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twelve, and in our city schools a summer vacation of fifteen or even sixteen weeks is by no means a curiosity. It is the teacher who needs this vacation more than the pupil. But even from his standpoint the present practise has gone beyond reasonable bounds. The German method of giving three weeks at Easter, one at Pfingsten, six in midsummer, one at Michaelmas, and two at Christmas seems wiser than ours, for it makes a more frequent alternation between work and play. Perhaps sixteen weeks including the recesses at Christmas and Easter and a long summer vacation, as better suited to our climate and habits of life than the German plan―might be agreed upon as the maximum period in which school duties may wisely be suspended each year.

better

But in addition to the school year of thirty- Need of six weeks and twenty-five hours in each week, trained the secondary schools are sadly in need of secondary better-trained teachers. It is remarkable how teachers entirely the teachers in these schools have remained uninfluenced by the great interest in the science and art of teaching which has of late years manifested itself both in this country and in Europe. Secure in their possession of a considerable amount of knowledge and of more or less culture, the secondary school

Aim of secondary instruction

teachers have not seemed to understand the significance or the value of a professional preparation. As a result their work has been done in a routine, imitative way, and their pupils have suffered. Most of the criticisms that may now be legitimately made upon the work of the secondary schools would be disarmed if the teachers in these schools were abreast of the present development of their art. One important reason why the secondary schools have not felt this full measure of progress in methods of teaching that is so marked in the elementary schools, is that secondary teachers are usually college graduates, and the colleges have, until very recently, done so little to show that they are aware of what is being accomplished in the study of education. Consequently they have failed to contribute their proper proportion of duly qualified teachers. Until the colleges assume their full responsibility in this matter and endeavor to discharge it, the work of the secondary school, speaking broadly, will not be as well done as it might be.

Assuming that more competent teachers are at hand, and that a school year of thirty-six weeks of twenty-five hours each is agreed upon, what should be the aim of the instruction in the secondary school, and with what curriculum

should it endeavor to accomplish it? It should be the aim of the secondary school, I take it, by instruction and discipline to lay the foundation for that cultivation and inspiration that mark the truly educated man. In endeavoring to attain this ideal, the secondary school must not lose sight of the fact that it is educating boys who are to assume the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, and who must, in all probability, pursue a specific calling for the purpose of gaining a livelihood. The fact that the secondary school has also a selective function to perform is often overlooked. Yet this is most important. Secondary school pupils are adolescents, and their tastes and capacities are rapidly forming and finding expression. To afford opportunity for these to develop, and to encourage them to develop along the best and most effective lines, is an obvious duty of the secondary school. Because they are not selective, many secondary courses of study are very ineffective.

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To prepare a course of study which shall Secondary keep all these points in mind, and at the same programme time afford the developing intellect of the pupil of study that exercise of which it is capable, is not an easy task. Indeed, it presents some problems which but a little while ago seemed almost im

possible of solution. But patience, wider experience, and a careful study of the surrounding conditions have lessened the difficulties. The chief of these is perhaps that created by the rapid development and present importance of scientific and technical schools. These in

stitutions represent a real and significant movement in modern civilization. They have complicated the question of a curriculum for secondary schools by demanding a preparation quite different from that required for entrance to the average American college. That the problem thus raised belongs to the field of secondary education in general and is not due to conditions prevailing in any one country alone, is shown by the fact that England, Germany, and France have all been brought face to face with it as we have been. In each of these countries much progress toward its solution has been made. In England the socalled "modern side" has been added to the traditional classical course. In France the lycée has its cours spécial in which mathematics and the sciences replace Latin and Greek. In Germany the well-established real-gymnasium and real-schule are every year justifying their right to exist on an equal plane with the gymnasium itself. A specially interesting move

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ment in this connection is one in Germany which has for some time past been calling for the establishment of an Einheitsschule, in which the main features both of gymnasium and real-schule are to be combined.

The appropriate course of study for the typical American secondary school is one in which eight elements should always be represented: namely, the mother tongue, geography and history, natural science, mathematics, Latin and Greek, French and German, drawing and constructive work (manual training), and physical training. It combines some features of the English "modern side" with some of those of the French cours spécial, and is not unlike what German students of education have in mind. under the name of Einheitsschule. It involves beginning the study of one foreign language at ten or eleven years of age, and the elements of algebra and of plane geometry shortly afterward. Ample choice would be permitted to students, provided only that not more than five so-called "book" subjects were carried on at once, that no two new languages were begun at the same time, and that English, geography and history, and natural science were always represented. Pupils of a different temperament, of different points of view, and with