COURSE OF STUDY IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS OF CITIES.

Attention is likewise called to the tabular views of the course of study in eighty-two cities of the United States, together with a critical essay on the different plans that prevail and the grounds urged for them (chapter XV, pages 373-410).

MANUAL AND INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.

This topic was treated with great fullness in the last Report. The usual tables of statistics (pages 1362-1367) are given in the present Report and the specialist has added some supplementary historical illustration and commentary in chapter XVI.

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS OF THE UNITED STATES AND OF ENGLAND.

The data compiled on this important subject in chapter XVII‡ include the replies to a circular sent out from this Bureau asking in regard to adjustments made between the parochial schools and the public school system. This chapter includes also a detailed summary of the report of the Royal Commission of 1886 as to religious and moral training in England and Wales.

COMPULSORY ATTENDANCE LAWS AND STATE TEXT-BOOK LAWS.

Chapters XVIII and XIX§ contain a mass of information in regard to the two educational subjects exciting most interest recently in our State legislatures. The question of supervision of education in private and parochial schools, the question of furnishing free text-books to all pupils, and the question of State preparation and publication of such books have been discussed more or less from Maine to California. It is believed that the compilation here given (pages 470-578) will be found sufficiently complete and that it will prove useful in the discussion which is still going on.

THE LIVE EDUCATIONAL QUESTIONS.

In the State school reports and other documents for the year the chief topics discussed are, (1) Instruction to prepare for citizenship (page 588); (2) Country schools (page 590); (3) Education as related to crime (page 600); (4) Evening schools (page 601); (5) High schools (page 601); (6) Physical training (page 603); (7) Private and parochial schools (page 611); (8) Religious and moral training (page 622); (9) Revenue and taxation (page 634); (10) School hygiene (page 635); (11) * Prepared by Mr. J. C. Boykin.

In chapter prepared by Mr. Wellford Addis.

Prepared by Miss Annie Tolman Smith.

Prepared by Mr. F. E. Upton, the specialist of the Bureau on State systems.

Science teaching (page 636); (12) Sex in education (page 639); (13) Supervision (page 640); (14) The township system (page 642).

There is also much interest growing in the subject of methods of teaching thrift and economy by means of school savings banks (see pages 655-668).

COURSES OF STUDY IN COLLEGES.

In chapter XXVIII are given the statistics of superior and professional instruction. A new item is added (item VI) showing the complete courses of study for more than one hundred of the colleges of the country in the following subjects: Classics, mathematics and astronomy, English, modern languages, philosophy, chemistry, physics, biology, geology and mineralogy, history and political economy, and technics. †

THE TWO CHIEF INTERESTS IN THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENTS.

The educational questions which at present excite most attention among the people of the United States relate either to the extension of the free public elementary schools or to the adjustment of the colleges and universities to the preparatory schools.

In those States where the public school systems are newest, as in the Southern States and in the States on the western borderland, it is quite natural that the chief educational interest concentrates on the problem of extending the free schools in such a manner as to provide by public taxation for longer school sessions, better teachers, better school buildings, and increased attendance.

In the older and richer States of the north Atlantic, including New England and the Middle. States, there is much thought and discussion going on regarding the future place and function of the small colleges, and regarding the relation which college work holds to university work. There is even more interest manifested in the proper limits of secondary education. The question relates to the free public high school on the one hand and to the private endowed academies amd classical prepara tory schools that furnish the greater part of students for the colleges. The friends of education everywhere behold the spectacle of the establishment of the free common-school system in the Southern States with a feeling of pride. The extension of the system has been so rapid in those States and its rate of increase so uniform that all who believe that local self-government and universal participation in the right to vote must be preceded by universal education in common schools have reason to be satisfied with the promise for the future.

Compiled by Mr. Lewis A. Kalbach.

The chief of the division of statistics, Col. Weston Flint, is preparing a similar table for the next Annual Report of this Bureau to show the course of study in secondary schools.

In the 13 years for which separate statistics for the white and black races in the South are accessible (see page xviii), the white children enrolled in the public schools have increased from 1,827,139 to 3,197,830, or about 75 per cent., while the increase of the total white population has been only 34 per cent. The school attendance has increased more than twice as fast as the population. All this has been done amidst the poverty which followed the most devastating war of modern times. But the education of the colored race has a still better record to show. In 13 years the enrollment has increased from 571,506 to 1,213,092, an increase of 113 per cent., while the total colored population has increased only 24 per cent. In other words the school attendance has increased more than four times as fast as the population among the colored people of the Southern States.

募

In this same connection I mention the fact, that the attendance of the colored people on normal schools, high schools, and colleges has increased during the same period of 13 years previous to 1890 from a total of 8,511 to a total of 25,540-almost exactly three times the former number.

We all know that an increase in school facilities and a more general attendance on schools means more careful supervision and improvements in methods. Teachers will manage in some way to learn by the experiments of their fellow-teachers. There have been during the past 20 years many eminent men who have filled the positions of State superintendent and of city superintendent in that section of the coun

try.

