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ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

PART I GENERAL SURVEY OF THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF THE UNITED STATES

In all the schools of the United States, public and private, elementary, secondary and higher, there were enrolled in the year 1898 about sixteen and one-half millions (16,687,643) pupils. (See appendix I.) This number includes all who attended at any time in the year for any period, however short. But the actual average attendance for each pupil in the public schools (supported by taxes) did not exceed 98 days, although the average length of the school session. was 143.1 days. There were enrolled in the aggregate of public and private schools out of each 100 of the population between the ages of 5 and 18 years, 71 pupils.

Out of the entire number of sixteen and a half millions of pupils deduct the pupils of private and parochial schools of all kinds, elementary, secondary, higher, and schools for art, industry and business, for defective classes and Indians, there remain over 15,000,000 for the public school enrollment, or nearly 91 per cent of the whole. (See appendix I.) In the 28 years since 1870 the attendance on the public schools has increased from less than 7,000,000 to 15,000,000. (Appendix II.) The expenditures have increased somewhat more, namely, from 63,000,000 to 199,000,000 of dollars per annum, an increase from $1.64 per capita of population to $2.67. To account for this pro rata increase of 61 per cent in the cost of the common schools one must allow for a slight increase in the average length of the school term, and for the increase of enrollment from less than 17 per cent to more than 20 per cent of the population. But the chief items of increase are to be found in teachers' wages for professionally educated teachers, and the cost of

expert supervision. These account for more than two-thirds of the 50 per cent, while the remaining one-sixth (of the whole) is due to better apparatus and more commodious school buildings.

The increase of cities and large villages, owing to the influence of the railroad, has brought nearly one-half the school population within reach of the graded school holding a long session of from 180 to 200 days per year, and taught by professional teachers. (See appendix III.) In 1870 there were for each 10,000 inhabitants 12.75 miles of railway, but in 1890 the number of miles of railway for the same number of inhabitants had risen to 26.12 miles, or more than double the former amount. The effect of this increase of railway is to extend the suburbs of cities and vastly increase the urban population. The rural schools in sparsely settled districts still continue their old practice of holding a winter school with a session of 60 to 80 days only, and taught by the makeshift teacher who works at some other employment for two-thirds of the year. The school year of ideal length should be about 200 days, or 5 days per week for 40 weeks, i. e., nine and one-half months. In the early days of city schools the attempt was made to hold a session of over 46 weeks in length, allowing only six weeks or less for three short vacations. But experience of their advantage to the pupil has led to the increase of the holidays to nearly double the former amount.

Reducing the total average attendance in all the schools, public and private, to years of 200 school days each, it is found that the average total amount of schooling each individual of the population would receive at the rates of attendance and length of session for 1898, is five years, counting both private and public schools.

The average schooling, it appears from the above showing, amounts to enough to secure for each person a little more than one-half of an elementary school course of eight years, enough to enable the future citizen to read the newspaper, to write fairly well, to count, add, subtract, mul

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tiply and divide, and use the simplest fractions. In addition he acquires a little geographical knowledge, so important to enable him to understand the references or allusions in his daily newspaper to places of interest in other parts of the world. But the multiplicity of cheap books and periodicals. makes the life of the average citizen a continuation of school to some extent. His knowledge of reading is called into use constantly, and he is obliged to extend gradually his knowledge of the rudiments of geography and history. Even his daily gossip in his family, in the shop, or in the field is to > some extent made up of comments on the affairs of the state, the nation, or distant peoples,- China, Japan, Nicaragua, or the Sandwich islands, as the case may be,—and world interests, to a degree, take the place of local scandals in his thoughts. Thus, too, he picks up scraps of science and literature from the newspaper, and everything that he learns becomes at once an instrument for the acquirement of further knowledge. In a nation governed chiefly by public opinion digested and promulgated by the daily newspaper, this knowledge of the rudiments of reading, writing, arithmetic and geography is of vital importance. An illiterate population is impenetrable by newspaper influence, and for it public opinion in any wide sense is impossible; its local prejudices are not purified or eliminated by thought and feeling in reference to objects common to the whole civilized world.

The transformation of an illiterate population into a population that reads the daily newspaper, and perforce thinks on national and international interests, is thus far the greatest good accomplished by the free public school system of the United States. It must be borne in mind that the enrollment in school of one person in every five of the entire population of the country means the same result for the southern states as for the northern, since the states on the Gulf of Mexico enroll nearly 22 per cent of their total population, colored and white, and the south Atlantic 20.70 per cent, while the north Atlantic and the western, mountain and

Pacific divisions enroll only 18 per cent, having a much smaller ratio of children of school age.

In a reading population one section understands the motives of the other, and this prevents political differences from becoming too wide for solution by partisan politics. When one section cannot any longer accredit the other with honest and patriotic motives, war is only a question of time. That this general prevalence of elementary education is accompanied by a comparative neglect of the secondary and higher courses of study is evident from the fact that out of the number of pupils enrolled more than ninety-five in every hundred are pursuing elementary studies; less than four in a hundred are in secondary studies in high schools, academies and other institutions; only one in a hundred (13 in one thousand) is in a college or a school for higher studies.

In considering the reasons for the increase of the length of the term of the elementary school and its adoption of a graded course of study, one comes upon the most important item of improvement that belongs to the recent history of education, namely, the introduction of professionally trained teachers. The first normal school established in the United States recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. It was founded at Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1839. The number of public normal schools supported by the state or municipal governments has increased since that year to 167, enrolling 46,245 students, and graduating nearly 8,000 per annum. To this number are to be added 178 private normal schools, with an aggregate of 21,293 students and 2,000 graduates. In 1880 there were 240 normal school students in each million of inhabitants; in 1897 there were 936, or nearly four times as many in each million.

The professionally educated teacher finds his place in the graded schools, above mentioned as established in cities and large villages, and kept in session for the entire scholastic year of 200 days. It is the experience of school superintendents that graduates of normal schools continue to improve in skill and efficiency for many years. The advan

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