item in this increase was the income from local taxation - indicating the growing willingness of the people to tax themselves, in this immediate and direct way, for the support of their common schools.*

The accelerated progress of our public school system is graphically indicated from another point of view by examining the expense accounts of this decade (1900-1909). As the population of the country was growing more rapidly than the school population, it cost $2.84 per capita of population to meet school expenditures in 1900, and $4.45 in 1909, or an increase of only about 56 per cent. to meet the increase in total expenditures of 86 per cent. In the same period, the total expenditure per pupil for common school purposes increased from $20.21 to $31.65, or at the exact rate, curiously enough, of the per capita increase - 56 per cent.

The close of the Civil War found the public school system, outside of the rural schools and such town or city schools as made any attempt whatever at classification, roughly divided into primary; elementary, intermediate, graded or grammar; and high. In many cases there were only two divisions, the primary being merged with the intermediate.t

any, advance was made in methods. until the whole system was revolutionized and vitalized by the introduction into the public schools of the Froebel kindergarten. This was in 1873, at St. Louis, when Miss Susan E. Blow, in coöperation with Superintendent-of-Schools W. T. Harris, organized a kindergarten under full control of public authorities as an integral part of the city school system. True, about a dozen German kindergartens had previously been started in German-speaking communities - the first one in Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1855, by Mrs. Carl Schurz; and the first kindergarten for English-speaking children had been organized at Boston, in 1860, by Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody," the apostle of the kindergarten in the United States." with the successful outcome of the St. Louis experiment, the kindergarten assumed as rightful a relation to the public school system as was held by any of the other grades. Within two years nearly 100 public schools had adopted the kindergarten; by 1880, 400; and in 1904 the report of the Commissioner of Education showed that there were over 3,000 public kindergartens attended by nearly The number of 200,000 children. private kindergartens was then estimated to be about 1,500.*

But

* A new trend in primary education, which is attracting much attention, is the Montessori System" as developed by Dr. Maria Montessori, docent of the University of Rome, in her celebrated " Houses of Childhood." Its central idea is that of auto-education and auto-discipline

The intermediate and high schools constitute the largest bulk of the public school system and cover the important years in a pupil's life. Even before the war the studies, except in the rural and very small schools, had of course outstripped "the three R's" of sainted memory; but in the last forty years at least, going back to the time when the country first got its breath again, the range of the curriculum in both the elementary and secondary school had almost appallingly widened, some high schools of to-day offering almost as liberal an education, in point of ground covered, as many colleges of yesterday.

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In the intermediate schools, radical improvement has been been made made in methods of teaching the great fundamental subjects, unless it be spelling which, although not yet a lost art, has been somewhat neglected, to the detriment of outer evidences that a child may have to show of having received even a common-school education.' Reading has gained both in method, which is now phonetic," and in spirit interpretative rather than declamatory. Grammar, which most of us, as children, "hated," has passed from "parsing diagraming parsing" and " to English-study," which is more practical, attractive and assimilative,

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under the essential condition of the liberty of the child." Those interested in the subject should read: Garber, Current Educational Activities, pp. 164-172 (1912); Anna Tolman Smith, The Montessori System of Education, Bureau of Education Bulletin 17 (1912); and an article in McClure's Magazine (May, 1911).

now

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though some think less sternly sturdy than the "rules" that, after all, controlled the style of Nineteenth century literature. Arithmetic now concerns itself with present problems, seeking to meet present conditions. Geography "from proceeds within, out," beginning with the schoolhouse grounds and the home town, county and State, and ramifying into commercial geography and physiography. Nature-study has become a very important and beneficial part of the curriculum. By using the abundant seasonal resources at hand, even if there is no opportunity for cultivating school gardens, scholars obtain, in an intensely interesting way, more than an elementary knowledge of plant and animal life; learn to observe closely and reason carefully; and, better still, imbibe a love of Nature and cultivate an æsthetic taste that opens their eyes to an appreciation of the beauties of the world around them. The study of history has lost as a mere record of facts largely political and somewhat unrelated and has gained in the human and humanistic aspects. Drawing has become a study; music is now regularly taught, not simply sung; hygiene -no longer "physiology

Jacques W. Redway, The New Basis of Geography (1901).

†Those interested should consult the chapters on Nature Study" and "School Gardens" in Laurie, Teacher's Encyclopedia, vol. ii., pp. 1-21, and 197-227.

Henry E. Bourne, The Teaching of History and Civics in the Elementary and Secondary Schools (1903).

is inculcated in many practical and impressive ways, with special reference to the effects of alcoholic drinks, stimulants and narcotics upon the human system; morals and ethics receive a goodly share of attention; and many forms of manual training have been gradually introduced into the grades of both the intermediate and high schools, including, besides drawing and designing, some forms of woodwork, iron-work, modelling in clay, printing, needlework, domestic science, etc. In 1871 manual instruction for other than purely industrial purposes was first given at the Illinois Industrial University, now the University of Illinois - both wood and iron shops being put into operation. The next year, 1872, St. Louis established similar shops at Washington University. The move in the public schools has taken on two forms that of the introduction of manual branches into the regular curriculum of the schools, as alluded to in the preceding paragraph, and the establishment of separate manual training high schools.*

