Education

THE Dean of the Harvard College Faculty, in his report of the present year, after speaking of the need of coöperation on the part of the leading colleges “in enforcing upon teachers, and in enabling them to enforce upon their pupils, the necessity of thorough training in all the elements of a sound education,” says: “As soon as these colleges unite in demanding of candidates fox admission a thoroughly good training in English no less than in classical subjects, the schools which feed the colleges will in turn be able to exact from lower schools an efficiency which they now greatly lack.”

We think that this greatly overestimates the influence that the colleges and the preparatory schools have or should have upon the grammar or common schools of the country. We have not, except in the mistaken theory of a few educators, a system of instruction that proceeds from the primary school through regular and successive stages, and finds its completeness only in the university. The great mass of our children receive their entire education in the primary and lower classes of the grammar schools. An exceedingly small percentage ever enter higher schools. Probably in no one of our cities is the proportion of those in the high schools to those in the grammar and primary schools greater than five per cent. Philadelphia embraces in her system of free schools 148,511 pupils, and of these but “ 2000 in the high schools and advanced departments of the grammar schools.” The Superintendent of the Common Schools of Pennsylvania reports this year that out of 1,200,000 persons of school age in the State, there are but 45,000 “ who are engaged in the study of one or more branches of knowledge beyond the elements.”

Still further: in the graded grammar schools of our cities and large towns, only a very small proportion of the pupils ever reach the highest classes. This is not generally understood, we think, by the community. When we exhibit with pride our high schools and the upper classes of the grammar schools, we are showing the most costly part of our school system, but a part that is reached only by the exceptional few. They are free to all, but nevertheless only a few are there. The great mass of children are called away from school by necessity or inclination, at an early age.

It should he recognized by all who are interested in the cause of general education in our country, that at least ninety per cent, of the pupils receive only what can be taught them in a very few years, and that their instruction should be based on what is best for them — leaving school as they will as early as fourteen years of age, and a large proportion of them much earlier—and not at all on what would he the best basis of training for those who are to superadd to this many years of higher culture. In many of the States the country schools are in operation quite frequently but twentyeight weeks of the year, and with a succession of different teachers from term to term. In our larger towns and cities, the number of those who leave school long before promotion to the higher classes is startling, as making manifest the limited education that the girls and still more that the boys receive.

No demand that the academies or classical schools may make will meet with response, because the number of those who expect to enter them is comparatively insignificant. The time must come, and the sooner it does the better, when those in charge of public education in tho different States realize that the right aim is to give a short course, as practical as it can ho made, to meet the necessities of the most of the children, and to draw off from them at a very early period those who hope for a more liberal training.

The burden of the additional requisitions of the college is laid upon the preparatory schools. “We can even imagine that some of the experienced teachers, in charge of great grammar schools in our cities, would smile at the thought that Harvard College, by any schemo of examination that she could devise, would have tho slightest influence upon the instruction of those who, with the exception of perhaps one in five hundred, have not the remotest notion of ever entering her halls. The real influence that Harvard College exerts upon lower education is in sending forth her own pupils as cultivated gentlemen, accurate scholars, and well-equipped teachers.

But we have an additional reason for thinking that it is impossible for the preparatory schools to exact of the lower schools “ a thoroughly good training in English.” We offer it with some hesitation, because in the absence of any comprehensive system of supervision of schools throughout our country, it is not easy to ascertain much concerning the real state of education, and we are likely to utter impressions that rest upon an insufficient basis of facts. We confess to having examined many volumes of reports upon public education without being able to get much definite knowledge upon what branches are taught, still less what proficiency is attained. The statistics given are such as refer largely to expenditure and attendance. One of the State reports says : “ To estimate with any degree of accuracy the value of a school system in a broad sense, there are four classes of facts that seem indispensable : first, the number of children to be educated; second, the number that attend school; third, the average daily attendance ; and fourth, the percentage of attendance.” The facts that are really important are, How have the children been taught, and what have they learned ? We doubt if any expenditure for education would be of so much service to any State, as a uniform examination, by properly appointed State officials, of all the public schools; or any report of so much value as a candid statement of the results of such examination. But after acknowledging that our belief does not rest on statistics upon which we can rely, we are constrained to say that we think the schools which feed the colleges can depend upon the lower schools for no part of what may be demanded of their pupils on entering college, because the lower schools do not do their work well.

