So long, and, O Lord, how long! So long as New England colleges insist in dividing the entrance examination in English into two parts-the second of which shall be "The candidate will be required to correct specimens of bad English set for him at the time of the examination"-so long will our secondary schools produce miserable results in a study that ought to be the crown and the glory of those schools. At the risk of excommunication, I would recommend that a conference of primary and secondary teachers be appointed to suggest to the colleges some rational method of examination in English; then would this idea of correcting bad specimens be "relegated to the limbo of discarded absurdities." I am not quite in sympathy with the plan to postpone the study of technical rhetoric until the third year, to be limited to forty lessons. I appreciate that this course is in good form, and quite consonant with the dictum of the so called inductive method. O, thou baleful word induction, what sins are committed in thy name! Yet I believe that, following the pursuit of technical English grammar in the lower schools, there should be a somewhat systematic study of the principles and maxims of elementary rhetoric and English composition in the first year of the high schools; that all these exercises should be illustrated and illuminated by the reading of choice specimens of English style and by original work on the part of the pupil, as a basis for the after study of the English classics and of English literature. In this way the first object of the teaching of English may be secured, viz: "To enable a pupil to understand the expressed thought of others and to give expression to thoughts of his own." To secure the second, viz: "To cultivate a taste for good reading, to give the pupil some acquaintance with good literature, and to furnish him with the means of extending that acquaintance." I would have forty or fifty books for the English laboratory of each of the high schools. They should be furnished in such quantities in duplicate as to accommodate all the pupils; they must be wisely graded and selected with the greatest care as to style and content; they should be suited to all talent and to every good taste, and each pupil should be be encouraged to read one book a month throughout the entire course. In the earlier years he should present original reproductions of some of these books, and as his ability to reflect and draw inferences increases he should prepare intelligent book reviews. All this written work should be conscientiously and pleasurably criticised with each individual writer, the best productions read as class exercises, and frequent conversations indulged in between teachers and pupils concerning the motive of the book and the lessons it inculcates. This is no idle theory. I have watched its results for some years, and it is no exaggeration to say that I know of scores of pupils the current of whose life and character has been turned into new channels by this method and who will be readers of the best literature while life lasts, always finding contentment, even in solitude, and enjoying the sublimest associations, whatever be their lot in the daily drudgery of life. In conclusion, in no one study has there been such advancement in late years as in the teaching of English, and since all educational reform must come from above, if the colleges will modify their method of examination, abandon the deleterious system of presenting specimens of bad English for correction, allow our high schools to introduce a laboratory method of teaching English similar to that used in the department of physics, permitting pupils to present notebooks, essays, and book reviews as a partial test of their preparation, change the requirements of admission in foreign languages to two instead of three, allow a few discreet substitutions in the sciences, then will the requirements of graduation from the high schools and the requirements of admission to the colleges be in harmony, and we shall enter upon a new era of educational progress in this country before we cross the threshold of the twentieth century. THE REPORT FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE LARGE MIXED HIGH SCHOOL. Discussion by Principal O. D. ROBINSON, Of the Albany (N. Y.) High School, at the thirty-second university convocation of the State of New York, July 5-7, 1894. Secondary schools may be briefly classified as of three kinds-the endowed academy, the wealthy boarding school, and the high school. The old-fashioned academy, as it is called, is rapidly passing away, giving place in some instances to the endowed academy or the expensive boarding school, and in others and more frequently, to the union school or high school. The problems for these different classes of schools are quite different and distinct. The endowed academies have been very properly termed fitt ng schools, and as I understand it they were and are doing their work very satisfactorily. The only difficulty is the lack of a common basis of admission to college, so that students could go from any of these large schools into any of the colleges. The same might be said of the boarding schools, for though the course there may be longer and not so definite, yet we know that in general boys and girls go to these schools to stay till they are prepared for college or till they have accomplished a certain course of study, whether that be longer or shorter. The question is whether the report of the committee of ten and their specimen programmes satisfy as well the demands of the typical or ordinary high school as of these other schools, for it is from the latter mostly that we have heard. What do we mean by the typical high school? We mean the school of the city or large town, generally a mixed school, that is composed both of girls and boys, where they enter from the grammar schools after completing a certain fixed course in preliminary studies there. The typical high school was represented by a single individual only and he not widely known. Dr. Harris, a man of great experience, understood the problem of the high school perhaps better than anyone else on the committee, unless it were Dr. Baker, who has had large experience in the not distant past. Of the other secondary school men one, a very able man, is principal of perhaps the wealthiest boys' boarding school in the United States, but the problem there is very different from that in the ordinary city high school. The other was the head master of the girls' Latin school of the city of Boston, a very able man and a man of large experience, yet at the head of a school just as entirely different from the ordinary high school as is the old endowed academy, like Exeter or Andover. As a result, the majority at least of the members of the committee, having had no recent experience in such work, failed to appreciate its needs as we do who are trying to solve its difficult problems. From the standpoint of the high school teacher, though the criticism applies to other schools also, I was entirely dissatisfied with the relegation of Greek to two years in a four-year course. I could not at first understand the position of my colleagues of secondary schools on that point till I remembered that the head master of the Boston Latin school has charge of a school in which the course is six years for Latin and three or four, I presume, for Greek, so that the recommendation would not touch his school at all; in the other case the head master of the school for boys has simply the problem of fitting boys for college. They come to him and stay till they get ready for college. But I could not understand the position of presidents of colleges and universities who were willing to deduct virtually one-third from the preparatory study of that subject which is the characteristic study of the classical course, and substitute a study which the committee has put itself on record as saying must under present conditions