Recent Changes in Secondary Education

A COLLEGE administrator who paid no attention to the condition of secondary schools could not guide well the policy of his own college, and could not secure for his college its proper share of influence on education in general. For this reason, efficient college presidents watch and think about secondary schools, — their effects on colleges, and the colleges’ influence on them. Nobody need be surprised, therefore, if Harvard College is frequently mentioned in this paper. It does not follow, however, that the interests of that large majority of secondary school pupils whose education is carried no farther will not be duly considered. It is one of the most promising of recent changes in secondary education that the interests of the two sets of pupils — those who are going farther, and those who are not — are seen to be, not divergent, but almost identical.

The institutions of secondary education in the United States are divided into two groups, — public schools, and endowed and private schools. In the country at large the public schools constitute about three fifths of the whole number of secondary schools ; but in the North Atlantic, North Central, and Western divisions of the United States two thirds of all secondary education is public. In the South Atlantic and South Central divisions, on the contrary, the greater part of secondary education is still endowed or private, — chiefly private.

Public secondary schools are, on the whole, much more recent than endowed and private schools, although there are a few notable exceptions, like the Boston Latin School; indeed, it is difficult to realize how very recent public secondary schools are in this country. Thus, the Cambridge High School is only fifty-two years old; the Boston English High School for boys dates from 1821, and the Chicago Public High School for both sexes from 1856. In Cincinnati a Central High School was organized in 1847 ; but in 1852 two large endowments for high school purposes — the Woodward fund and the Hughes fund — were united for the purpose of sustaining two public schools of this grade. The Free Academy of New York was organized in 1849, and the Central High School of Philadelphia in 1838. These two schools were for boys only.

Public high schools for girls are even more recent. Thus, in Boston, the Girls’ High and Normal School did not get into operation till 1852. It is said that the establishment in Chicago of the Public High School for both sexes in 1856 was a very early instance of public provision of secondary education for girls. That sort of secondary education which is now known under the generic name of “ high school ” is, therefore, on the average, not more than two generations old for boys, and less than two generations old for girls. Our survey, then, will cover no long period of time. When we consider how completely equal the public provisions for boys and for girls in secondary schools have become, we may well be amazed at the neglect of the girls less than fifty years ago, and hopeful about the higher education of young women.

The original object in establishing English high schools was to provide a training up to sixteen or eighteen years of age for boys who were not going to college. As to girls, nobody seems to have imagined, fifty years ago, that their education could be advantageously prolonged beyond eighteen years of age. The future occupations of the graduates of the high schools were imagined to be mercantile or mechanical; and the studies selected were those which it was supposed would be useful to boys destined to such careers. The early programmes of study did not lack variety : for example, that of the Boston English High School included arithmetic, algebra, geometry, geography, general history and the history of the United States, reading, grammar and declamation, rhetoric and composition, bookkeeping, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, natural theology, the evidences of Christianity, and various applications of mathematics, such as navigation, surveying, mensuration, and astronomical calculations. The Constitution of the United States, drawing, logic, and French were shortly added. This comprehensive programme of studies was to be completed in three years ; for it was not until 1852 that the school course was fixed at four years. The Chicago High School comprehended from the beginning three departments — classical, English high, and normal. The programme of the English department contained, beside the subjects just mentioned in connection with the Boston English High School, botany, astronomy, physiology, chemistry, geology and mineralogy, and vocal music. In the classical department of this school, the applied mathematics, the sciences, mental philosophy, moral science, rhetoric, logic, and political economy were omitted, Latin and Greek taking the place of these studies. The carryingon in the same building of two or more different courses of study, distinguished by such names as the classical, the English, and the general, soon became common ; for the example of Boston in maintaining a public Latin school and a separate English high school was not generally followed ; indeed, it is only within a few years that some cities, such as Worcester, Cambridge, and Somerville, in Massachusetts, have adopted the Boston method.

