CHAPTER XIX

NOTES ON SCHOOL LIFE AND STUDIES

THE crowding of the curriculum with a multiplicity of subjects had already begun away back in the old academy days. Even then the studies which had to do with useful information were much in demand, and it was with them that the crowding took place. After the middle of the nineteenth century the demand for subjects of this sort on account of their usefulness was mightily reinforced by a demand for the same subjects on account of their scientific value.

The physical sciences were becoming more scientific through application of the principle of the conservation of energy and its several corollaries. The biological sciences were just escaping from the stage of classification and becoming for the first time scientific through the doctrine of organic evolution. The word science was taking on new significance. With the progress of scientific discovery, new vistas were opening up in every direction. Men came to expect every conceivable good at the hand of this new scientific thought, and for themselves and for others they desired encyclopedic knowledge.

Schools of every grade were profoundly disturbed by the rapid changes going on in the larger world of ideas. In the seventies or thereabouts, the tendency to overload the curriculum with scientific studies was accelerated by the action of some state legislatures, requiring candidates for the teacher's certificate to pass an examination in several of the sciences. In some portions of the country it was regarded as no small part of the service of the public high schools that they prepared their students to pass the teachers' examination.

Statutory provisions relating to this examination had accordingly an indirect, but prompt and powerful, influence upon high school courses of study.

How many other influences were working in the same direction, it would be hard to say. But the result was that "multiplicity of short information courses," particularly in the natural sciences, against which the Committee of Ten protested. A group of text-books bearing the titles Fourteen weeks in chemistry, and Fourteen weeks in each of several other subjects, attained a wide popularity at this time, and was highly characteristic of the tendency referred to.1

The more recent history of studies can be traced in a series of carefully prepared statistical tables. It appears from the reports of the Commissioner of Education that between the years 1894 and 1900 the percentage of pupils in our secondary schools studying Latin, French, German, algebra, geometry, physical geography, physiology, rhetoric, and general history, was on the increase, the advance being especially marked in the case of Latin, algebra, geometry, rhetoric, and history. In the same period the percentage of those studying Greek, trigonometry, astronomy, physics, geology, and psychology declined. For a portion of the studies a report is presented covering ten years, from 1889 to 1899. In that time the percentage studying Latin had advanced from 33.62 to 50.29, and the advance in algebra, geometry, and general history, though less marked, was very noteworthy. In these years the actual number of students attending our secondary schools had increased from 367,003 to 655,227.

1 It was my fortune to teach for a single winter in the high school of a small town in central Illinois. The course of study was three years in length and included twenty-four subjects, all required. In his senior year, the student in this school studied natural philosophy, zoology, civil government, essays, astronomy, physiology, universal history, mental philosophy, and chemistry, the most of them for one-third of the year each. I do not think this instance was at all exceptional. The school had then no laboratory and but little apparatus, and only two teachers were employed in the high school department.

It would seem that in spite of this enormous increase in attendance, the schools had been gravitating back toward concentration on a smaller number of studies, and those chiefly the central studies of the old humanistic curriculum with the omission of Greek. While Greek seems to have declined proportionately, the falling off was very slight, and the actual increase in the number of students studying that language was not far from twelve thousand. It is likely that physics, which shows the greatest retrogression in the ten-year period, had made greater advance than the most of the other subjects in methods of presentation. The percentage of students studying physics by laboratory methods, if it could be determined, would probably show a substantial increase.

On the whole, then, we may safely conclude that in their actual working our secondary schools, at the same time that they are increasing enormously in attendance, are becoming more conservative in their schemes of instruction, are less given to "short information courses," are more humanistic, and on the scientific side are doing more in the direction of an improvement of instruction than in that of the extension of studies.

We may note in passing that in the same period, despite the tremendous increase in attendance at higher institutions, the number of students in our secondary schools who were not preparing for college increased more rapidly than those who were; 18.66 per cent were preparing for college in 1889-90 and 14.05 per cent in 1898-99.

The report for the year 1899-1900 shows a reversal at several points of the tendency indicated in the preceding paragraphs. It is impossible to tell whether the change marks a new and opposite tendency or merely a temporary retrogression. The total number of secondary students advanced in the single year from 655,227 to 719,241; yet the percentage of these who were preparing for college rose at the same time from 14.05 to 14.53. The percentage of those studying German, rhetoric, English literature, and civics in

creased; while a diminished percentage is recorded against all of the other subjects reported, namely, Latin, Greek, French, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physical geography, geology, physiology, psychology, and general history.1

The actual courses of study in our secondary schools show considerable diversity. The determination of the curriculum is generally left, in our school laws, to the discretion of municipal or district boards of education, and private schools are limited only by the ends which they choose to serve. Yet the differences between neighboring schools or between the schools of different sections of the country are not so wide as one might expect. Owing to the extensive circulation of all sorts of educational literature, and the frequent meeting of teachers one with another in educational conventions, there is a surprising approach toward uniformity in the educational provisions found in all parts of the country. Even the poorer and more backward sections are often seen striving consciously and earnestly after the ideals proposed in more favored districts. High schools may be found having courses ranging all the way from one to six years in length; but the four-year course is still the generally recognized standard. Private schools have commonly a four-year course, though six-year courses are now found in some of the great boarding schools for boys. A few recent courses are presented, by way of example, in the Appendix.2

Within the past half-century, methods of instruction, and to a less degree the choice of topics, in secondary school subjects generally, have been profoundly influenced by the changes which have appeared in the study of the natural sciences. Stephen Van Rensselaer, in founding the first polytechnic school in the United States (in 1824), gave directions that chemistry and experimental philosophy should not be taught in that institution "by seeing experiments. and hearing lectures, according to the usual method." Instead, the students should be required "to lecture and 2 See Appendix B.

1 See Appendix A.

experiment by turn, under the immediate direction of a professor or competent assistant. Thus by a term of labor, like apprentices to a trade, they are to become operative chemists." 1

James C. Booth, an early student in the Rensselaer Institute, became professor of chemistry in the Franklin Institute at Philadelphia, in 1836, and opened a laboratory which is said to have been the first in the United States for instruction in chemical analysis and in the application of chemistry to the arts. Six years later he became an instructor in the Central High School of Philadelphia; but the laboratory facilities of that school at the time, and for many years thereafter, seem to have been insignificant. In 1862, however, a visitor to the school reported that the laboratory, such as it was, was of great use, the students being taught to perform the experiments in chemistry for themselves. In 1868 more complete provision was made for such laboratory work, and an assistant was regularly employed for this purpose.

In the seventies and early eighties the establishment of laboratories in which experiments and observations should be made by the pupils themselves became much more com

Within the past ten or fifteen years the requirement by some of our foremost colleges of laboratory work on the part of those who would offer one of the natural sciences as a part of their preparation for college matriculation, has given a great impetus to this movement. In 1897 it was reported that in Massachusetts 66 high schools were provided with good laboratory facilities, 80 had fair or limited facilities, and 98 had poor facilities or none. We have seen that in the state systems of New York and Minnesota particular attention is paid to the laboratory equipment of the

1 Quoted by T. C. MENDENHALL in BUTLER, Education in the United States, II., pp. 557-558.

2 EDMONDS, History of the Central High School, pp. 57, 179, 200-201, 211-213. See also Mr. Edmonds' account of the establishment of the high school observatory, in 1840, op. cit., ch. 5. This is said to be the fourth observatory in this country in the order of their establishment, the first being that of Yale College, erected in 1830.