STATISTICS OF GERMAN SECONDARY SCHOOLS, 1871-1872. [From official sources.] 1. Gymnasia [Classical Colleges]. (Population of German Empire, see N.B. below.) Number of graduates.. the University.] ["Graduates" meaning here only those who have entered 564 108,694 6,951 2,906 Number of volumes in libraries [237 libraries reported]...... 1,661,875 One person in 377 of the whole population of Germany has a gymnasium education. One gymnasium to 32,805 of the population. Average number of students to each professor.... Average number of graduates from each gymnasium... 15 5 Average number volumes in each library [237 reported]. 7,012 ["Graduates" meaning here only those who have entered Number of volumes in libraries [168 reported]. 1,238 264,476 One person in every 468 of the whole population of Germany has a Real School education. One Real School to every 85,360 of the population. Average number of students to each professor.... Average number of graduates from each Real School.... Average number of volumes in each library [168 reported]... 18 8 1,574 3. Grand Total of Male Colleges [Gymnasia and Real Schools] in Ger Number of volumes in libraries [405 reported].. One male person in every 209 of the whole population of One college to every 39,290 of the population. 16 Average number of graduates from each college [604 colleges reported] 7 Average number of volumes in each library [405 libraries reported] 4,756 N.B.-Population of German Empire December 1, 1871 (according to Alveauech de Gobla for 1873), 41,058,196. This shows how ample the provision is in Germany for the advanced educacation of youths. That there should be upwards of 1,000 such schools or colleges in the German Empire, that instruction should be given in them by nearly 12,000 learned teachers, that there should be nearly 200,000 youths at these institutions, shows a state of things unequaled in any other country or in any age of the world. The full course of study in a gymnasium runs over nine years. There are in all six classes, the three lower occupying a year each, the three upper two years each. Let us look at what the student has done at the end of five years, that is, when he has gone through the first three classes and the fourth, and is about fourteen or fifteen years of age. Besides religion, the German language, geography, and arithmetic, he has got Latin grammar, with selections from CESAR and OVID, Greek grammar, with selections from XENOPHON'S Anabasis, French grammar and composition, elements of geometry, with lessons in botany, mineralogy and anthropology, and Greek, Roman and German history. The youth would not be fit to enter freshman in America, but he has learned branches of which our freshmen are ignorant. Four years after, at the end of the nine years' course, he is fully as good a scholar as (he is commonly more accurate than) if he had passed through the freshman and sophomore classes in our best American colleges. In The system pursued both at the gymnasium and real school is slow, but systematic. A youth is not allowed to tumble in at any place, as he may do in an English or American school, and perhaps prepare himself for college by the study of classics for a single year. He must begin at the beginning, and can not pass over a class per saltum. I have some times felt that, while you have more technical exercise in the German schools, you have less of life and independent study than in the best American and British schools. At the age of eighteen or twenty he leaves the gymnasium, and he may apply for certain public offices, such as those of the post-office and revenue. These offices can not be obtained by those who have not gone through such a course. this way Germany fosters learning in a way not known in this country, and has a well-educated and generally a high-minded and trustworthy body of public servants. Or the youth may now-not sooner or by any other methodpass on to a university. Now, for the first time, is he allowed independence of thought and study; and is often tempted to abuse it by the lectures of the professors, each of whom is anxious to display originality and thus attract pupils. The strict discipline which guarded him so effectually in his earlier years is now relaxed, and a number of the students give themselves to beerdrinking and sword duels, returning to systematic study only after a year or two, and through fear of the winding-up examination. During the college course there are no recitations or periodical examinations. At the close there is a very rigid examination, not by the teachers, but by a competent commission. Those who pass it can go on to the higher professions, such as the bar or church. By this organized system of instruction, and by the governmental departments coöperating, and requiring on the part of those who apply for public offices, higher or lower, that they have passed through the course of a secondary school or a university, Germany has secured every where a very large body of educated men. There never was so well-educated a body of men in an army as that which Bismark and Moltke took with them into France in the late war, and every one grants that this intelligence helped to make the Prussians triumphant. THE ENDOWED SCHOOLS OF ENGLAND.-The character of these is well known. The funds have come from old endowments, the value of which has greatly increased. They are almost all connected with the established church of England, and associated directly, or more frequently indirectly, with the universities of Oxford or Cambridge. They are attended by the sons of the nobility, or the wealthier under classes, who wish their sons to get into good society. The classics form the basis and the main body of the teaching, which is imparted by highly-educated and accomplished men, trained at the great English universities. The classical teaching imparted there has certainly been the means of training the great body of the eminent statesmen and orators which England has produced. A first-class English school, if it does not impart much general knowledge, contrives, by its open-air exercise and the manliness of its school-life, to prepare youths for acting their part in this world, and the high studies have sharpened the intellects of many, and produced a refinement among a select few such as you will scarcely find in any other country. Of late, royal commissions have inquired carefully into the operation of these schools, and exhibited their enormous defects, especially in the neglect of modern languages and science, and higher composition; and these branches are now being introduced into a number of these schools. Attempts have been made of late years, with partial success, to establish in various places middle-class schools a very objectionable phrase, as it seems to exclude the children of the poor, who are in fact excluded by the high fees exacted. Scattered throughout England we have also a considerable number of schools started on the teachers' own adventure. But, in respect of the number of secondary schools, and the utter want of provisions made for giving a higherclass education to the children of the poor, there is no advanced country in the world so deficient as England. IRISH UPPER SCHOOLS.-Much the same may be said of Ireland. It has two very superior universities-Dublin, and the Queen's with its three Queen's colleges, Its secondary education consists of a number of royal and diocesan schools, which have much the same excellences and defects as the endowed schools of England. Besides these, there are a few excellent academies, in such places as Belfast, Londonderry, and Coleraine, supported by societies interested in education. PAROCHIAL AND BURGH SCHOOLS OF SCOTLAND.