The tables following explain themselves: Enrollment of pupils in the several kinds and grades of schools for the school year ending Normal School... High School Grammar schools: Eighth grade Seventh grade Sixth grade Fifth grade. Total.. Primary schools: Fourth grade. First grade Total...... Grand total.... June 30, 1888. SCHOOLS. The number of schools below the High School was as follows: Grammar schools, city: Eighth grade Seventh grade Sixth grade.. Fifth grade.... Total. Primary schools, city: Fourth grade Third grade Second grade First grade County schools: White Colored. Total..... Grand total........ Number of whole-day schools... 40 997 1,576 1,905 2,457 3,041 8.979 3,329 3,250 3, 197 4,018 13,794 23,10 29 34 44 50 157 51 *48 *48 *49 196 229 30 59 == 412 == 323 Number of half-day schools... Total...... 412 * Two of these schools were taught by Normal School pupils. The average number of pupils to a school was as follows: Four hundred and sixty-three teachers were employed, as follows: The cost of the schools for supervision and teaching was as follows: Cost per pupil (estimated on average enrollment, 19,762)... .81 Cost per pupil (estimated on average enrollment, 913)..... 2,500.00 22,899.33 25, 399.33 27.81 Grammar schools, city (29 eighth, 34 seventh, 44 sixth, 50 fifth grade schools) Cost per pupil (estimated on average enrollment, 7,111).. Primary schools, city (52 fourth, 48 third, 48 second, 49 first grade schools)...... 126,650.00 17.81 $99,875.00 Cost per pupil (estimated on average enrollment, 9,146). 11.23 Special teachers (2 music teachers and 3 drawing teachers). 4,800.00 Cost per pupil (estimated on average eurollment, 19,762)... .24 Teachers of manual training schools (of carpentry 4, of metal working 1, of cookery 2, of sewing 2)....... 4,975.00 Cost per pupil (estimated on whole enrollment, 2,743). 1.82 15.39 REMARKS AND SUGGESTIONS. A school report should show, first, the purpose of the school as a whole, of each branch or department thereof, as well as of each grade or step in every kind of school; second, should set forth the means and processes employed by the supervision to accomplish such purposes; third, should detail the results obtained as nearly as possible, noting and emphasizing the failures or partial failures, as well as the successes; fourth, should suggest such changes, either of purposes or of plans, as would result in better educating those who attend the school. The enrollment and attendance, the regularity and promptness, the cost of the different kinds of schools and the cost per capita of the different kinds of instruction, as well as the entire cost, are to be found in the tables accompanying this report, and constitute the most uninteresting part thereof. "Figures," it is said, "never lie." Yet, in school statistics, if it is not known how they are obtained, figures may be the This includes the cost of teaching 6 practice schools. Two of these schools were taught by normal pupils. To be increased by the cost of teaching 6 practice schools ($2, 844). most deceiving rascals that ever told a tale. High percentages of attendance and punctuality on the face of them indicate advanced educational processes at school and high educational sentiment in the community, whereas they may have been obtained at the expense of the better and nobler impulses of the child, of the better and broader view of learning and growth, of other and equally valuable privileges afforded outside the school. The teacher should know the value of sequence, continuity, and determined effort, and should seek to impress their importance upon the mind of every pupil, and should be estimated by his knowledge of causes of absence or tardiness rather than by the percentages made in either of these by his pupils. The educating forces of the cultivated home and of society are so. numerous and so valuable as auxiliaries for broadening and making practical the work of the schools that absence or tardiness occasioned by desire or opportunity may sometimes be excused in the pupil seeking these advantages. I would not encourage irregular attendance. Such is not the purpose of my writing. I wish only to emphasize the advisability and fairness of distinguishing between absence occasioned by carelessness of pupil or parent and that occasioned by opportunity and desire to profit by other valuable means of cultivation. Further. more, I wish to emphasize the importance of recognizing the possibilities of the less fortunate of those who send to our schools, and to avoid, if possible, debarring from school privileges, even for a part of a week or a part of a day, any who may be detained from school occasionally to aid an indigent parent in the support of his family or to assist a poor, hard-working, self-sacrificing mother in caring for an infant brother or sister for a part of the forenoon. To know the cause of absence, to detect, encourage, and reform the careless and the wayward, to know and to strive to reform the criminally careless and indifferent by all legitimate means should be encouraged in and made possible to our schools. I believe that the percentage of attendance, as shown by our records, is as good as it ought to be with our present facilities for knowing the causes of absence and tardiness, and that a more stringent enforcing of our present rules would do more harm than good. The discrepancy between the whole enrollment of pupils and the av erage enrollment of pupils demands more serious consideration. The whole enrollment was 31,850; the average enrollment, 28,553. This means that every month in the year, on an average, the monthly enrollment was 6,297 less than the entire enrollment of the schools. Now, many causes operate to produce this result. Many children are enrolled in the schools who leave the city and thus leave the schools; many chil dren are enrolled in the upper grades of schools who leave to engage. in the active pursuits of life, to become bread-winners; many children leave to go to other schools; some leave because of sickness or death. 290 A-2 But, after considering all possible legitimate causes for with drawing from the schools, it is undoubtedly true that many absent themselves from school by the consent of their parents or because of slight restraint of parental authority who pass their time in idleness or in corrupting indulgences and pastimes that lead to debauchery and criminality. To more perfectly understand this subject it may be looked at from another stand-point. In the census taken by Col. William G. Moore, major and superintendent Metropolitan police, and his assistants, June 15, 1888, by order of the honorable Commissioners of the District of Columbia, the following facts are found: Whole number of inhabitants, 218,157. Whole number of children of school age (from six to seventeen years, inclusive), 51,500. Whole number of children enrolled in public and private schools (public schools, 34,850; private schools, 3,119), 37,969. It is well known that very many persons of school age, embraced in this enumeration, have passed through the schools and graduated therefrom; that very many others have attended the schools for a longer time than would be required by any existing compulsory law in the States; others are educated at home, and still others are not in school because they are invalids. Yet there must be some who do not go to school at all and others who go for so short a time that no permanent good is obtained by their attendance. In looking at this subject I call your attention to the fact that the difference between the school population of the District and the aver age enrollment in the schools should be considered rather than the difference between the school population and the whole enrollment, the former of which is 20,389 and the latter 13,531. No community is safe in the presence of an unemployed, aimless, or purposeless element. The larger such element the greater the danger to the community. No community can safely permit any portion of the population of school age to be idle and purposeless. The remedy, so far as the schools can furnish it, lies first in affording school accommodations for all who ought to go to school; not basement 100ms, dark, damp, and unwholesome, not garrets, not rented stables, not contracted school rooms, with low ceilings and no ventilation, not school-rooms to be shared by two sets of pupils, one in the forenoon, the other in the afternoon. These are not inducements; these are barriers; these ill compare with the allurements to vice and sin; these are meager in comparison relatively with the inducements that must elevate a free people, for the eternal must that elevates the freeman is ever in front alluring, and never behind compelling. The remedy, on the part of the schools, lies next in doing efficient and interesting work, so varied as to suit the capacities of all the chidren and to meet the requirements of our composite nationality and |