There are in Pennsylvania over nineteen thousand teachers of public schools, but the Superintendent of Common Schools says: “ We have only about 2500 teachers fully qualified for their work; ” and again, “ Of the 15,003 teachers receiving certificates to teach during the year, only 374 were found to have a thorough knowledge of reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and grammar, and that practical preparation for their profession which insures success.” Similar complaints, perhaps not so plainly expressed, are found in other State reports. In fact, when we take into account the low average pay of teachers, the itineracy of their occupation, outside of the cities, and the fact that local measures, plans, and expenditures prevent anything like a true system of education, we see that the results obtained are all but accidental, and are not surprised that, at the recent examination for admission to West Point, nearly one third of all the candidates, very many of whom had doubtless been specially selected by the appointing congressmen through confidence in their ability, were rejected for deficiency in elementary English studies.

We are told in the report of the Dean of Harvard College, that the single aim of the Faculty in the changes required by them in the preparatory course of study has been “to make that course correspond more nearly with the best possible coarse of study for young men, up to an average age of eighteen, who purpose to pursue non-professional studies for four years more.” In the words that we have italicized is seen the reason why no part of this “ best possible course ” can be expected of those whose purpose is entirely different; can be demanded of any schools excepting those that undertake to contribute a part of this long-extended general training

A single illustration will show that no part of the college requisitions can he met in the common schools. The academies might perhaps claim that boys should come to them already well prepared in geography. We give a few questions taken from late examination papers at Harvard — one question taken from each of several papers — to show the range of topics and extent of knowledge required of the candidates, who cannot, of course, know upon what parts of the general subject the examiner will direct his inquiries : —

“ To what powers belong the Azores, Corsica, Malta, Heligoland, Algeria, Batavia, Manilla, Sydney, Havana?”

“ State approximately the population of the most important states of Europe.”

“ Give as precisely as you can the position of the following mountains, and state, when possible, to what range each belongs: Washington; St. Elias; Hecla; Elburz; Pike’s Peak; Dwalagiri; Chimborazo ; Shasta; Orizaba.”

“ Describe the coast of Asia from Behring’s Strait to the Strait of Malacca, mentioning the peninsulas, the seas, the months of important rivers, and the islands lying near the mainland.”

“ To what States or countries would you go for caoutchouc, coffee, olives, opium, pepper, rice, sugar, silk, tapioca, turpentine ? ”

“ Name and give the situation of the English colonies in Africa.”

Would it be reasonable to expect schools, the great majority of whose pupils before the age of fourteen, and many still earlier, leave all school instruction, to undertake to give such an acquaintance with geography as is indicated by these questions?

We think Harvard College has" a full right to demand all that her new requisitions exact, that it is no more than “a well-educated young man ought to possess,” but we also think that the only way by which it can readily and surely be reached is by separating those who hope to receive a liberal culture from the great mass of their schoolmates, at a much earlier ago than is now usual, and by the classical schools attaching to themselves classes preparatory to their own course and under their own direction.

— The last Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction in the city of Brooklyn, Mr. Thomas W. Field, lies before us. In it he says that the boys in the public schools of Brooklyn now leave them at the average age of fourteen years, whereas the former average was fifteen, and that consequently their grade of scholarship is diminished. The reasons for this he finds in the fearfully overcrowded state of the schools, the classes in about one half of them ranging all the way from eighty to a hundred and eighty scholars ! and in the yet sadder fact, if possible, that these tremendous classes are taught by girls so youthful as to bo utterly incompetent either physically or intellectually for their work. Brooklyn refuses to support a Normal School, yet her Board of Education appoints annually not less than a hundred new teachers, of whom the average age is “less than eighteen years,” and “three fourths of whom are little more skilled than the pupils themselves.”The poor young things often have not got their growth even, and for a pittance of four hundred dollars per annum they undertake this exhausting daily drudgery, and many of them teach in the evening schools beside. “ So monstrous is this overcrowding of their class-rooms,” says Mr. Field, “that in some instances, when the pupils have once assumed their positions, only the front rows are accessible to the teacher without treading upon or removing the scholars.” The male principals of the schools are obliged to give their entire time to the mere superintendence of these young hordes, and the function of teaching devolves wholly on their female assistants, which again, Mr. Field thinks, is a cause of the hoys leaving school a year earlier. He therefore recommends the appointment of a male assistant to each principal, who will also succeed to his place when the latter retires, —and we recommend that the next benevolent association formed in Brooklyn he one for the “Prevention of Cruelty to Teachers, and of Mental and Moral Ruin to Children.”

But Mr. Field’s anxieties are not all for the hoys, and there is still another implied reason for their low scholarships. The city of Brooklyn has tried what he calls the “sentimental caprice ” of mixed schools of boys and girls. The girls are so much more faithful or ambitious, that they are in effect about half a grade beyond the boys all the time. The hasty inference from this statement naturally is that the boys in mixed Bchools are half a grade lower than those in unmixed schools; but this is nowhere shown or stated by Mr. Field. If the boys in mixed schools are no lower in scholarship than those in umnixed ones, other things being equal, then Mr. Field’s point is worth just nothing at all. On the contrary, the boys must he benefited in the end by hearing the better recitations of the girls, however little they seem to profit by them at the time, since the next best thing for a class to a good teacher is a bright scholar.