- In respect to upper schools Scotland differs widely from both England and Ireland. The educational system of Scotland was projected by JOHN KNOX-whose character, so long maligned, has been successfully defended by MCCRIE and FROUDE,—who proclaimed that there should be an elementary school, open to all, in every parish; a grammar school, with Latin (and Greek), in every burgh town; and a university in each of the four leading cities. What he recommended he was enabled to execute by the unsurpassed energy of his character. The parochial schools of Scotland constitute the first example of an education provided for the whole people of a country. It is a circumstance worthy of being noted that every parish schoolmaster in Scotland has an acquaintance with Latin and the elements of mathematics, and many of them know Greek, while some of them are very superior scholars. The consequence is that in Scotland every boy has within a short distance of him a teacher fitted to instruct him in the higher branches. A considerable number of the students in the universities have come up directly from the parish schools. In every chartered town there is a burgh school, with a number of teachers of English, with assistants; a teacher of classics; a teacher of penmanship and mercantile branches; a teacher of arithmetic and mathematics; often a teacher of French and German, and a teacher of drawing. Each boy may take what branches he pleases; may take classics without mathematics, or mathematics without classics; or satisfy himself with higher English and modern languages. There is often a difficulty in arranging the hours to suit the various parties, but the board of teachers, some how or other, contrive to meet, as far as possible, the wants of all. There is a well-arranged course for those who are preparing for college. The scholarship is not so high as in the German gymnasium, but it is well fitted to prepare youth for the business of life. I might dwell on the educational systems of other European countries, but my limits do not admit. The Austrian system is modeled on the Prussian, and is very little behind it. The grand hope of Austria lies in its admirable schools. Much the same organization is found in Holland. In France the schools have to some extent been benefited, but to some extent repressed, by their dependence on the University. SECONDARY INSTRUCTION IN THE UNITED STATES.-I have before me an early copy, kindly furnished to me, of the Report of the Commissioner of Education for the year 1872; and in it there is a table in regard to Secondary Institutions. The statistics furnished are as good as the bureau is in circumstances to supply; but it is acknowledged that they are very imperfect. The report says that it is impossible to include the course of study pursued in these institutions, and declares that it can not yet answer the question, so often asked, “What ought they to do?" In one table the total number of academies is 811; of instructors, male and female, 4,501; of students, male and female, 98,929. The number of pupils at first sight seems considerably large, but when we examine the record more carefully, we find a result by no means flattering. 856 316 Who have entered colleges last academic year 5,772 It will be perceived that of the 98,929 pupils at the academies, 33,624 are classed as pursuing English, and I fear that many of them are receiving no higher an education than is to be had in the best common schools. We have a record of only 8,517 males and females pursuing the classical languages, that is, the languages which open to us the ancient world with its literature and its history, and in particular open to us the New Testament. It will be remembered that in Germany the whole of the 108,690 students in the gymnasia are learning Latin and Greek, and learning them thoroughly, and that the 87,500 students in the real schule are learning Latin. It should be noticed farther that we have a return of only 3,444, preparing for college; of only 856 who have entered college during the previous year, and only 5,772 who have been sent to college by these institutions since their organization. The Government census gives a somewhat different report from that issued by the Bureau of Education. This discrepancy does not imply any error, or even negligence, on the part of the Census Commissioner or the Commissioner of Education. It merely manifests how imperfect the returns have been, or rather, it shows how imperfect the organization of these schools, how difficult it is in regard to many of them to say that they are primary or secondary, or half way between, or a mixture of the two. The census give 1,518 academies, or 707 more than have been reported to the Bureau of Education, and makes the attendance 129,406, whereas the Bureau has heard of only 98,929. It is calculated that there are in America 2,455,000 persons, male and female, from the ages of 15 to 17 inclusive; and we have no evidence of more than 129,404 getting instruction in the academies, and of these between half and a third seem to be simply studying English, and a number of these, I fear, not taking the higher departments of English. So far as we can judge from the statistics furnished by the Bureau, only a small proportion of the students entering colleges, classical and scientific, are sent up by the academies. We learn from one of the tables of the Bureau that there are 19,260 students in collegiate courses, and when we compare this with the number of pupils at academies preparing to enter college, only 3,444, when we consider that the academies can report only 5,772 as prepared by them for college, we see that they are not the principal feeders of the colleges. We have seen it stated that the Cincinnati High School and the Chicago High School, each with an attendance of between 400 and 600, send each, on an average, from 4 to 7 students to the colleges. The question arises, Where have the great body of the 19,260 students been trained? The answer is, In a very varied way, a great number in a nondescript way. A considerable number are in fact self-educated, having only had irregular lessons from a minister of religion interested in them, or a tutor picked up for the occasion, or by a teacher at his odd hours. This shows how difficult it is in all states out of New Englandwhere they have numerous high schools-to have young men prepared to enter college, and how difficult it is for our colleges to raise their standard of entrance without casting off able, deserving and promising young men. A considerable number of the institutions designated academies are boarding-schools. Let it be observed of men that they are not available to any but the children of the rich, who can afford to pay $400, $500 or $600 a year for each of their children. Many of these establishments are doing immeasurable good, are imparting a high intellectual education, with an excellent training, moral and religious. But they differ very much as to the instruction given and the care taken of the morals of the pupils. Not a few of those at the head of these establishments have no higher ambition than to earn a livelihood for the present, and in the course of years lay up a competency to make them |