The classical sides, or courses, of the public high schools, like the classical courses in the endowed and private academies and schools, have been from the start much influenced by the requirements for admission to American colleges ; but the English sides, or courses, have been but slightly influenced by these requirements. Only since the institution of scientific or technological schools have the English high schools proper, or the “ general,” or English programmes in public high schools, felt the influence of institutions of higher education to which some of their graduates were going. The development of these scientific schools having taken place mainly within the last thirty years, they are practically younger than the high schools. Since the majority of high schools never send any graduates, or but an insignificant proportion of their graduates, to higher institutions, the high schools have had a development or evolution of their own ; and their ideals have been largely their own, with the exception of the comparatively small number of high schools which have maintained an effective classical side. Their constituency and government have been quite unlike those of the public elementary schools on the one hand, and of the institutions of higher education on the other.

How have their ideals, or standards, changed with lapse of time? The first and most obvious change is in the standard of the schools as regards physical provisions for the safety, comfort, and health of the pupils. Buildings are better constructed; thought is taken, at least in planning new buildings, for proper heat, good light, adequate ventilation, and cleanliness ; and in general the convenience and health of pupils and teachers are much considered, although not always with successful results. This change is, of course, part of the general change in the sentiments and practices of the intelligent part of American society in regard to bodily excellence, physical training, and public health. In this respect the public high schools have altogether outstripped the endowed academies, — as may be plainly seen on comparing the accommodations of such famous academies as the two Phillips Academies at Exeter and Andover with such Massachusetts high schools as those of Cambridge, Medford, Springfield, and Fall River, not to mention those of Milwaukee, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Denver. To appreciate the magnitude and beneficence of this change one must have been a pupil in a public school fiftyfive years ago, as I was in the then new building of the Boston Latin School.

In the second place, the number of subjects in the programmes of study of public secondary schools has been gradually reduced, as the idea of imparting useful information at these schools has given place to the idea of training capacities and implanting desires or aspirations. On the programme of the Cambridge High School for 1853, in the 'English department, or course, more than twenty different subjects appear. In the English course of the same school in 1883, thirty years later, not more than fourteen subjects appear. In the regulations of the Boston Girls’ High School in 1867, for the three years’ course of study, at least twenty-one different subjects occur, and it would be possible to make the count even higher. There is still some complaint that the number of simultaneous studies in our public schools is too large ; but the number has unquestionably been much reduced during the last twenty-five years. This reduction in the number of studies means greater thoroughness in treating some, at least, of the subjects retained. The tendency is a thoroughly good one, and ought to be given free course. The introduction of the laboratory methods of teaching natural science has compelled the assignment of more time to any science studied by that method. Superintendents and masters have perceived that no valuable result in the way of training could be got from a few weeks’ attention to botany and zoölogy, or meteorology and astronomy, or chemistry and physics, at the rate of three or four lessons a week. Accordingly, they have either refused to deal at all with a scientific subject proposed for admission to the programme, or they have given it time enough to enable the pupils to get from it the training it is fitted to give. I have before me the lists of subjects in the three courses of study maintained in the high school of a small Massachusetts city in the later seventies and earlier eighties. On this programme, Latin, mathematics, Greek, and French are all studied forty weeks in the year, if they are studied at all, — that is, it was not considered worth while to attack any one of those subjects unless it could be studied forty weeks in the year. The subjects pinched for time in this high school are the English subjects, such as English grammar, history, English literature, and civil government, and the scientific subjects, such as geography, physics, physiology, botany, chemistry, astronomy, and geology. The largest number of subjects prescribed for any single pupil in the course of four years is seventeen, and this prescription occurs in the feeble course called “ general.” Even in this “ general ” course, the smallest number of weeks in the years assigned to one subject is twelve. In the programmes of this school, the habitual superiority of the classical course over the other courses is very clearly marked. The total number of subjects dealt with in the classical course of four years is only ten; and of those ten, Latin, algebra, Greek, and French are taught for forty weeks every year in which they occur; geometry is taught for twentyeight weeks ; and physics for thirty-two ; and the only subjects which can be said to be slighted are English grammar, ancient geography, and ancient history. These programmes of this typical school are twenty years old. They show great progress, since the first programmes of the Boston English High School were made, in regard to condensation and thoroughness : they show progress away from the false ideal of giving useful information, toward the ideal of imparting power and implanting a longing or taste for some intellectual pleasure, like reading good literature, cultivating a natural science such as physics or chemistry, pursuing out of doors some branch of natural history, or studying history. They show that the constituency and governors of this school had begun to perceive that the supreme object of all education, whether elementary, secondary, or higher, is to implant an intellectual longing that will continue to demand some satisfaction long after school days or college days are over. That education which does not accomplish this object has failed, no matter how prolonged it was; and that education which has effected this has succeeded, however short it was.

