taken of the eagerness with which the American leaders of the period sought knowledge respecting German practice or of the high esteem in which the school system of that country was held by them. The tendency of Americans of this period to turn to Germany for suggestions attracted the attention of Francis Adams, an English writer, who made a study of the schools of the United States in 1875. He wrote:

It is the habit of American educationists, ungrudgingly and with sincere admiration, to give the palm to Germany. Nor is this a mere complimentary recognition of excellence. It is shown to be genuine by the manner in which they are accepting from Germany not only lessons in the details of educational science, but vital principles like compulsion.1

As early as January, 1836, just at the beginning of the agitation to secure compulsory attendance and graded schools, the plan which had been developed in Prussia and which has been followed somewhat closely by us, was described by Prof. Stowe, who took his material largely from Cousin's report, in an address before a convention of teachers assembled at Columbus. The address, entitled The Prussian System of Public Instruction and its Applicability to the United States, was brought to the attention of the General Assembly of Ohio and was ordered printed and circulated by that body. It was also published independently in the same year (1836) and widely distributed.2 Doubtless it was this address which lead the general assembly to request Prof. Stowe to present a formal report on the European trip which he was then about to make. In this report of his visit to the schools of Europe, prefacing a detailed description of the course outlined for each grade of the Prussian and Wurttemberg schools, he sketched the plan as follows:

The whole course comprises eight years and includes children from the ages of 6 till 14, and it is divided into four parts of two years each. It is a first principle that the children be well accommodated as to house and furniture. The schoolroom must be well constructed, the seats convenient, and the scholars made comfortable and kept interested. The younger pupils are kept at school but four hours in the day-two in the morning and two in the evening-with a recess at the close of each hour. The older, six hours, broken by recesses as often as is necessary. Most of the schoolhouses have a bathing place, a garden, and a mechanics' shop attached to them to promote the cleanliness and health of the children and to aid in mechanical and agricultural instruction.4

1 Francis Adams, The Free School System of the United States (1875), p. 239.

2 See the Truman & Smith edition, Cincinnati (1836), in the Boston Public Library. 3 See the account given, p. 24.

4 Stowe, Report on Elementary Public Instruction in Europe (Boston edition, 1838), pp. 27, 28. A detailed summary of the report in Western Literary Institute, Transactions (1837), pp. 204-228; also Course of Instruction in the Primary Schools of Germany, in Am. Jo. Ed. (1860), Vol. VIII, pp. 371-382.

Prof. Stowe strongly urged the adoption of the Prussian plan, as the concluding lines of his report show:

The above system is no visionary scheme emanating from the closet of a recluse, but a sketch of the course of instruction now actually pursued by thousands of schoolmasters in the best district schools that have ever been organized. It can be done, for it has been done; it is now done and it ought to be done. If it can be done in Europe, I believe it can be done in the United States; if it can be done in Prussia, I know it can be done in Ohio. The people have but to say the word and provide the means and the thing is accomplished, for the word of the people here is even more powerful than the word of the king there, and the means of the people here are altogether more abundant for such an object than the means of the sovereign there. Shall this object, then, so desirable in itself, so entirely practicable, so easily within our reach, fail of accomplishment? For the honor and welfare of our State, for the safety of our whole Nation, I trust it will not fail, but that we shall soon witness in this Commonwealth the introduction of a system of common-school instruction fully adequate to all the wants of our population.1

Except for the fact that in certain particulars our schools have not yet reached the development which Prof. Stowe reports, the fore-going description would fit remarkably well our elementary school system as it now exists.

An examination of the school codes of the German States will show that, in almost every case, the laws provided that the child should enter school in his sixth year and remain in attendance, if a Catholic, until time for his first communion, or, if evangelical in his church affiliations, to the time of confirmation, the two rites usually occurring at the same age—namely, in the fourteenth year. Thus, for example, in Saxony, the village schools were attended by the children of the parish from their sixth to their fourteenth or fifteenth year—full eight years whereupon they were, after from three to six months' instruction in religion by the parish clergyman, "confirmed" as Christians, and after that, for the first time, admitted to the Lord's table.2 In the Duchy of Coburg the children were admitted in their sixth year, and excused from attending the schools only on taking their first communion. In Saxe-Meiningen boys and girls in the country were obliged to attend school eight years, from their sixth to their fourteenth year, while boys living in the city had to remain one year longer. The discharge from school coincided with admission to the first communion. In Wurttemberg the obligation resting upon the children to attend school began for both boys and girls with

1 Stowe's Report, p. 53.

2 Dr. Hermann Wimmer, Public Instruction in Saxony, in Am. Jo. Ed. (1870), Vol. XX, p. 554.

8 Dr. Eberhard, Public Instruction in Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, in Am. Jo. Ed. (1870), Vol. XX, p. 602.

