tional thought to-day, as may be seen in the now famous Report of the Committee of Ten, is towards a distinct and generous recognition of the more popular courses in our high schools as suitable for college purposes, provided only they are pursued with greater seriousness and thoroughness. This closer articulation all along the upper line between the high schools and institutions above them is earnestly to be desired. It would hasten this union if the colleges would generally follow the example of Williams and Tufts in offering a course in Greek for beginners, and of Harvard, Williams and Tufts in abandoning their insistence on Greek as a prerequisite to granting the degree of A.B. This union once effected, it would become possible for struggling high schools to do away with their expensive Greek courses, and to tone up the teaching in their hitherto non-preparatory courses. All this would be to the advantage not only of the colleges and the high schools in their closer relation, but also of the thousands of high school graduates who will never enter college.

When a good general course of four years, adapted to popular demands, is also accepted as a satisfactory preparatory course by the colleges, it will then be feasible to give a good minimum definition of the statutory high school that will not only embody the spirit of the laws but also provide for the needs and aspirations of the people. This definition, as inferred from old and recent legislation, from the character of the high schools in existence, and from any fair interpretation of their purpose, will include such elements as the following:1. Primarily, a provision for a good liberal training in recognized secondary subjects and by approved methods for those pupils who end their schooling with the high school.

2. The preparation of pupils for the normal schools. This will be adequately provided for if the provision mentioned under number 1 is made.

3. The preparation of pupils for high technical schools, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Lawrence Scientific School, the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the Massachusetts Agricultural College and others. This, too, will be adequately provided for if the provision mentioned under number 1 is made.

4. The preparation of pupils for college. This will become

generally feasible if the colleges finally accept, as now seems probable, a good general four years' course as a suitable preparatory course.

5. At least one course of study that is four years long. For the current year the graduate from a three years' course in a high school will be permitted by the Board of Education to take the entrance examinations of the normal schools. But this is a reluctant concession to certain high school conditions that now exist, and not an expression of opinion that a three years' course is an adequate one. On the contrary, a course of not less than four years, as is provided in four fifths of our high schools, is earnestly advised for every candidate.

6. An adequate teaching force and an adequate equipment for the accomplishment of the foregoing aims.

Even under present conditions, no high school should be regarded as worthy of the name, no community should tolerate such a high school, that does not meet at least the first two requirements. Four fifths of our high schools, if we judge from their courses of study, need only the strengthening that comes from a competent teaching force to meet the first five requirements.

Unless a non-high school town sees its way to meet substantially the foregoing requirements, it had better send its pupils to towns that are able to meet them.

Schools like the following ought not to be treated as high schools in any sense that is likely to defeat the securing of a good high school education by any properly qualified child: —

1. A grammar school in which a few high school subjects are taught.

2. A so-called high school that in its first year or in its first two years is strictly a grammar school.

3. A so-called high school in which, as in an ungraded school, the pupils select such studies as they please, without following a carefully thought-out plan.

4. And, in general, any high school that falls seriously short of fulfilling the mission of a high school as already defined.

The establishment of schools ranking above the grammar school but falling below the true high school is commendable so far as it indicates a desire to give children higher opportu

nities, however incomplete they may be. Out of such schools high schools of satisfactory grade may sometimes issue. The objection to starting such schools lies, as has already been intimated, not so much in the schools themselves as in the fear and the prospect that they may contribute to the defeat of what is now the legal right of every properly qualified child in every non-high school town, the free right to as good a high school education as he can secure outside.

It is the hope of the Board of Education, in view of the importance of the subject, to secure more complete and accurate data for the proper classification of the high schools of the State.

HIGH SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY.