But not only do the girls, in Mr. Field’s opinion, injure the boys intellectually. The boys injure them morally, and “ the sad facts in his possession,” which prove this, induce him to recommend that the mixed schools he given up as failures in every respect. These “sad facts "'are not surprising, when we learn that “hoys and young men from sixteen to twenty years of age are encouraged to sit at the same desks with young ladies of tho same age,” and that the “vicious youth, whose mind is precociously matured with the evils of a metropolitan city, and thoroughly educated in all its mysteries of vice, is not a rare personage in our public schools.” An innocent girl, not only “permitted but encouraged” to sit by what he calls a “youthful debauchee,” is indeed an unpardonable spectacle.

But it rests upon those who, like Mr. Field, discourage mixed schools and colleges, to show, not merely that occasional “sad facts ” among the boys and girls who go to school together come to the knowledge of teachers. These aberrations occur under all systems. But Mr. Field must prove that the whole tone of the community is lowered in regard to the relation of the sexes, before he ran make pood his case. The advocates of co-education maintain that it raises the moral standard of the community, and that the cases of aberration become fewer and less pronounced. Eat no school, mixed or unmixed, should harbor a “youthful debauchee” who is known by his teacher to be such, whether his “respectable parent requires his attendance there,” as Mr. “Field says, or not. lie should be sent to the Reform School, along with the young thief.

— Here is a compendium which is one indeed, for between the covers of Mr. Gilman’s little book,¹ we whiz from one end of history to the other with the speed of an English lightning express. It is very complete, with maps, chronological tables, an ample index, and a catalogue of histories and related works in English to assist the student. If compcndiums must exist, it should seem that their style, in the very nature of things, should be rapid, and that a few hold strokes should tell the story. Generallv they are anything but this, and are as tedious as they must be uninstructive. This of Mr. Gilman’s is, however, a shining exception, for beside his own fluent narrative, he gives the reader many attractive side glimpses by the apposite quotations which come in here and there in a very easy way — as for instance in the description of the Greek and Latin languages on pp. 33, 34. Altogether, the compilation has the effect of having been thrown off from memory by a cultivated mail in his leisure moments, and the. result is so graceful that that aloue would make it popular.

Mr. Gilman writes, he says, “in order to stimulate the student to make thorough investigations, and at the same time to furnish a guide which shall indicate the general path to he pursued.” We hope it may have the desired result in a wide degree, since there is no study which is so shamefully neglected in our country as the study of history, though to a people that is trying the art of self-government, it is obvious that there can be none so important. The sketch of our late civil war, which closes the story, is the, most judicious we have seen in any text-book.

Of the philosophy of history—the rationale of it—there is no hint throughout this book. Mr. Gilman skims the cream of events, but as to how the cream came to be there he does not trouble himself or the reader. And yet it would have added very little to his account of the ancient republics, to have stated briefly the phases that they nearly all of them alike went through, what kiud of relation the citizens of each held to itself and to the others, and what was the social, political, and intellectual condition of women and of the masses throughout their existence. A few wellconsidered paragraphs might have cleared up popular misconceptions on these points that have too long prevailed; for a Greek republic, or that of Rome itself, was no more like our own than a modern steamship is like an ancient galley. In like manner, in the chapters devoted to England and America, the constitutional history of England previous to the time of the Stuarts is not even alluded to, and the student is left, as in our absurd grammarschool histories of the United States, to infer that the principles of our constitution originated on American soil. Not even the birth of political representation in the thirteenth century by the creation of the English House of Commons, is anywhere mentioned ! In short, the history of the people, as it appears in their laws, customs and struggles from generation to generation, is too much ignored. A long procession of kings, warriors, and statesmen pass across the stage in company with an occasional poet or philosopher, and that is almost all. Still, Mr. Gilman may be forgiven for having adhered so closely to the old plum-in-the-pudding principles of writing history, since any other conception of it is of so comparatively recent date. His inaccuracies, however, seem to us not so excusable. For example, he says that Elizabeth’s favorite, the Earl of Leicester, was the son of her prime minister, Cecil, Lord Burleigh, and that “among the chief advisers of James I. was the Cecil who had been of so much service to Elizabeth,” whereas the latter Cecil was the son of the former. Other examples nearly as flagrant might be cited. With a careful revision, however, and some additions of the nature indicated, this little book might he made a model of its kind. The dates between commas, following proper names, we think, would be better in the margin.