It becomes in an important sense the mission of our secondary schools to help our people of all social and industrial grades and classes to understand one another, for they help the schools of all kinds and grades to understand one another. Especially is this true of the public high school, which lays its hand directly upon both the primary school and the university.

It is a great thing, this promoting of a good understanding between all classes of our citizens. There will be times of crisis when it will be a paramount concern in our national life. We can view with patience even the bungling work occasionally done by politically minded school boards in dealing with our high schools, when we realize that in just this way our demos, of which we are all a part, is working toward an understanding of an institution which in many lands the demos neither tries nor cares to understand. Even through temporary mismanagement of our higher educational institutions our people are coming to understand one another, and through better management they are coming to a better understanding.

It takes wisdom and patience and poise and unbounded good-will to discharge the responsibilities of an intermediary position such as is occupied by our middle schools. But if such graces shall abound in the teachers and managers of the schools, these will deserve well of their country; and even though we are a democracy, we shall not be wholly ungrateful.

APPENDIX A

STATISTICS OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS

(From the Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year

1899-1900.)

THE total number of secondary students in institutions of all classes reporting to this Office for the scholastic year ending June, 1900, was 719,241, or more than 4 per cent of the aggregate enrollment in all the schools and colleges of the United States which was 17,020,710. There was a gain of 64,014, or nearly 10 per cent, over the preceding year in the number of secondary students enrolled. The secondary students enumerated were distributed among eight classes of institutions as follows:

The enrollment of secondary students for the year 1899-1900 was almost 1 per cent of the total population, or 9,460 in every million of population. The number reported as enrolled is something less than the actual number of secondary students in the United States. In localities in most of the States where high schools are not accessible there are many students pursuing sec

ondary studies under the direction of teachers of the elementary schools. The 91,549 students in commercial schools are not here included.

Since 1890 the rate of increase of secondary students has been more rapid than the rate of increase in population. The number of secondary students in private institutions has about kept pace with the growth of population from year to year, while the number of such students in public institutions has increased from about 3,600 to the million in 1890 to over 7,000 to the million in 1900. The following table shows the remarkable growth in the number of secondary students in the past ten years:

It has been found impracticable to collect complete statistics of secondary students in the preparatory departments of colleges and other institutions, such as the number of students pursuing certain studies, and certain other details. For this reason this chapter is devoted almost exclusively to the statistics of the 6,005 public high schools and the 1,978 private high schools, academies, and seminaries reporting directly to this Bureau for the year 1899-1900. The following table shows the remarkable growth of public and private high schools since 1889-90:

DENOMINATIONAL SCHOOLS.

Of the 1,978 private secondary schools reported, 945 are controlled by religious denominations. In these denominational schools there were 5,074 instructors and 53,624 secondary students, as against 5,043 instructors and 57,173 students in the 1,033 nonsectarian schools. In Table 43, which gives in detail the statistics of private secondary schools, the name of the religious denomination controlling each school is given in column 4. Tables 28 and 29 show the number of schools in each State controlled by each religious denomination. The following synopsis is made from these tables :