be inferior. I could not believe that seven or eight colleges were getting students too well fitted in Greek, a complaint I had never heard of before, but with the exception of one obstinate member there seemed to be perfect unanimity in relegating the preparatory Greek to two years instead of three. ED 93-94 For the ordinary high school perhaps the next criticism that might be made on this report is that the programme and the work laid out there is too much on the factory plan of piecework-the effort to reduce the whole system of secondary school education to a scientific basis, where we could know beforehand just how much work was to be turned out provided the contract were fulfilled that the student did the work assigned. While that is a comparatively simple matter in an academy or school organized specially for fitting students for college, it is not so easily applied to the ordinary high school. On this subject I had quite an extended correspondence with the chairman of the committee, and part of this has been printed in the June number of the School Review. Such exercises as music, drawing, elocution, orthography, and a great many subjects, some of which necessarily go into all high schools, seemed to be in danger of being left out entirely. The only thing we could get was a resolution in committee, that while no place was made for these in the programme, it was left to local authorities to deal with the matter as they saw fit. In the correspondence just referred to I said of the tentative report sent to the different members of the committee for examination before the final meeting: "I can not agree with the report in recommending that nearly all the subjects taught in any year should be taught during the same number of periods per week. Tablo III provides no place for music, drawing, elocution, spelling, penmanship, etc. Such studies as stenography and manual training are coming into high schools and are coming to stay, and we might as well recognize the fact. Another and a very different class of subjects, such as political economy, psychology, and ethics has long been taught in secondary schools, and I am not prepared to recommend their abolition from the curriculum. Remembering that more than 90 per cent of high school pupils may not go to college, I consider such studies far more valuable than astronomy, meteorology, or physiography." In reply to that the chairman said: "I see there is another objection in your mind which the committee can not meet, because the conference gives opposite advice. You think there must be in the high school course place for music, drawing, elocution, spelling, penmanship, stenography, manual training, political economy, etc. Now I believe it to be absolutely impossible to make a course valuable for training to which these various and numerous subjects are admitted." In answer I said: "Of the subjects mentioned in your letter of the 24th which are not named in the tables of the provisional report, such as music, drawing, etc., I am firmly convinced that some should have a place in every high school course, while others I think should be admissible in certain courses." Of course there was no conference provided to consider the question of any of these added subjects. Very naturally, therefore, they find no mention in any of the reports of the conference, with the single exception of political economy, and that I believe the conference reports adversely as a secondary school study. I hold that the typical high school, in order to do its best work, must have some of these subjects, and if the school is large enough and its equipment is sufficient it should have them all. We can not leave out elocution nor music and have the work complete. In a high school of this kind our students fortunately come from all classes and families. Some come from the most refined families in the community, and we must have an atmosphere in which they will feel that their manners will not be corrupted in the high school. Others get their highest ideas of culture and refinement from their connection with the high school, and for them it is necessary to introduce as many ethic and æsthetic exercises as we can without impairing the more solid courses of study. I do not know that it is best to include the other class-political economy, psychol ogy, and ethics--in the secondary school course. College men generally pronounce against them, but they have never told us what we should do for the 90 per cent of the graduates of the high school who do not go to college, and therefore can not study these subjects under the most favorable conditions. I believe that a properly equipped school will find not perhaps that these subjects are best, but that they are good and that the results are satisfactory, especially when a large proportion of these students go out as teachers. Without training in the subjects known as the intellectual studies they will be intelligent in a way, but they can hardly appreciate the ordinary writing of Dr. Harris or Dr. Taylor or any of our theologians or great writers who contribute so freely to magazines and educational periodicals. Certainly ethics and psychology should be taught to the senior class in the high school, and political economy also, for in all these some things are settled, and these as first principles may be taught. In spite of the blundering way in which they are often learned and taught, they are valuable. But the committee says: "Then teach these things, but do not do it when anybody is looking. Teach them as something else. Let your ethics come in as part of your algebra, and your psychology as part of your geography, and your political economy as part of your history." Cicero long ago said that all the studies which pertain to culture have between themselves a certain relationship, but it does not follow from that that you can teach psychology from history very well or ethics from geography. It reminds one of the modern furnishing of our houses, where everything is, as it were, something else. Your ottoman is a coal-hod and your divan may be an ice-chest. A piano tuner said the other day he was afraid to sit down to tune a piano for fear a folding bed would fly out on him. So they would have these subjects taught under a different name when scholars are not aware that they are learning them. If you are to teach these studies, teach them by their true name; and though we can not do university work, yet I believe it is better to teach something of these than to send our scholars out with an idea that there is nothing in this universo except that which can be weighed and measured. The committee says let them go to the college and university and they will make a better beginning. There they will begin with the discussion as to whether there is a soul. I do not object, but I stand on the proposition that I have a soul and a body. Following that, I believe we can teach in the high school a great deal that is valuable in these subjects. BIBLIOGRAPHY. ADAMS, CHARLES KENDALL. Impressions of the report. University of the State of New York-Regents' Bulletin, No. 28, July, 1894, p. 313. Albany, 1894. 12°. BAKER, JAMES H. Report of the committee of ten. University of the State of New York-Regents' Bulletin, No. 28, July, 1894, p. 307. Albany, 1894. 12°. Review of the work of the committee of ten. Journal of Education (New Eng. and Nat.), July 19, 1894, vol. 40, p. 76. BANCROFT, CECIL F. P. Report of the committee of ten from the point of view of the college preparatory school. Educational Review, March, 1894, vol. 7, p. 280. BRADLEY, JOHN E. 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Report of committee of ten. University of the State of New York-Regents' Bulletin, No. 28, July, 1894, p. 303. Albany, 1894. 12° HARRIS, WILLIAM T. Report of the committee of ten. Educational Review, January, 1894, vol. 7, p. 1. The committee of ten. 8, 1894, vol. 39, p. 150. Journal of Education (New Eng. and Nat.), March |