and the facts here are offered not without misgivings of being criticised, but they are what the present state of statistics allows. In the result of our inquiry we have systematically excluded from the count all institutions, such as "infant schools" in France and "kindergarten" in Germany and the United States, belonging to the prescholastic age.

We have also excluded all professional schools, such as universitie polytechnic, medical, and pharmaceutical schools, conservatories music and art schools, in short, all special schools, except normal school not because we do not think them special and professional, for they a and needs should be, but because they are not sufficiently designated special schools in the statistical material at hand. Most normal schoo are academic institutions in part, some are academic exclusively, at the limit where academic instruction ends and professional begins! not well defined. Hence the inclusion of normal school students in t

sum total of "children in school."

This then brings the age, commonly called "school age," within t years six and eighteen. These numbers are not in every case and all nations the same, but where deviations occur they are so stated explanatory notes following each chart.

Many blanks are seen on the accompanying charts, but it needs prophetic eye to see the trend and bent of the times; it is, in the la guage of Diesterweg: "Education of the people is liberation of th people."

TABLE 18.-Number of children enrolled in school in the various countries of Europe an America, and the proportion they form of the entire population.