The number of public high schools reporting 20 or more students in manual or technical training courses reached a total, in 1911, of 425, with 43,126 students in such training, of whom 27,178 were boys and 15,948 girls. Manual and industrial schools (the earliest of which was the St. Louis Manual Training School, opened

*Dexter, History of Education in the United States, pp. 407-412; The Manual Training Maga zine (Peoria, Ill.).

in 1880) have increased from 18 in 1889, and 153 in 1901 to 287 in 1911, with 5,017 teachers and 127,130 students-78,500 boys and 48,630 girls. These schools owned buildings and grounds valued at $38,874,001, and scientific apparatus, furniture, machinery, etc., valued at $6,140,483; they expended in 1910-11 $7,543,668, including outlay for salaries, new buildings, improvements, tools, materials, etc. The figures given on schools, not courses, include some of the private schools.*

Manual training is differentiated from both industrial and vocational training by its cultural as well as technical value; and industrial education is different from vocational in being mechanical, while the latter more closely occupies the field of craftmanship, including for girls, millinery, dressmaking, embroidery, etc. But there is a far more important differentiation. Vocational courses and schools are designed primarily to enable a pupil, under the sympathetic and intelligent guidance of the teacher, to find himself," and are gaining much favor in private industrial and trade schools, as well as those under the public system.†

At the close of the Civil War there were about 150 public high schools in

* Annual Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1911, vol. ii., pp. 1229–1259.

Interestingly and more fully treated in Garber, Current Educational Activities, part ii., chap. iii., pp. 97-116; David Snedden, The Problem of Vocational Education (1910); and John M. Gillette, Vocational Education (1910).

the United States; the number in June of 1911 was 19,234. This enormous growth indicates not at all the bitter animosity which a prolongation of study and time beyond the common school originally encountered; but it does attest to the intrinsic soundness of the high school idea. It not only bridged the chasm between the intermediate school and the college, but met in great measure the intellectual needs of the very large class to whom the privileges of higher education. would have been denied. In fact, the high school, even with its unavoidable limitations, is somewhat approaching what it has often been called

-

the

or

The high school has enjoyed suffered two distinct kinds of development. It has had to act the difficult, because divergent, rôles of a college-preparatory and, at the same time, of a life-preparatory school. The difficulties of the " college-feeding" side were not lessened by the increasingly rigorous demands of the college entrance examinations, nor by the modern vociferous outcry against

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credited " or "affiliated " schools are most harmonious and mutually beneficial.

But the increasing demands of the college catalogue and those of stern life were radically diverse. It was soon discovered that the old prescribed classical course, which was admirable when supplemented by the four years at college, was a fatally poor preparation for work-a-day duties when not so supplemented; and the first solution attempted was, naturally enough, to extend the number of subjects that would be useful to the students who could not go beyond the high school. This was done almost ad infinitum, until, in one instance, the number reached 29, and this in a three years' course. This structure of almost endless additions to prescribed subjects soon broke down of its own gravity, and made way for one of the greatest improvements in high school régime that has taken place in the period we are considering the subdivision of these subjects into separate courses, such as classical, Latin scientific, modern language, etc., with the privilege granted to the student of electing a course " and, as a further later evolution, of choosing a limited number of electives from subjects not included in the course."

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*

In the 10,234 high schools in the

* John F. Brown, The American High School (1909); Horace A. Hollister, High School Administration (1909).

Advance from grade to grade is by annual, or sometimes semi-annual, promotion, which, since about 1870, is largely based on the results of written examinations. A practical difficulty as well as frequent injustice consists in simply shunting all scholars all scholars through the same hopper, those having high or average scholastic attainments sliding through, while others are subjected to "retardation."* It is one of the great strides made by recent thought along these lines that "the hygiene of grading" is supplanting the pedagogical one-consideration being given to " physiological age, psychological age, ability to work and resist fatigue, the general physical condition, the mental type as regards imagery," power of attention and concentration, home surroundings, etc., indeed meeting all the idiosyncrasies of "exceptional children." Some of the difficulties

*Louis B. Blan, A Special Study of the Incidence of Retardation (1911).

See the articles Hygiene of Grading, Grammar Grades, and Grammar High Schools, in Paul Monroe (ed.), Cyclopædia of Education, vol. iii., pp. 128-130, 138 (1912).

are being met by "flexible grading," but more often segregation or assignment to special schools or departments is found to furnish a satisfactory solution.

The attempt to grade more scientifically has called medical inspection, among other allies, to its assistance, and this, in turn, has pointed the way

to greater reforms. to greater reforms. Medical inspection for the detection of contagious diseases has been in vogue since Boston introduced it in 1892; but this was protective, while modern inspection is also preventive. Tests and examinations for defective teeth and subnormal eyesight and hearing are now made; while a most important application of the new system is, perhaps, the detection by the "Binet test" of incipient feeble-mindedness or other mental weaknesses, with a view to the special treatment of children afflicted, of whom, in 1911, there were 17,470 in public and private schools.* The school nurse " soon followed in the wake of the "school physician," and has been considered indispensable since New York City introduced her in 1902.†

SO

One direct outcome of this definite health-oversight has been the establishment of open-air schools, which have given many a tuberculous or anæmic child a new lease on life Providence, Rhode Island, setting an

*B. Maennel, Auxiliary Education, translated from the German by Emma Sylvester (1909).

Gulick and Ayres, The Medical Inspection of Schools, in Russell Sage Foundation Report for 1908.