Two hundred and sixteen millions of dollars have been paid from the public taxes for the support of the schools, white and colored, during the period of 13 years mentioned. The labors of the superintendents in improving the quality of the teaching forces by institutes, associations, and normal schools have shown good results. The increase of the appropriations from $11,231,073 in 1877, to $23,225,982 in 1889, has reinforced their labors by attracting a higher order of talent into the work of instruction. The admirably managed endowments of the Peabody Fund and the Slater Fund have been instrumental in improving the character of instruction.

The devotion of the western borderlands to the cause of common schools may be inferred from the fact that they expend annually from public funds the sum of $4.11 for each man, woman, and child of the population for their schools-a sum nearly double the average sum expended per capita by the rest of the United States. But in those distant regions the cost of living is greater and the salaries must be larger to secure talent and skill in the teacher.

The effort in the South now tends in the direction of increasing the length of the annual school term. While the number of different pupils enrolled in school is quite as large a proportion of the popula tion in the South as in the North, and indeed somewhat larger, yet the

number of days for the average school session is much less. While the North Atlantic schools average 164 days in the year, the South Atlantic average only 100 days. While the North Central schools average 147 days, the South Central average 91 days. But the States of the South expend quite as much in proportion to their wealth in taxable property for schools as do the North Atlantic States (i. e., the New England and Middle States). But the Northwestern States exceed them in the rate of tax.

Looking over the whole country we have remarked that in public and private schools 22 per cent. of the population is enrolled13,726,574 pupils of all grades for the year 1889. The proportion in private schools varies with the grade of work. In the elementary grades it is 9 per cent.; in the secondary three times as large, or 27 per cent.; in the superior instruction it is 73 per cent. of the whole. The total amount expended for education in the United States in 1889 was $172,000,000, counting the amount for private institutions at $35,000,000.

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE COLLEGE AND THE COMMON SCHOOL.

In the schools of the United States there prevail two different ideals of the course of study; the one originating with the directors of higher education and the other a growth from the common elementary school. These two ideals clash in quite important particulars. The commonschool course of study, as it appears in the elementary school and in the public high school which gives secondary instruction, does not shape itself so as to fit its pupils for entrance to the colleges. At least, if we admit that as an actual fact many high school pupils do enter college, we must also admit that there is a constant tendency in the public high school to diverge in its course of study and follow a path that does not lead to the college.

The older colleges of the States, following the traditions brought over from Europe, built their course of study on mathematics and the classical languages, Latin and Greek. They accordingly demanded of the preparatory schools a preliminary training or preparation along these lines, and neglected all else.

Human learning at one period did not include much that was not conceived and expressed in Latin or Greek words. But within the past 300 years there has arisen a modern tributary stream of human learning, and it has some time since begun its demand for recognition in the course of study. This modern side of human learning includes the natural sciences and modern literature. These two contingents are almost wholly the product of the past 300 years.

The demands of the sciences and the demands of the literature of the modern languages to a share in the course of study were met in one way by the college and in another way by the common school. The direc tors of higher education affirmed that Latin, Greek, and mathematics

furnished the truly disciplinary studies fit for the foundation of all liberal education. Modern literature and the sciences, on the other hand, they said, were not and could not become culture studies, although they might be useful in the way of accomplishments in practical life.

Accordingly the colleges proceeded to recognize the moderns by admitting them only into the course of study at the end. During the fourth or senior year of college the student was given a rapid survey of the sciences and of some of the great works of modern literary art. But the college did not encourage the introduction of modern literature and natural science into the preparatory school. Consequently the pupil who left school during his preparatory course, or before the senior year of college, found himself ignorant of these two great and rapidly growing provinces of human learning.

But the public-school system has taken a different direction. It has been under the supervision and management of less highly educated men; that is to say, of men less thoroughly instructed in the forms of the past, and as a result less conservative. When the moderns appealed for a place in the course of study, some concession was made at once to the demand. A tendency has been established to recognize the moderns throughout the course of study. First, modern literature was admitted in the shape of a graded series of school readers containing many of the gems of English and American literature, and much, too, that was written in mere colloquial English, and much that was trashy in its style and thought.

In the geographical text-book there was an attempt at a survey of the world in its relations to man-the world in its mathematical features of size, shape, and motions; in its physical aspects of interacting forces of light, heat, moisture, and gravitation; and finally in its biological aspects of plant life, animal life, and the races of men.

This geographical text-book also drew on the social sciences, and introduced scraps of information regarding political economy, the occupations of men, and also their political institutions, their laws and cus toms, and religion. Geography has therefore developed from the beginning into a sort of compend of natural science, affording the pupil a survey of the results of the modern sciences, both in the physical and social world.

Having yielded to the demands of the moderns in the elementary school in these respects, and in the introduction of a history of the fatherland, it remained next to emphasize this tendency still more in the secondary public school, and to make the high school course of study include more thorough work in English literature, universal history, three or four selected sciences like geology, astronomy, physiology, and chemistry, in addition to the mathematics, and some modern by the side of an ancient language.

It might be claimed that the graduate of the high school had a broader education; his education, under good teachers, might even be