I have said that most public high schools have maintained, and still maintain, parallel courses which are selected by or for groups of pupils supposed to have separate destinations. The commonest names for these courses are classical, general (or Latin scientific), English, and commercial. Their merit, as a rule, declines quite obviously from the classical, which is the best, down to the commercial, which is the poorest. The number of these separate courses is in some schools large, — even eight or nine in number; but the commonest numbers of separate courses are three and four. The number of real options used in constructing these three or four courses is in reality small, the commonest options being some science and history instead of Greek, and some English literature and rhetoric with history instead of Latin. A few of the best and most progressive high schools, and a few endowed academies, are now arranging their studies in one programme, with clear indications of the few options ; and this arrangement makes the course of study for the individual pupil distinctly more flexible than the commoner arrangement in stiff groups. This change marks a decided advance in the theoretical conception of a just freedom for the individual during secondary education. The Boston plan of maintaining a Latin school and a separate English high school involved a decision by parents or teacher as to which school a little boy ten or twelve years of age should enter; and that decision classified that boy for life at a very early age, long before the boy’s capacities and possibilities could have been determined. The common method of arranging the studies of a high school in three or four different groups or series, and compelling each pupil to choose which group he will take, also involves a very early decision of the pupil’s destination. If he chooses the classical course, he can go to college ; but if he chooses any other course, he can at best go only to a scientific or technological school; and he is not sure of being well prepared for that. During the last thirty years it has been my fate to listen to, or read, many arguments on the impossibility of a college youth’s selecting his own studies with discretion, when he has attained the age of eighteen or nineteen and is only choosing for a single year and with much advice ; yet it never seems to have occurred to the persons who find such comparatively unimportant choices dangerous, that the organization of our public secondary schools has compelled the determination of the pupils’ life destinations at the early age of ten to fourteen, through choices made for them, without their participation or consent, by parents or teachers, sometimes on trivial grounds, or, at least, on imperfect knowledge of the pupils’ capacities and tastes. The recognition of the profound individual differences of capacity and mental inclination in children, and the desire to give elasticity to secondary school organization, in order to accommodate instruction to these individual differences, are invaluable changes of sentiment and disposition in the management of our public schools.

Underneath these changes lies another change of ideal. The former conception was, that different kinds of education were needed for the high school graduate who was going into some sort of commercial or industrial occupation at eighteen, and for the youth who was destined for college or scientific school at eighteen. Inasmuch as the first boy’s education was to be much shorter than the second’s, it must also be more discursive and superficial, and must inform him slightly about a much greater variety of subjects. The college boy could wait to learn in college something about natural history, or physics, or political economy, or civil government; but the less fortunate boy, whose education was to cease at eighteen, must get glimpses of all these subjects before he left the high school. A consensus of opinion, arrived at from two different sides, is gradually modifying profoundly these views. From the side of the high school graduate, it is now contended that whatever subjects are fit to make a young man ready to pursue with intelligence and vigor some of the higher studies of a college or scientific school ought also to prepare him to grasp with rapidity the details of any business or mechanical occupation to which he may be compelled to resort at eighteen, and to enable him to prosecute that business with diligence and alertness. In either career after the age of eighteen, what the youth most needs is a trained capacity to observe, to reason, and to maintain an alert attention. In either career a firm mental grip is the first element of success. Whatever studies will impart this power will answer the main purpose in either career. On the other hand, it is beginning to be recognized by colleges and scientific schools, that whatever subject is well and thoroughly taught in public high schools taken together as a class, taught in a way to inspire interest and train mental power, ought to count toward admission to college or scientific school ; inasmuch as all the college or scientific school needs as material is young men who have developed mental powers in proportion to their age. In other words, the colleges and scientific schools are beginning to recognize that their first demand should be for trained capacity in their candidates for admission, and not for knowledge of any particular subject or subjects. What has moved the colleges toward this new acknowledgment ? I have already observed that the public high schools in the United States have had a gradual development of their own, and have secured functions of their own, and that they are not properly to be called fitting or preparatory schools. It is the sight of this development all over the northern and western portions of our country, which has, after two generations, procured a substantial modification of college requirements for admission. This modification, with its probable effects upon secondary schools, both public and private, is the next topic to which I shall ask your attention.

