to revel in its pleasures, is evident to those who have had the opportunity to inspect the work of this school. Not to tarry too long here, it seems to me that as teachers of English-speaking people, possessors of a grand history and literature, it is our duty to lift up and set upon a pinnacle in the high school the study of English. In history as grave fault may be found with present high-school work as in English. A daily recitation for a year is given to ancient and modern history. In that time is gone over the history of Greece and Rome, and, by those not too ambitious, the history of England. Some wrestle with the history of the world for this length of time. At any rate, it becomes only a question of relative thinness and poorness when we look over the work in history in the high school. United States history has generally been disposed of in the grammar school before the high school is reached. From the mental immaturity of the pupils studying United States history, and from the imperative necessity to complete the study in two years at furthest, nothing like genuine historical study can be expected. As a result, the study of civics labors under many disadvantages in our high schools. New ideas involving logical processes take lodgment in their entirety very slowly in the minds of the young. They can see but one side of any matter at a time. An idea must be presented again and again, different sides of it, and illuminated by changing lights, in order that a true picture may exist in the mind. This is the kind of study especially desirable in history, but this is out of our reach until hours and minutes are not dealt out to us so stingily as at present, and until it will not be necessary for the high school, as a fitting-school, to do all the preparatory work for the college in every direction. There remain yet to be considered the natural sciences. Except for their special courses, the colleges make little demands upon the high school in the sciences. Under natural sciences are generally taught in our high schools, physiology, zoölogy, botany, geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and physical geography. These are of varying value to the student as studies in creating new mental power, and as helps in his college course. Most valuable to him, from my standpoint, are botany, geology, astronomy, physics, and physical geography. Botany awakens the powers of observation and classification. Geology demands in addition logical reasoning from well-known facts to causes. Astronomy and physics—both forms of mechanics-are properly added at times to the department of mathematics, and physical geography takes up under one name all that has been discoverable in all the realms of science. Chemistry can only be made of value where enough time can be given to allow of genuine study, so that the new ideas and chemistry is full of them-may have time to root themselves in the fibers of the brain and begin to grow.

Now, to summarize briefly: The high school, as an outgrowth of the academy, comes to us burdened alike with excellences and defects. Supported by the community, its course of study has been fashioned by the influence of the college to suit the purposes of the college. The recent establishment of schools of science has had some influence in modifying the high-school course of study, and has brought it nearer to the needs of the community.

The adjustment of the course of study to these varying interests is not complete, and the high school, as at present organized, is a provisional arrangement.

In Latin, the demands are too great for thorough work, and it is questionable whether the substitution of extensive reading and the changed methods of acquiring the elements are any improvement over the old method of thorough mastery of grammatical forms.

The decreasing interest in Greek in our high schools and colleges is much to be deprecated. As a high-school study it can be made more valuable and more fruit-bearing than Latin. In mathematics high schools have done readily all that is expected from them by the colleges, because in this subject the interests of the college and the community are in harmony. The work done in English in very many high schools is almost farcical. The better colleges lament this, although the fault rests in the main with the colleges, which, until very recent years, have almost ignored this subject.

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Ancient and modern history is very poorly taught in the ordinary high school. The colleges ask for very little. The course of history in many leges is very weak, and as a result the work is shirked and poorly done in high schools. As to natural sciences, the college makes few demands on the high school as preparation for the classical course. From the standpoint of general scholarship, botany, geology, astronomy, physics, and physical geography are deemed most valuable. Chemistry is valuable only where enough time can be given to do thorough work.

Of the right of the high school to do work preparatory to the college or scientific school I have said nothing. It seems to me that at this late day in the ninteenth century, in view of the general tendency of society-in view of an existing necessity-it may be assumed that such a right exists, and that the school is free to expand indefinitely in lines of teaching. Of the ability of the high school to map out any one course of study or combinations of courses to do equally satisfactorily the various lines of work, previously referred to, I am doubtful. It has been suggested that by beginning some of our high-school work in grades below the high school, and by modifying somewhat our time-sanctioned schemes of work, the high school might be converted into a gymnasium after the German pattern.

Of many objections against such a scheme, I may mention two. My time will not permit an expansion, even of these:

First: The patrons of our schools will not indorse and join in such a change.

Second: The social environment of pupils in this country militates against such a change.

Our schools must adapt themselves to American conditions. These, and other reasons, cause me to believe we will gradually develop out of our high school as it now is, a series of special schools-all public schools, and each one a fitting-school for something beyond.

And now in conclusion, my topic, "The High School as a Fitting-School,” I take to mean a discussion of the course of study of high schools as preparatory to college. There is another sense, however, in which the high school is a fitting-school, and that is in preparing men and women. This idea has been in my mind constantly in preparing this paper. Here and there I have sought to refer to it incidentally. The subjects boys and girls study in our high schools can be made to bear good fruit in that direction. We look to our colleges, to which we are related as fitting-schools, as a wanderer in a desert country looks to the hills; and from them would that we could always draw the help we need.

EFFECT OF THE COLLEGE-PREPARATORY HIGH SCHOOL UPON ATTENDANCE AND SCHOLARSHIP IN THE

LOWER GRADES.

C. W. BARDEEN, SYRACUSE, NEW YORK.

An ounce of pull is worth a pound of push. If a child remains in school because he wants to stay, he is a better scholar than if he were forced to attend by a compulsory law. To show that the effect of a college-preparatory course in the high school is to increase the interest and to prolong the attendance of the lower grades, is the limited and definite purpose of this paper.