* Barnard, Public instruction in Saxe-Meiningen, in Am. Jo. Ed. (1870), Vol. XX, pp. 608, 609.

the seventh and terminated with the fourteenth year. Well-developed children, however, were received in their sixth year, though no one could be discharged from school until after confirmation or the first communion.1 In his report, as special commissioner to an English parliamentary commission (1861), Prof. Mark Pattison, of Oxford, pointed out that the corner stone of the system of primary education throughout Germany was compulsory school attendance; that it was all but universal among the German States, though its mode of enforcement was variable; that the usage of the several States varied but little respecting school age, the Prussian code fixing the end of the child's fifth year as the time when attendance should begin; that in some provinces attendance was not compelled until the end of the sixth, though permitted at the end of the fifth; that the duration of compulsory school attendance in most of the States was eight years, though in some parts of Prussia usage extended it to nine, and in one instance cited it was reduced to seven years; and that “much less by law than by the manners of the people, school time is universally terminated by confirmation-a rite which, with its accompanying first communion, obtains in the Lutheran population the same social importance as in the Roman Catholic." 2

3

It seems clear that the duration of the period devoted to elementary education was determined originally by the church, and that the practices thus begun were subsequently sanctioned by legal enactment. Pattison points out that when, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, Frederick Wilhelm began to issue royal ordinances for the regulation and improvement of elementary schools, these ordinances assumed universal school attendance of all unconfirmed persons. He adds:

The usage, as part of the duty of a Christian parent, had even survived the ruin of the Thirty Years' War. In Wurttemberg it has existed by legal enactment ever since the year following the peace of Westphalia (1649). The edict of 1716, which is popularly regarded as the source of the Prussian compulsory system, does really nothing more than give the sanction of a royal ordinance to an existing practice. The Allgemeineslandschulreglement of 1763 for the first time exactly defines the age, viz, from 5 to 14; but this was only defining an obligation universally admitted as one of the first duties of the citizen and the member of the church.

Prof. G. Stanley Hall considers the rites of confirmation and the first communion as the objective recognition given by the church to the advent of puberty. He holds that the pubic initiations among savage peoples, the ephebic educational ceremonies of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the inspiring observances practiced at the knighting of the medieval youth, and the ceremonies attendant upon

1 Barnard, Public Instruction in Wurttemberg, Am. Jo. Ed. (1870), vol. 20, pp. 661. 2 See digest of Pattison's report, in Am. Jo. Ed. (1870), vol. 19, pp. 617, et seq. 3 Ibid., p. 620.

religious confirmation among the Jews, Catholics, Russians, Episcopalians, and Lutherans all testify to the recognition by the race of the critical nature of the period thus ushered in. Thirteen and 14 or 14 and 15 are the customary ages at which these rites of the church are administered, the former prevailing in the Episcopal Church of England and America and the latter among the Lutheran Churches of Europe. Prof. Hall points out, however, that in Italy the lowest age at which confirmation may take place is 7, in France and Belgium 10, while in the Greek Russian Church confession, which takes the place of first communion and confirmation, occurs at about the age of 8. The explanation of these variations, he thinks, lies in this, that they are among pubescent customs which have gradually moved forward to an earlier time in the child's life, thereby losing much of their original significance. Respecting the tendency to fix the age formally at 14, Prof. Hall gives a suggestive excerpt from Leopold Löw,' who states that in early times "puberty was determined by individual signs of ripeness"; that later, legalistic tendencies operated toward establishing a definite age, and that in fixing the same 14 was attractive, in being twice the sacred number 7.2

1 Löw, Die Lebensalter in der Judischen Literature, Szegedin, 1875, p. 457.

2 For a survey of the field referred to in this paragraph, see IIall, Adolescence, vol. 2, Ch. XIII.

Chapter III.

EFFORTS TOWARD A FUNCTIONAL REORGANIZATIONTHE FIRST DECADE OF THE DISCUSSION.

CONTENTS.-Attempts at reform-The demand for a reorganization-The universality of the tripartite arrangement; ancient Greeks; Roman youths; Melancthon's plan; Comenius's divisions; in the American States; theories as to origin-President Eliot's attack; efforts of the Harvard faculty; the discussion taken up by colleges and universities-The studies made under the auspices of the National Education Association; the report of the Committee of Ten; the report of the Committee of Fifteen; the report of the Committee on College Entrance Requirements-The influence of President Butler-Summary of the first decade of the discussion.

The educational discussions and the educational practices of the last two decades show the existence of tendencies toward abandoning the present arbitrary divisions of the public-school system for a system wherein natural function shall determine the parts and their relations. The extending of the election of studies from university and college down through the high schools, and, in some instances, into the upper grades of the elementary schools; the adoption of departmental teaching in the high school and in the older elementary grades; the endeavor to secure greater flexibility in grading and in promotion; and the introduction of industrial and vocational training into the schools are the directions in which effort has been expended to make more effective a system based largely upon tradition. While these tendencies express a recognition that the present system is imperfect, the reforms contemplated do not necessarily imply a reorganization of our grouping by years, but suggest, rather, an improvement within the confines of our traditional scheme. The discussions, however, ranging over such questions as shortening and enriching the elementary curriculum, the six-year "high-school college," the extension of the field of secondary education both upward and downward, the shortening of the time for colleges, the establishment of the "junior college," and the substitution of a triennial classification for our present quadrennial arrangement, go further and squarely demand that our school system be reorganized.

The threefold arrangement, elementary, secondary, and higher, which comprises our school system, is a form of organization that has become universal among the countries providing a systematic education, though wide differences obtain respecting the years em