All endowed and private secondary schools in the United States have been much affected as to their courses of study and their methods of teaching by the requirements for admission to the American colleges. Most of them were expressly intended to prepare boys for colleges. The few public schools, like the Boston Latin School, which were established for the same purpose, of course arranged their studies with reference to college requirements ; and in the public high schools established within the last fifty years with a classical course as well as English or modern language courses, college requirements for admission had to be regarded in their classical courses; and these classical courses, though frequented by only a small proportion of the pupils, have always claimed a disproportionate share of the total expenditure made on the school, because for these courses the best teachers were required.

Now, for more than twenty years after the establishment in numerous American cities and towns of these high schools with classical courses, the requirements for admission to college remained what they had been for generations, — Latin, Greek, and elementary mathematics, with ancient history and geography. Harvard College has certainly been as ready for experiments and changes as any other American college ; yet down to 1869 the requirements for admission to Harvard College were the subjects just named, with the addition of the elements of physical geography and modern geography. No English, French, or German, no history except ancient history, and no natural science except the elements of geography, could be counted toward admission. Although hundreds of high schools for boys between twelve and eighteen years of age had been established between 1849 and 1869, and had made for themselves a large place in American education, the requirements for admission to the American colleges were practically unchanged for the twenty years between 1849 and 1869. The scientific schools throughout this period had but little influence on secondary schools whether public or private ; because their requirements for admission were set very low. Thus, the requirements for admission to the Lawrence Scientific School were, in the chemical department, the elements of chemistry, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry ; in the department of engineering, — algebra, geometry and trigonometry. The chemical department might be said to have encouraged the study of chemistry in secondary schools, and both departments encouraged the study of trigonometry. Such were the limits of the influence of the Lawrence Scientific School on secondary schools previous to 1869. No scientific or technological school in the country had requirements which compared in extent or difficulty with the requirements for admission to the average American college.

By a gradual process, extending over thirty years, Harvard College has come to recognize for admission the following additional subjects : English, French, German, English and American history, the history of Europe, physics, chemistry, physiography, anatomy physiology and hygiene, trigonometry, astronomy, and meteorology, — that is, all these new subjects may count toward admission to Harvard College ; so that the modern languages, including English, the natural sciences, and history, have obtained from that college, at least, full recognition as suitable elements of secondary education. For the Lawrence Scientific School, all the subjects just mentioned may now be counted for admission, and, in addition, botany and zoölogy, shop work, and drawing. The shopwork may embrace one or some of the following divisions —woodworking, blacksmithing, chipping, filing and fitting, and machine - tool work. Moreover, it is proposed to bring the admission requirements of the Lawrence Scientific School up to an equality with those of Harvard College by adding new subjects from year to year, until the labor or effort required to get into the Scientific School shall be as great as that required to enter the college, although there will be a larger range of options for the individual candidate.

