TABLE 113.-Ratio of school enrolment w total population and to school population in

foreign countries.

CHAPTER XXI.

PAPERS ON EDUCATIONAL SUBJECTS.

CAN SCHOOL PROGRAMMES BE SHORTENED AND ENRICHED?

A PAPER READ BEFORE THE DEPARTMENT OF SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION, AT WASHINGTON, FEBRUARY 16, 1888.

BY CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D.

President of Harvard University.

In the process of improving the secondary schools, colleges, and professional schools of the United States-a process which has been carried on with remarkable energy since the Civil War-certain new difficulties have been created for the higher education in general, and particularly for colleges. These difficulties have to do with the age at which young men can get prepared for college, and therefore with the ages at which boys pass the successive stages of their earlier education. The average age of admission to Harvard College has been rising for sixty years past, and has now reached the extravagant limit of eighteen years and ten months. Harvard College is not at all peculiar in this respect; indeed many of the country colleges find their young men older still at entrance. The average college graduate is undoubtedly nearly twenty-three years old at graduation, and when he has obtained his A. B. he must nowadays allow at least three years for his professional education.

In respect to the length of time required for a satisfactory professional training, there has been a great change since the War. Twenty years ago the period of residence at Harvard University for the degree of bachelor of laws was eighteen months; now it is three years. Many of the States of the American Union have passed laws which practically make three years the normal period of study before admission to the bar. Ambitious medical students are giving four years to their medical training. Twenty years ago the leading colleges were satisfied to take men just graduated in arts as tutors in Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Now they expect a candidate for tutorship or instructorship to have devoted two or three years to study after taking his bachelor's degree. School boards and trustees have become correspondingly exacting. In short, professional education in the United States is becoming constantly more thorough and elaborate, and is therefore demanding of aspirants to the professions more and more time. The average college graduate who fits himself well for any one of the learned professions, including teaching, can hardly begin to support himself before he is twenty-seven years old.

This condition of things is so unreasonable in a new country like the United Statesbeing hardly matched in the oldest and most densely settled countries of Europethat some remedy is urgently demanded; and the first partial remedy that suggests itself is to reduce the average age of admission to college to eighteen. This reduction would save about a year. In effecting this saving of time it is greatly to be wished that no reduction should be made in the attainments which the average candidate for admission now brings to the American colleges; for it is probable that the saving thus effected will not be sufficient in itself, and that the public interests will require in addition some shortening of the ordinary college course of four years. College men, therefore, are anxiously looking to see if the American school courses can be both shortened and enriched; shortened so that our boys may come to college at eighteen instead of nineteen, and enriched in order that they may bring to college at eighteen more than they now bring at nineteen, so that the standard of the A. B. may not be lowered.

The anxiety with which men charged with the conduct of college education look at this question is increased by the relative decline of American colleges and universities as a whole. This relative decline, which was pointed out nearly twenty years ago by President Barnard, of Columbia College, is very visible of late years. The population of the United States is supposed by the best authorities to increase about one-third in every period of ten years. In the ten-year period from 1875 to 184, inclusive, the universities and colleges included in the tables published by the Commissioner of Education show an increase in their muber of students of only eleven per cent., instead of thirty-three and one-third per cent. If we select from the same

tables the ten-year period fror 1876 to 1835, the increase is sixteen per cent.; but the explanation of this higher percentage of increase is that the total number of students in the year 1876 was abnormally low, being 2,400 beneath the number of 1875. If we add to the institutions enumerated as universities and colleges all the schools of science, and all the higher institutions for the education of women, we still find that this enlarged list of institutions has not gained students at the same rate at which the population has increased, although the schools of science have made very large gains in the decade referred to. Thus the increase in the number of students in universities and colleges, schools of science, and women's colleges, all taken together, was only twenty-three per cent. in the ten years from 1875 to 1884. inclusive. Obviously there are serious hindrances affecting all the institutions which receive young men and women at the age of eighteen or nineteen, to keep them under liberal training for three or four years. One of these hindrances undoubtedly is that the colleges as a whole held too long to a medieval curriculum; but a greater hindrance, in all probability, is the burden imposed upon parents when their elaborately educated sons can not support themselves in their professions until they are twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. Hence the importance of the inquiry: Can school programmes be shortened and enriched?

In studying this problem it is natural to turn first to the schools sometimes called preparatory-that is, to the best high schools and academies; but if we examine the courses of study in these schools, we find that the four years during which they keep their pupils are generally crowded with work. Thus the Phillips Academy, at Exeter, N. H., one of the best academies in the United States, has a four years' course which is so full that hardly any suggestion can be made for compacting or abbreviating it. But what are the requirements for admission to Exeter? "Some knowledge of common school arithmetic, writing, spelling, and of the elements of English grammar." These requirements might reasonably be made of a boy leaving the primary school at eight years of age; yet the average age of admission to Exeter is sixteen and one-half. Now, Exeter is an academy which does not content itself with such low terms of admission unless under compulsion. It would require more if it could get more from the average candidate; but it draws its pupils from a wide area, and its experience is against making greater demands. The Exeter course is itself encumbered with some studies suitable for a boy of ten. Thus it devotes much time to arithmetic, and teaches the very elements of English and English literature. A secondary school which is obliged to take its pupils in the average condition of the boys who enter Exeter can hardly do more for them in the four years between sixteen and twenty than is now accomplished at that academy. What is true of Exeter is true of the whole body of upper schools. They have to make good deficiencies of the lower schools. It is necessary, therefore, to examine the American school programmes from the beginning, to start with the primary school and go on through the grammar school and the high school, searching for the places where time and labor can be saved.