In accordance with a request issued by the Board of Education in the spring of 1894, courses of study have been received at the office from about two hundred high schools. Several high schools, however, failed to respond, and the facts about them have been gleaned from the printed reports, often very meagre, of school committees. Consequently the following table, while trustworthy enough to base general conclusions. upon, is to be regarded as only approximately correct :

1. Number with about fifteen exercises per week,
2. Number with about twenty exercises per week,
3. Number with at least three parallel courses, .
4. Number with two parallel courses,

5. Number with college preparatory courses,
6. Number offering courses for four years with or without shorter

213

30

103

88

146

parallel courses,

198

7. Number whose courses do not exceed three years,

29

8. Number whose first year is devoted to grammar school subjects, 9. Number of grammar schools with some high school subjects for those who have finished the grammar school course,

9

11

Every high school that aspires to be a good one should have a well-defined organization and plan. This should be in print and at the service of the school committee, of the Board of Education and of the public. Whatever else such a plan may present, it should give specific information on the following points :

1. The course or courses of study actually taught.

2. The length of each course.

3. The studies of each course, the order of their arrangement, and the length of time allowed each study in the course.

4. The number of exercises per week given to each subject. 5. The number of exercises per week assigned to each pupil. If, with the plan of studies, there is further information about laboratories, libraries, sessions, text-books, recitation periods, the hours the several subjects receive during the course, the number of pupils in each course at a given time, etc., so much the better. The expediency of revising the list of high schools as reported annually by the Board of Education by dropping therefrom every school that does not come up to a fair standard merits earnest consideration.

VALUE OF THE HIGH SCHOOL.

The value of a good high school to its pupils, to the community, to the schools below and to the schools above, cannot be easily overrated. It has been customary for people in their public utterances, even when they have been strong advocates of the most liberal high school policy, to speak of high schools as an inconsiderable part of our school system, since, as they say, but a small percentage of the school population (about seven per cent.) ever enter the high school. Presidents of colleges, members of school boards, editors of the public press, - all these have unwittingly given more or less currency to this error. The fact is at least in Massachusetts that it is not seven per cent. of the school population that enter the high school, but, on an average, twenty-five to thirty per cent., and, in many of our old and typical New England communities, the per cent. rises as high as forty or even fifty. The reader is referred to the earlier pages of this report for a full discussion of this point (pages 66, 67).

If in most of our communities the numbers of pupils in attendance in the thirteen grades should be graphically presented in the form of a pyramid, the slope of that pyramid in the upper four years would vary far less than is commonly supposed from the slope in the lower nine years. Any inference to the contrary is drawn from a thoughtless misuse of a percentage that in itself is correct, namely, that small percentage (seven and six tenths for 1894) which represents the ratio at

any one time of the entire enrolment in the high schools of the State to the enrolment in all the schools of the State.

Great as is the value of the high school to the State, even under present conditions, this value is only a part of what is promised when the high school, through the inevitable adjustments of the future, is placed, in all its serious courses, in harmonious connection with the normal schools, the scientific schools, the colleges and other high institutions above it; and this greater value, it cannot be too earnestly urged, will not be simply that, nor chiefly that, which accrues to those who pass through the high school gateway to these higher institutions, but it will be that which is destined to come through improvements in high school work to the children of the people who do not go beyond the high school.

INSTRUCTION IN TEMPERANCE.

It is the misfortune sometimes of a noble movement to be indiscreetly pushed. Such advocacy leads to reaction, and the cause suffers. In this way temperance is sometimes wounded in the house of its friends. The very commonness, too, of its presentation tends to take off the edge of that presentation, to permit the introduction of an element of cant, and to make of .that which should be vital and effective something mechanical and inoperative. Thus temperance, either in its narrower sense of abjuring that which intoxicates, or in its broader sense of high self-control and self-respect, loses something of caste where it should be one of the royal themes. It is a common experience for genuine believers in temperance and workers for temperance to have moods in which they prefer not to hear the subject discussed, at least, if the discussion promises to follow certain stereotyped ways.

And yet the conviction is strong and deep, and among no class of people is it stronger and deeper than among teachers, that the young should be trained to temperance as well as to the other virtues. How shall it be done? The earlier laws say, "By moral measures." The later laws say, "By a scientific presentation of the effects of alcoholic drinks, stimulants and narcotics." Both these classes of laws still stand; both methods are, therefore, obligatory, and it is the duty of school boards and of teachers to respect them. But when we inquire