In the wide range of subjects which may be presented for admission to Harvard College, the individual candidate has inevitably a good deal of choice. He must present English, Latin, either French or German, elementary history (either Greek and Roman, or English and American), algebra, geometry, and one natural science ; but nearly three quarters of his preparation may still be the traditional Latin, Greek, elementary mathematics, and ancient history, — or, on the other hand, these traditional subjects may be represented by less than a third of his studies in the secondary schools ; namely, by Latin, algebra, and geometry. At the option of the candidate, the modern languages, including English, may be represented to the extent of nearly one half of his preparatory studies ; or natural science may constitute a little more than one third of his preparatory studies; or, at the small additional cost of presenting three advanced subjects instead of two, the modern languages and history may cover sixteen twenty-sixths of the total requirements.

It is manifest that under this scheme Harvard College proposes to count for admission any study taught in secondary schools to an extent which can fairly be supposed to cultivate in the pupils the peculiar mental capacity the study is fitted to impart. With the exception of Latin, every one of the studies absolutely required for admission to Harvard College is already a common high school study; and, of course, there is not a single study in the list of permitted subjects which would not be a good subject for a secondary school.

The subjects recognized for admission to the Lawrence Scientific School include shopwork and drawing, subjects which belong to the programmes of manual training schools, or mechanic arts high schools. This recognition of the function of these new schools is novel and interesting. Hereby the university declares that in the scientific professions, at least, eye skill and hand skill are of great utility ; and it also recognizes the fact that there are children whose minds are opened and set working, and whose powers of attention are trained, by manual tasks more effectually than by book tasks, and who arrive at distinct conceptions of precision, proof, and truth, better through mechanical achievements requiring accuracy of eye and hand than in any other way.

These new requirements for admission to Harvard College and the Lawrence Scientific School have been carefully defined in descriptive pamphlets, but will need to be still further defined by the actual examination papers in a series of years. They recognize to the full the importance of the field conquered by the public high school in the United States, while they leave to the private fitting school, and the endowed school their traditional programme in full force, with the additions which the experience of those schools has led them gradually to accept within the past thirty years. The new scheme of admission requirements was, indeed, based in part on a careful examination of the actual programmes of a large number of good public high schools, the preliminary inquiries which have led to this important change going back as far as the investigation made by the Committee of Ten in 1892-93.

It may reasonably be expected that within a few years all the leading American colleges and scientific schools will make analogous modifications of their requirements for admission ; for it is not only their interest to do so, but the interest of American education in general. Indeed, a considerable number of American colleges have already taken some steps toward this result, as for instance by permitting the substitution of modern languages for Greek at entrance examinations to the course for the A. B., or by offering a variety of degrees corresponding to entrance examinations of various standards. At its first opening, the Leland Stanford University printed a list of twenty subjects, — languages, sciences, mathematics, and history,— and said that any ten might be offered for admission. No discrimination whatever was made between the subjects, although some of them might have been studied four years at school, and others only six months. It is much to be wished that the scientific and technological schools should raise their standards for admission ; for so long as they admit their students on much easier terms than the colleges admit theirs, the public high schools, or the non-classical courses in public high schools, will lack that valuable support which the colleges give to the classical courses in high schools, and to the endowed and private fitting schools.

The support which colleges and scientific schools can give to secondary schools comes indirectly through that portion of the schools’ graduates who go on to a college or scientific school. The establishment of colleges for women has therefore strengthened decidedly the influence of colleges and scientific schools with high schools, and, vice versâ, the influence of secondary schools with the institutions of higher education. This increased influence is, in part, a result of the increased number of pupils in secondary schools who are preparing for the higher institutions. But the presence of girls in the classes preparatory for colleges has had a further effect to enlarge the range of subjects accepted by colleges at their entrance examinations. Thus, girls naturally want to study the modern languages and history, and they ordinarily have a quicker appreciation of literature than boys, and a stronger desire to become acquainted with the literature of their own and other languages ; hence, a greater willingness on the part of school committees and school trustees to provide for these new subjects in secondary schools. This indirect effect of the establishment of colleges for women is by no means exhausted. In the early years of college education for women it was natural that the most ardent supporters of the undertaking should desire, in the first instance, to prove that young women could pursue with success precisely the same subjects which young men had been accustomed to pursue. This demonstration having now been given, the advocates of the higher instruction for women will feel at liberty to seek experimentally a better education for young women than that contrived in the interests of young men. Hence will probably come a better development of some subjects now but feebly taught in secondary schools; and with this new development, a greater freedom of election of studies in secondary schools.

