Education

CONTINUING our review of the school reports, we find that our space will permit us but few Statistics. The yearly cost of each pupil in Chicago is $14.93 to $32.54 in Boston, the average per capita in the high schools of the latter city being $79.51. In some of the primary schools of Chicago there is a half-time system which is said to work perfectly for the children, but which frequently breaks down the teachers, owing to their having two classes daily of sixty pupils each, making one hundred and twenty in all ! The superintendent therefore recommends half - time teachers for such schools as well. In compliance with the wishes of their board, the Chicago teachers are making great exertions to do without corporal punishment in their schools, and with “ decided success; ” but the same difficulties with “persistently disobedient and disorderly pupils ” appear here as in New York. The superintendent observes that in the grammar schools the increased amount of written work is injuring the handwriting of the children. We believe ourselves that our schools will yet have to retrace their steps on this whole question, nothing being more wonderful in the history of pedagogy than the persistence with which educational authorities ignore the distinction between childhood and youth so much insisted on by Rousseau, and cling to the belief that what is suitable for the student (as for instance this written work) is suitable also for the child. The number of women to men teachers in the Chicago grammar schools is as thirty to one, a proportion far too largo, as it cannot he good for either sex to be so exclusively taught by one. Such being their numbers, however, we almost wonder they did not " strike ” when the board effected a saving of twenty per cent, in its expenses, by cutting down their (not the men teachers’) salaries! It is really moving to see the cheerfulness with which American citizens spend money on costly school-houses, and the equal good faith with which they scrimp the teachers, as if a good schoolhouse without a teacher inside of it could be anything more than a body without a soul. In the grammar schools of Chicago there are seventy-five recitations each of grammar, arithmetic, and spelling, to twelve of United States history; and in the high school historical examination, out of ten questions, four were on the late civil war. None were on general history !

The twenty-ninth semi-annual report of the superintendent of the Boston schools is peculiarly interesting, as being a history of the educational work carried on in that city for the eighteen years during which he held the office he has just resigned. Of much of this he was evidently both the originator and the promoter, and his city may well say to him in gratitude, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” His aim throughout has been to make and keep the public schools of Boston second to none, and, if possible, the first in the country. Owing to the wealth and liberality of the Boston taxpayer, he has succeeded in the former, and doubtless would have done so in the latter ambition, could he have risen earlier above the pedagogical traditions in which he probably gained his own training. For it is surprising to learn (p. 73 et seq.) that the primary schools of the " Athens of America ” had no systematized scheme of instruction until 1863, and the grammar schools none until 1868.

In Mr. Philbrick’s own candid language, “Boston cannot claim to have taken the initiative ” in the matter of programmes, and yet, as we have before intimated, it is the matter the most important by far of any within the range of an educator’s responsibility. So little was this understood by the Boston school committee, that when, after “a year and a half of discussion and contention,” a programme was at last decided upon, “None of us then connected with the schools,” says Mr. Philbrick, “ fully appreciated the value and importance of that action of the board,” Nor was it until after the adoption of this new programme that be “studied the most approved courses of study in foreign countries, where the science is vastly more advanced than it is in this country,” and was “gratified to find that our course for elementary instruction is so nearly up to the standard of the best existing models. ... We built better than we knew ! ”

Since Mr. Philbrick’s election to office in 1856, the salaries of school officials in Boston have increased seventy-four per cent., against one hundred and twenty-five per cent, of other city salaries. The attendance on the schools has risen ten per cent., the number of pupils has doubled, but that of the teachers has trebled, thus reducingthe average number of scholars to a teacher from 54.4 to 37.6. In admitting drawing, music, and sewing,¹ and otherwise enlarging the elementary curriculum, Mr. Philbrick wisely contends that the old common-school studies have not been crowded out, as so many persons fancy, but that they have been only curtailed of some of their disproportionate time ; and he further denies that the “ high pressure ” system of excessive tasks and unwholesome competitions exists at present to any great degree in Boston, as great efforts have been made to suppress it. There are no home lessons for the primary schools, and the boys only in the grammar schools are allowed to study at home for one hour a day. No competitive medals or other prizes are awarded, graduating diplomas having been substituted instead. The music in the primary and grammar schools is under the charge of three able masters, they themselves being under a general musical director, who also teaches the girls in the high and normal schools. We have very grave doubts whether the Boston system of changing the Do with the tone is the one which will enable the largest proportion of children to read simple music at sight after leaving school, and it is to be hoped that some other of our large cities will try with equal thoroughness the old way of regarding Do as invariably C, Ré as invariably D, etc., and let experience decide which plan is the better. We believe that in the German public schools the New England system is unknown. In the high schools the boys are drilled in military exercises and the girls in Swedish gymnastics, but “a thorough system of physical training has not as yet been attained for the Boston schools, though there exists a general recognition of gymnastics as a branch of school culture. In Vienna one hundred special teachers of gymnastics are employed in the public schools,” which perhaps accounts for some of the personal beauty for which that city is famous. The number of high-school scholars has increased one hundred and seventy per cent, since 1856, that of pupils in the primary schools only fifty per cent., though the whole number in the high schools is only five per cent, of all the schools taken together. Mr. Philbrick emphasizes what we also in these reviews have endeavored to enforce, namely, that the common school is always feeble and inefficient where high schools are wanting. He says that in Vienna, whose population exceeds that of Philadelphia, hut is less than that of New York, there are sixteen high or secondaryschools for boys alone, of which the apparatus of a single one cost over twenty thousand dollars. He fears that it will be a late day before America can boast such schoolhouses as those of that splendid metropolis, where they are built under the direction of the highest official architects and pedagogues, who after many years of experimenting have reached a type of schoolroom which is supposed to combine the requisites of light, ventilation, and convenience, in the highest degree. If all the grades of schools required by any city locality could be grouped round a quadrangle, and the inclosed space devoted to the play-ground, would not all the interests of beauty, use, and health be better served than by the present isolated buildings ?