First, I remark that on general principles the higher one aims the more he accomplishes. "Jump at the moon," says Emerson, in effect; "you won't hit it, but you will go higher than though you aimed at the saw-horse." It is the common weakness of man to be satisfied with less than he has undertaken. Start twenty boys in a mile race and seldom will a dozen reach the half-mile post: but more will get there than if it was a half-mile race. Let pupils look upon the high school as the end of education, and half of them will think they are doing well to graduate from the grammar school. It is important to maintain the idea that completing a course is only a step forwarda lean-to on a Vermont hill. There are too many persons whose education is "finished." A class-mate of mine went away from college to teach, one winter, and when he came back he boasted how high the grade of the school was. "Three of the girls," he said, "had been through Latin." Let it be the common idea in school that only a college-bred man can be called fairly educated, and a great many will feel that self-respect compels them at least to finish the high school.

In the second place, if the high school fits for college it will retain most of the scholars who intend to go to college, and who would otherwise be forced to attend private schools. This is an important consideration. For one thing, these are on the average the brightest pupils. Children usually of

well-educated parents, brought up in a cultivated and intelligent home circle, with better manners and higher purposes than the average public-school scholar, they are an uplifting element-an element that the public school cannot well spare. They will usually raise the standard of scholarship, and, recognizing that they are forming habits of study that are to continue for several years, they will usually be found more industrious and diligent than their fellows. In this way their direct influence is of benefit.

Indirectly they confer upon the school a benefit even more discernible. They usually represent the better families of the place-those that are respected and imitated. If these families send their children to the public school, this becomes, for many who are looking for an example to follow, the correct thing to do. Hence the high school will be popular, and the question of attending the high school or a private school will be recognized as depending, not upon whether one's parents can afford to pay tuition at a private school, but upon whether one is bright enough to pass the examinations of the high school. I come from a city of 85,000 inhabitants. I do not know a family in that city that would not prefer to have its children in the high school. When it is remarked that such-or-such-a-one has gone from the public into a private school, it is spoken of among the young people as a matter of course that the reason must be she could not keep up with her class. Hence in Syracuse it is an honor to be a high-school scholar, and to some extent a reflection upon one not to be. How greatly this prestige increases the attendance upon the public schools I need not point out.

But it affects more than the attendance. The children whom considerations like these lead to the public instead of the private schools are commonly from wealthy families, who have influence, if in no other way at least as taxpayers. It is no small benefit to have these people interested in the high school, and proud to have their children its pupils. A man pays taxes more willingly for the school that his children attend, than for the school his gardener's children attend while his own are sent to an expensive private school. The public schools will command the general support on which their efficiency depends, only in proportion as they are recognized as schools for all. They cannot be schools for all, if they fail to provide a college-preparatory course. In this connection it may be remarked that to maintain a college-preparatory department is by no means so expensive as it was when only men could teach the classics. To-day our colleges are graduating every year scores of women who can be had for four or five hundred dollars a year, and who can teach Latin and Greek better than the average man-graduate of twenty-five years ago. Add to this that the entrance-examinations are now so broad that the language requirements are much less than ten years ago, and the maintenance of a college-preparatory department is no longer a formidable undertaking.

But it may be asked, for what college shall the high school prepare? The same fit that will put a man into Harvard without condition would graduate

him from some smaller colleges. What shall be the standard of the collegepreparatory high school? The answer is simple: The standard must correspond with the demand. The Latin High School in Boston must give a fit for Harvard or Yale in every way equal to that of the two Phillips Adademies, because if it did not its best scholars would go to the Phillips Academies; but it would be absurd for a Michigan high school to give the same training. In that State the great majority of the college boys go to Ann Arbor, and there a Harvard fit would be a positive disadvantage, putting them so far ahead of the rest of their class on the start that they would grow careless, and lose their habits of study. In Ohio, again, where the college standard is still lower, a Michigan fit would be out of place; while in some of the newer cities of the West, where a Baptist and a Methodist and a Presbyterian university are staked out with the first grocery store and blacksmith shop, it is some time before an Ohio fit is needed.

It is not within the scope of this paper to discuss the restrictions that should be laid upon the use of the words "college" and "university"; nor, on the other hand, to consider the general educational uplifting of a community through the influence of colleges so near by and so inexpensive that the majority of the better scholars of the public schools are encouraged to go on with study four years longer than would otherwise be possible. The four years' work is worth having if it is honest work, whether it is really collegework or not. But these questions have often been discussed here in the past, and will be discussed here in the future; they have no place in this paper.

My claim is, that whatever be the grade of college which the majority of college-entering students in a community expect to enter, for that grade of college the high school should give in its regular course a fairly good fit, with some provision for post-graduate work in case the student desires to enter a college of a higher grade. In other words, it should not be regarded as necessary, or as desirable, that such scholars should go elsewhere for their preparation.

That this is an advantage to the school has been, I trust, made manifest. But is it an advantage to the student? Would he not get a completer preparation in a private school where the course is chiefly college-preparatory, and where most of his fellow-students are going with him to college?

It may be cheerfully admitted that he would; that his freshman year would be a great deal easier for him, and the possibilities of his taking scholarship honors greatly increased. If the end for which I sent my boy to college were to have him take the valedictory, I should send him to a special fitting-school at the earliest age at which they would receive him.

This is the English plan of education, as carried out at the great "public schools," as they are called-Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and the rest. From eight to eighteen, the ten formative years of a boy's life, are spent at these schools, in special preparation for Oxford or Cambridge. The preparation is so special at Harrow, founded in 1571, that for more than two hundred and