The argument for many informationstudies, each developed but slightly in secondary schools, carries with it an assumption that after leaving school the boy or girl will have no opportunity of acquiring information, however much it may be needed. The same argument is used in favor of long periods of study in graduate schools. The young man who has graduated from college at twentythree is urged to spend four or five years in a graduate school, to pursue his studies and acquire a thorough knowledge of his chosen subject, before he goes out into the desolate world, wherein no more knowledge is to be acquired. This argument, whether applied to the secondary school or to the graduate school, is in the highest degree fallacious and misleading. The fact is, that if a boy or girl of eighteen has acquired the habit of study and the desire for knowledge, he or she will continue to acquire information rapidly and effectively after leaving school. If no such habit has been acquired, and no such taste imparted, no continuous mental absorption of facts or principles is to be expected; but this disastrous result is due not to the lack of information-studies at school, but to the lack of power-training and inspiration. It is precisely the same with the young men and women of twenty-five or twenty-six who should be going out into the world from the graduate school of arts and sciences. To linger longer in study at school is to forego the better training of the scholar’s life out in the world, the better training, that is, of the life of productive, scholarly activity — of the life which gives out as well as sucks in. There is a plausible but canting phrase which says that the high school provides a training for life, the preparatory school a training for college. The fact is that the secondary school should provide a good training for life beyond eighteen years of age ; the college a better training for life beyond twenty-one or twenty-two; and the professional school a still better training for life, because the training is prolonged to twenty-five or twenty-six years of age. But the graduate from any one of these three institutions should find, in his own case, that the training which active life affords is the best he has ever had, because more strenuous, more responsible, and more productive. Any institution of education may calculate on the prodigious development in mental powers and moral character which the man or woman, well started in youth, will undergo through experience of life in the actual world. When the class of 1853 graduated at Harvard College, photographs of the whole class were taken and preserved in book form. Forty years after, the photographs of all the survivors were taken and placed in a similar book, each older photograph opposite the younger photograph of the same person. The resulting volume was lying on my table at home, when a French gentleman, who had been for some years the librarian of the Argentine Republic, called to see me on his way to Paris. As I was obliged to keep him waiting a few minutes, he picked up from the table that book of photographs, and soon became absorbed in examining it. When I joined him he was full of eager inquiries about it, and concluded by saying that it was the most optimistic human document he had ever seen. A perfect stranger to all the men, and of a different race, he nevertheless appreciated in the older faces the immense improving effect of the experience of life. It is safe, then, to rely on the development of good mental and moral quality out in the world after leaving school, college, or professional school, provided that the preliminary training has been sound and well directed. Secondary schools need no longer feel that now or never is the time for their pupils to acquire useful information. It will be enough if they teach them how to get trustworthy information, and to desire it.

It is sometimes said that the degree of Bachelor of Arts ought to represent culture, and the degree of Bachelor of Science technical skill and useful information applicable at once to the earning of a livelihood ; and, in like manner, that secondary school studies are divisible into culture-studies and information-studies, the first class being the higher and the second the lower. It is certainly true that the young graduate from a good scientific or technological school is somewhat nearer to the earning of his living than the young graduate of a college ; because his studies have been expressly arranged to prepare him for some scientific calling, like that of the chemist, engineer, architect, or teacher of scientific subjects. But this distinction between the two degrees is fading away, and may soon disappear altogether, for the reason that the object in view with candidates for both degrees is fundamentally the same, namely, — training for power. In that sense, all the studies of a college or of a scientific school ought to be culture-studies, and all informationstudies, and all broadening, elevating, and inspiring. Just so in secondary schools, the distinction between culturestudies and information-studies may be expected gradually to disappear, all subjects suitable for secondary schools having both qualities. Even the cultivation of the imagination is likely to take on new aspects; for it is already clear that the imagination which broods over new facts, broad inductions, and guiding hypotheses is of a more vigorous and fruitful quality than the literary or romantic imagination; unless, indeed, that imagination also occupies itself with biographical or historical pictures, or with possible manifestations of natural forces and of human qualities and powers, and keeps itself within these bounds.