We are obliged to this report for calling attention to the unpleasant fact that “the great American nation is the only one whose citizens speak through their noses and not through their mouths.” It is a fond delusion with our countrymen that because we have no dialect and do not drop our h’s, we therefore speak the English language better than the English themselves; whereas, as the report says, “no civilized people at the present day is so deficient in agreeable and finished speech as our own. . . . What we want is the music of the phrase, a clear, flowing and decided sound of the whole sentence,” etc. But when nearly all the best educated men and women of Massachusetts say “stoopid ” and “ dooty ” and “ sooperb ” for “stewpid,” “dewty,” and “ sewperb,” and when all Americans say “ dawg ” and “gawd” and Bawston” for “dogg” and “godd ” and “ Bosston,” it would seem as if something were wanted more elementary still, and this is, that the English pronunciation of English words according to the best authorities be insisted upon, at least in the spelling and reading classes of the public schools, and in the school and college declamations.

The report complains that the provision for examining teachers in Boston is exceptionally inadequate for a city of its size and prestige, and the manner of their dismissal seems to be as arbitrary and inconsiderate as that of their appointment. The under teachers meet semi-occasionally with the superintendent or with their own principals for “ advice and instruction in teaching,” and the grammar masters from time immemorial have held a monthly social meeting, at winch, over a “modest supper,” educational topics are discussed, and “ freshness and enthusiasm ” gained for the ensuing month; but the women teachers, though six times as many as the men, are not spoken of as holding any common consultations, though, if they did so, any joint decisions and suggestions that they might make to the board could not but be of great value, Mr. Philbrick holds up to the board the strength and thoroughness which the device of a head superintendent with several assistants has imparted to the New York city school system, and recommends a similar arrangement for Boston. He wishes also that “ the teachers could be more encouraged by the school authorities in their efforts to inculcate good morals and manners.” The latter recommendation comes none too soon, for the manners one often observes in the shops, cars, etc,, of Boston, are not such as belong to persons who, in the old-fashioned phrase, have been “well brought up ” in childhood. As for morals, how they are to be successfully inculcated without any reference to a moral lawgiver is a problem that has not as yet been solved fer the American public - school educator, though, owing to the Roman Catholics, it is rapidly becoming the most formidable one in his path. The sexes were separated in the grammar and high schools of Boston over forty years ago, though they continue together in the primary grades. In all the lately annexed suburbs of the city, however, our indigenous system still prevails. The evening high school also is attended by both sexes, with strange inconsistency, as it seems to us, for if there are any real objections to the co-education of the sexes, they must exist in such a school in their fullest force. Whether co-education be better for the pupils or not, there is no doubt that it is harder for the teacher, as bringing in another element of care and responsibility, and that rather than procure and pay teachers who are up to the requirements of their position in judgment and dignity, school boards are inclined to abolish it. The programme of studies in the Boston schools is not given in this report, and therefore we cannot much comment upon it. Like the national curriculum generally, however, it probably contains much too large a proportion of the disciplinary studies, i. e., mathematics, physics, and grammar, to the humanitarian ones of history, literature, and the. beautiful and good generally. There is too much “ rule and compass ” work throughout, even in the music and drawing, and memory and intellectual acuteness are developed without a corresponding development of the heart, the judgment, the character, and the taste. Notwithstanding these defects, a remarkable testimony to the public schools of Boston is to be found in the fact that whereas in 1817, with a population of forty thousand, there were but twenty-three hundred and sixty-five pupils in the public schools to forty-one hundred and thirty-two in private schools, in 1873, to a population of two hundred and fifty thousand, there were thirty-five thousand nine hundred and thirty pupils in the public schools to thirty-eight hundred and eighty-seven only in private ones. This verifies the boast of her school superintendent in the beginning of the report, that in no city in the country do all classes more patronize the public schools than in Boston. It is indeed to the glory of Massachusetts that within her borders the day schools are so noble, and that boarding schools form so slight a feature of her educational system.