The subject seems to be one chiefly interesting to colleges, but really it has a much broader scope. In the first place, whatever improves the school programmes for those children whose education is to be prolonged, perhaps, until they are twentyfive years old, will improve the programmes also for the less fortunate children whose education is to be briefer. The public schools will never send to higher institutions any very large proportion of the children who are trained in them; but their programmes may best be made substantial and systematic by fitting them to the needs of their most intelligent and fortunate pupils. Moreover, we may reasonably strive to make every grade of the public school programme, primary, grammar, and highand, indeed, every year in any programme-a thing good in itself, as well as a good introduction to the course of study which lies beyond it. The better the programme is in itself, the better it will be as a preparation for further study. To the primary and grammar schools this principle applies in all its fullness. In the high school and academy the principle needs qualification for the foreign languages only, and for that portion of the programme options should be allowed. The question, Can American school programmes be at once condensed and enriched? has, then, a wide scope, and touches the interests of the whole population.

As evidence conducing to the formation of a just opinion upon the practicability of shortening and enriching our school programmes, an actual comparison of two public school programmes-one French and one American-covering the ages of eight to seventeen, inclusive, is printed on pages 1010-14. One programme is the programme of the French secondary schools, which is followed all over France in the institutions called lycées; the other is the programme made by uniting the first three years of the Boston grammar schools with the complete programme of the Boston Latin School. It is assumed that the Boston school are a fair type for the country. Indeed, the Boston Latin School is supposed to be the best, as it is the oldest, American classical school which is supported by local taxation. In the tables referred to the programmes are placed side by side, so that the courses for the same years of age can be conveniently compared. It is in each case the classical course which is tabu

lated; but a similar comparison could be instituted between the corresponding programmes in which Latin and Greek are replaced by other subjects. In the French schools Latin and Greek can be in large part replaced by mathematical and scientific studies, and in Boston the English High School offers a programme like that of the Latin school, but with similar substitution of mathematical and scientific studies for all the Greek and some or all of the Latin. The present purpose can be fully accomplished by limiting the comparison to the classical programines. The French programme was chosen rather than the programme of a German gymnasium, because it is a lower term of comparison, the German programme being more comprehensive, elaborate, and difficult. The French programme is a recent reduction of a programme in force from 1880 to 1885, the reduction amounting to about twenty per cent., and the number of recitations per week in the two programmes (French and American) is nearly the same. It is the best of foreign programmes as a term of comparison, because France is socially a democratic country, politically a republic, and industrially a country whose chief reliance, in the strenuous competition to which its population is exposed within and without, is the intelligence and skill of its producing classes. In all these respects France and the United States closely resemble each other. Moreover, the French boy has no possible advantage over the American boy in strength of constitution, intelligence, or endurance; on the contrary, he is not so large a boy as the American on an average, and he is not so well fed.

A very brief examination of these two programmes side by side reveals several important facts. The French programme is decidedly the more substantial; that is to say, it calls for greater exertion on the part of the pupil than the American, introduces the children earlier to serious subjects, and is generally more interesting and more stimulating to the intelligence. For example, at eight years of age the French boy begins to study a foreign language, either English or German; the American boy begins to study a modern language five years later, at thirteen, when the best period for learning a foreign tongue is already passed. The French boy of eight begins the study of history in a very interesting and stimulating way through the study of biography; the American boy gets no history until he is thirteen, when he begins Greek history. The French boy of eight gives just one-third the time to arithmetic that the American boy gives, and in the whole course does not give to that subject more than one-third the time the American boy gives; yet, for practical purposes, the French are quite as skilful with numbers as the Americans. The French boy gets at natural history earlier than the American boy, and in better subjects. Again, the French programme represents an actual fact, the large majority of French boys passing regularly through it at the ages indicated in the programme; whereas the programme of the Boston Latin School, prepared for the years from eleven to sixteen, inclusive, actually covers the years from thirteen to eighteen, inclusive. In comparing the attainments of the Boston boy with those of the French boy we must, therefore, add two full years to the ages set down in the American programme. The inferiority of the Boston programme, then, becomes very conspicuous. There is no single subject touched in the American programme in which the French boy does not accomplish more than the American. This appears very clearly on comparing the amounts of Latin and Greek set down in the two programmes, but equally plainly in geometry and physics. Moreover, the French course extends a year beyond the American course, and in the class called philosophy gives a comprehensive survey of philosophy and ethics, a thing never attempted in the United States with boys of seventeen, yet found practicable and in the highest degree useful in the French Republic. The preponderance of the French language, the mother tongue, in the French programme is most noticeable. Until Latin and Greek are introduced French occupies half of the whole course. When the study of Latin and Greek is at its height French still claims a substantial portion of the programme; and in the final year, the year called philosophy, French resumes almost exclusive possession of the programme. Great improvements have been made during the last ten years in the study of English and English literature in the best American schools; but the mother tongue does not yet hold anything like the place in American schools that French holds in the French schools. In the French lycées geometry comes before algebra, and with the help of drawing is treated thoroughly before algebra is seriously attacked, plane geometry being finished by the time the boy is fourteen years of age. At the Boston Latin School, on the other hand, plane geometry is not completed until the boy is seventeen according to the programine, and nineteen in reality. This brief discussion of the two programmes may reasonably convince any one that the French boy makes a much greater total attainment by the time he is eighteen than the American boy has a chance to make at the best American schools by the time he is nineteen. Thorough study of them will only strengthen this conviction.