Another change in the policy of American secondary schools deserves mention. When the high schools were first established, and in some measure during the first thirty or forty years of their existence, it was natural that they should take to themselves a large group of studies superior to those ordinarily pursued in the grammar schools or grades, and seek the exclusive possession of those superior studies. In carrying out this policy, the secondary schools came to violate some of the best established principles in education. Thus, they prevented the foreign languages from being begun at the right period of a child’s life, —namely, between nine and twelve. They also reserved to themselves algebra and geometry, both of which subjects should be begun long before the age of fourteen. This segregation of high school studies is, of course, exceedingly undesirable ; since it results in depriving pupils under fourteen or fifteen years of age of some of the most appropriate and useful portions of an elementary education. From this point of view, the German or Swedish division of the total period of education up to eighteen is much to be preferred to our own. In those countries the elementary schools claim the child up to nine or ten years of age, the secondary schools from nine or ten up to eighteen or nineteen. Under our conditions, the most available method of recovering from this error is to push back into the grammar schools some of the studies which have heretofore been reserved for the high schools, — such, for example, as Latin, French, the elements of algebra and geometry, and the elements of physics. If we could get rid of that distinct and most untimely stdopping-place at the end of the grammar school course, a larger proportion of American children would pursue their education beyond fourteen or fifteen. By this change of policy, both the elementary school and the secondary school would be strengthened and enriched, as both kinds of school now begin to see.

Beside conveying the theoretical recognition by the colleges of the fact, that modern languages, natural science, and history, if well taught, may give as good a mental training as classics or mathematics, the changes made in college requirements for admission have an immediate practical value. They will bring colleges into closer connection with English high schools throughout the country, and open the colleges to considerable numbers of young persons who have no faculty for mathematics or for Greek, thus extending the influence of colleges, and increasing the proportion of highly educated persons in the community. The changes made at Harvard College are merely part of a general movement for freer and at the same time closer relations between colleges and secondary schools. Hereafter it will not be necessary for a boy of thirteen or fourteen years of age to choose once for all between a college career and a business or industrial career ; and, furthermore, — and this is the more important consideration,— the other courses of study in high schools need no longer be inferior to the classical course, all courses being stimulated by the possibility of meeting through them the admission examinations to colleges. The entire body of instruction in high schools will thus be elevated, to the advantage of that large proportion of pupils whose education stops with the high school. This result is one of those aimed at by the Committee of Ten in 1893, every one of the nine conferences called by that Committee having recommended that its own subject, or subjects, if taught at all in a secondary school, should be taught in the same way to those intending to go to college and to those not intending to go to college.

Let us consider for a moment the effect of the changes proposed in regard to a single subject, — history. Can there be a more appropriate and desirable study in the American high schools than history, whether we look to the interests of the Republic or to the intellectual and moral needs of the pupils ? Yet, history has notoriously been a weak subject in high schools, being taught from condensed manuals chiefly by committing them to memory, and without illustration and enforcement through studies in geography, climatology, ethnology, and economics. The improvement in the elementary requirement in history at the Harvard entrance examinations, and the addition of an advanced examination in history, together afford a notable example of the efforts made by Harvard College to render studies hitherto weak in secondary schools fit to compare with, and in some measure to replace, studies which heretofore have been on a much better footing.

It is obvious that the new plan of admission to Harvard College tends to enlarge election of studies in secondary schools, because it tends to give the individual pupil a wider choice among studies than he has theretofore enjoyed. Of course selection between groups of studies has existed in public high schools almost from the beginning, and is open to all the familiar objections to early selection among groups. The present changes tend to offer to the pupil election between individual studies — a much less fateful and conclusive sort of choice. There are those who say that there should be no election of studies in secondary schools,—that the school committee, or the superintendent, or the neighboring college, or a consensus of university opinion, should lay down the right course of study for the secondary school, and that every child should be obliged to follow it. This is precisely the method followed i in Moslem countries, where the Koran prescribes the perfect education to be administered to all children alike. The prescription begins in the primary school, and extends straight through the university ; and almost the only mental power cultivated is the memory. Another instance of uniform prescribed education may be found in the curriculum of the Jesuit colleges, which has remained almost unchanged for four hundred years, disregarding some trifling concessions made to natural science. That these examples are both ecclesiastical is not without significance. Nothing but an unhesitating belief in the Divine wisdom of such prescriptions can justify them; for no human wisdom is equal to contriving a prescribed course of study equally good for even two children of the same family, between the ages of eight and eighteen. Direct revelation from on high would be the only satisfactory basis for a uniform prescribed school curriculum. The immense deepening and expanding of human knowledge in the nineteenth century, and the increasing sense of the sanctity of the individual’s gifts and will-power, have made uniform prescriptions of study in secondary schools impossible and absurd. We must absolutely give up the notion that any set of human beings, however wise and learned, can ever again construct and enforce on school children one uniform course of study. The class system, that is, the process of instructing children in large groups, is a quite sufficient school evil, without clinging to its twin evil, an inflexible programme of studies. Individual instruction is the new ideal.

It is to be observed that election of studies in a secondary school ought to be followed, for all those who go to college, by election of studies within the college. It ought to be perfectly possible for a boy who has been prepared for college chiefly upon the modern-language, or scientific, or mathematical side, to turn in college to the study of the ancient languages, history, literature, and philosophy ; and, vice versâ, it should be possible for the boy prepared chiefly on the classical side to turn to natural science, mathematics, history, or modern literature.

If, however, the training to be hereafter obtained in high schools from modern languages, science, and history is to be comparable in merit with the training given by the classical sides of high schools in Latin and Greek, it is clear that a new and more expensive kind of teacher must be provided in these modern subjects — men and women of broader training and greater attainments, and therefore entitled to higher salaries. The classics have had enormous advantages in secondary schools : they have been taught through more years than any other subject, and more periods a week, and by more accomplished teachers. These advantages must now be given to the newer subjects, if equally good results in mental training are to be procured through them. The intellectual ideal which has been maintained by the classical course is not to be lowered — it is to be extended to other courses. The prime object of the proposed changes is to lift instruction in secondary schools, not to bring down instruction in colleges. The average quality of the youth admitted to American colleges ought not to be lowered in the least degree, in consequence of the recognition of the new subjects. That evil must be avoided by providing in the schools as good instruction in the new subjects as in the old, and by maintaining strict examinations at the college gates.

Finally, the new scheme of requirements for admission to colleges does not mean that secondary education is to be more discursive for the individual pupil than it has been. On the contrary, it should become less so. Discursiveness is advantageous neither to the boy who is going to college, nor to the boy who is not going to college, and should be absolutely avoided for every pupil in the high school. The elective system, as a whole, whether in school or in college, does not tend to discursiveness, but to intensity in study. That the new requirements have no tendency to diminish the specialization of studies in secondary schools is obvious from the fact that they are adapted to the ordinary curriculum of the best classical schools in the country. These are the most highly specialized schools. They are also adapted to schools which wish to specialize in science, mathematics, or history.

Let me not end this paper, however, with a negative or defensive statement. It has been my object to call attention to some of the positive gains made in recent years in both the theory and the practice of secondary education. These gains are noiseless, but pervasive; they take effect on 500,000 pupils every year. Have we not here some solid ground for hopefulness about the Republic, both as a form of government and as a state of society ?

Charles W. Eliot.