ion.

The comparison thus instituted gives no warrant for impatient, revolutionary actThe transformation it suggests is not to be wrought in a year, but should be the aim of patient labor during many years. Everybody knows that foreign institutions of education can not be imported; that a nation's educational institutions are strongly influenced by its political, ethical, and industrial conditions, and that the

improvement of schools and colleges must necessarily be slow. It may, however, be justly inferred from this comparison of programmes that the condition of secondary schools in the United States is at present one of inferiority; that the country ought not to be satisfied with that condition, and indeed should strenuously exert itself to improve it, there being opportunity in American programmes for both condensation and enrichment. If it be said that the American boy turns out pretty well after all, and that the American community, as a whole, is as intelligent as the French or the German community, the ready answer is that free institutions are in themselves a considerable education for the population, but that the advantage which the nation has over Europe in possessing free institutions ought not to reconcile it to a position of inferiority as regards schools; it ought to aim to have the best schools, too. If it be practicable to make American primary and secondary schools better, the work of improvement should be set on foot.

The fair inference from the above tables being that it is practicable, it will not be unprofitable to consider some of the means of improving the American public school, from the primary grade through the high school.

1. In the first place, better programmes need better teachers. The great difference between the French and German secondary schools and the American is in the quality of the teachers. Two modes of improving the general body of teachers in the public schools demand special attention. In the first place, school committees, superintendents, teachers themselves, and all friends of public education should constantly strive to procure a better tenure of office for American teachers. The American schools will never equal the schools of Germany and France until well-proved teachers can secure a tenure during good behavior and efficiency, like teachers in those countries. Consideration, dignity, and quietness of mind go with a permanent tenure, and the public school service will never compete successfully with the service of private educational corporations in this country until the public employ is as good as the private employ in this regard. Secondly, the average skill of the teachers in the public schools may be increased by raising the present low proportion of male teachers in the schools. Herein lies one of the great causes of the inferiority of the American teaching to the French and German teaching. The proportion of women teachers in American schools is vastly greater than it is in Europe. The larger the proportion of women in any system of public schools, the larger will be the percentage of new appointments every year and the larger the amount of work done by temporary substitutes. New appointments and substitutes generally mean inexperienced teachers, or, at the best, teachers suddenly put to work in unaccustomed places. This superiority of men as teachers has, of course, nothing whatever to do with the relative intelligence or faithfulness of men and women. It is a well-known fact that many women enter the public schools as teachers without any intention of long following the business, and also that women are absent from duty from two to three times as much as men. Young men who take up teaching as a temporary expedient are also unsatisfactory material. The schools need the life-work of highly trained and experienced teachers. After these two most important means of raising the average quality of public school teachers come lesser means which ought not to be neglected; thus, superintendents and committees can do something to improve teachers by invariably advocating the expenditure of money for teaching, rather than for mechanical appliances or buildings. Cheap teachers and expensive apparatus and buildings are precisely the reverse of wise practice, particularly if the fine buildings are not fire-proof after all. Again, the teaching of the public schools can, of course, be improved by the establishment of teachers' examinations, which secure a better preparation in the average teacher, and by methods of supervision which make known the relative merits of teachers who are on probation. Good progress has been made in this direction during the past ten years.

2. The second direction of untiring effort should be to the improvement of programmes; for the programmes are all important to the steady development of the whole system of schools from top to bottom. A good programme will of course not execute itself; it must be vivified by the good teacher; but an injudicious programme is an almost insuperable obstacle to the improvement of a city's schools. As a rule, the American programmes do not seem to be substantial enough, from the first year in the primary school onward. There is not enough meat in the diet. They do not bring the child forward fast enough to maintain his interest and induce him to put forth his strength. Frequent complaint is made of over pressure in the pube schools, but Fredrich Paulsen is probably right in saying that it is not work, which causes overfatigue so much as lack of interest and lack of conscious progress. The sense that, work as he may, he is not accomplishing anything will wear upon the stoutest adult, much more upon a child. One problem in arithmetic which he can not solve will try a child more than ten he can solve. One hour of work in which he can take no intelligent interest will wear him out more than two hours of work in which he can not help being interested. Now, the trouble with much of the work in the public schools is that it is profoundly and inevitably uninteresting to the childish mind. To enrich the school programme, therefore, and to make serious sub