to help on the broader and more worldly concerns that were below. In time it transpired that with all this in the same territory there was now and then some abrasion. The function of the academy was to prepare for college and incidentally for life; that of the high school is to prepare for life and incidentally for college. The one was classical with some practicalities; the other is severely practical, and generally in the best sense, with some classical appurtenances. The academy was essentially an advanced school for boys; the high school is as essentially coeducational.

The courses of the high schools have widened out from the old standbys and gone into about everything that can aid one to earn a living. There is mental discipline in study that informs the mind and applies to life.

It is interesting to study the first decisive manifestations of this high school movement. They came in the West-in what was then the West-where there was nothing in the way, where democracy was freer than in thoroughly settled social conditions, and where the masses were doing things on their own account. The movement advanced on lines of least resistance, but when forced it accepted the gage of battle, and when it did it won or drove a mutually advantageous compromise.

The movement from the beginning and always has been strong in the West- in whatever came to be the West. A western village is ashamed to be without a high school. The building is the finest and the most conspicuous in the settlement. It is so in all of the North Central, the Mountain, and the Pacific States. Of course it results in many struggling high schools, but in many more which are as fine as any in the land. And, moreover, they will abundantly take care of a splendid future.

They will do that not so much because of what they are, but because of their buoyant spirit and their universal popularity, because they are everywhere and grow steadily, and because of the relations in which they stand. There are sixteen grades in the free school system in the great West. The continuity of the system from the beginning of the kindergarten to the graduate school in the State university is perfect and the road is open. Certificates of work done in the school below admit to the school above without examination. The inadequacy of a written examination as a test of the knowledge and the power of pupils when the examination is set by strangers who have had no immediate connection with previous work seems to me obvious. The acceptance of certificates helps pupils to go to the university who would not go. It stimulates and steadies all of the schools below. It articulates the whole educational system and gives each part intelligent interest and pride in all the other parts. It does not lower standards in the universities. The tests of university work are as severe and the degrees as exalted as anywhere in the country. Eastern universities try not to believe it, but they will have to open their minds and modify their opinions.

And a further word might be dropped by way of a not over venturesome prophecy. The old line universities which have come to be great may of course continue indefinitely upon old line policies with only very slight modifications. But unless they go further in accepting, not quietly or stealthily, but openly and avowedly, the credentials of high schools of unquestioned standing, unless everyone who has in himself the reasonable possibilities of doing their work has his free chance, unless they guard against letting snippery and second-hand culture give tone to their character and flavor to their doings there will be free public universities in some of these Eastern States before all of us die.

The demand of our democracy for free education to the very limits of human knowledge is aggressive. It has grown more aggressive through the success of the public high school movement and as a result of the influence of high school graduates upon the sentiment of the country. It is going through the land. It is a demand which will have to be treated politely and negotiated with or there will be another issue, which ought to be avoided, between public and private institutions.

The figures concerning the high school movement are as interesting as any figures

are likely to be. Commissioner Harris tells us that at the turning point of the last century there were but 11 high schools with progressive courses continuing from two to four years and covering advanced studies in foreign languages, mathematics, literature, natural science, and history. In 1860 there were 44 of these schools; in 1870, 160; in 1880, 800; in 1890, 2,526; in 1900, 6,005. This remarkable growth has been decisive in every section of the country-the South by no means excepted-but it has at all times been specially noteworthy in the Mississippi Valley States.

THE NEW YORK HIGH SCHOOLS.

But the advance of the secondary schools in New York is of chief concern to us to-night. From the very beginning of statehood the bounty of the State has gone liberally to these schools; and the return has approved the policy and justified the investment.

What is known as the literature fund, as already stated, was established in aid of secondary education in 1790. The stream made a fine start, and it has gathered volume in its progress. It is but just to say that no other State has anything like such a record. The State appropriation now for this purpose is $350,000 annually, which is apportioned on the basis of $100 to each teacher, not to exceed $250 for approved books and apparatus provided the school supplies a like amount, and a proportionate share of the balance on the basis of attendance of academic students. * *

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In 1822 the legislature passed an act making the trustees of Farmer's Hall Academy in the village of Goshen, Orange County, trustees of the common school district when a majority of the taxable inhabitants of the district should give their consent thereto. An act similar in all respects was passed in 1823 concerning the academy and the common school district at Oyster Bay in Suffolk County. Here was the nucleus of the union school movement.

The first use, certainly the first legal use, of the term "high school" in this State seems to have grown out of the combined, or larger, or the little more advanced school of the Lancasterian movement. In 1825 an act was passed by the legislature incorporating the "High School Society of the City of New York," and in the next ten years a dozen other similar acts were passed. Governor De Witt Clinton gave that movement and this legislation his warmest support. While the institutions here provided for were far from public high schools as we use the term, they were quite clearly the first fruits of the public high school movement. And the charters of at least two or three of these institutions contained the first distinctly recognizable factors of the public high school, for they consolidated school districts, they associated academies and elementary schools together under public management, and they combined classical instruction with instruction in the useful arts.

The act of 1853 contemplated such schools everywhere and for the election of boards of education for their management. These union schools were authorized when there was an academy in their district to make the same the academic department of the union schools upon the consent of the board of trustees of the academy. Thus the process of elimination and absorption went on, and the union schools with the resulting academic departments, and then the independently organized high schools, came to possess the land.

The present number of academics and high schools is as follows:

In the State, during the decade 1890-1900, while the growth in enrollment in the common schools was 16 per cent, the number of public secondary schools increased 140 per cent; the number of academies (including denominational schools) 34 per cent; the total net property of secondary schools and the number of secondary students more than 100 per cent. In 1903 secondary schools reported 95,096 students and a total net property of $33,771,006.27, with expenditures for the year of $7,106,999.90, as follows: High school property, $14,400,278.45; high school expenditures, $5,007,055.02; academic property, $19,370,727.82; academy expenditures, $2,099,944.88.

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Beyond this the State has entered upon the policy of making an allotment to the high schools for the tuition of pupils who may come from districts without high schools in order to equalize the State largess for secondary education to all of the people, and particularly to make sure of aiding the more aggressive pupils in the less fortunate districts. The appropriation for this each year equals more than half of the entire sum which the State appropriates annually for the encouragement of secondary education. From this it is clear that neither the State government nor the people in their local communities have been indifferent or unintelligent in the upbuilding of secondary schools. Taking the whole State together, in spite of the fact that the hindrances to the diffusion of higher education augment with the size and particularly with the congestion of population, New York justifies the splendid commendation of the author of The Making of the Middle Schools. If the special drawbacks which present themselves in the metropolis were to be eliminated the presentation would abundantly show not only the best organized system of secondary education developed on American soil, as Professor Brown puts it, but it would show about as abundant and energetic, and probably more evenly distributed, provision for secondary instruction as will be found anywhere in the land.

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But before passing from the city of New York it ought to be distinctly said that the rapidity of growth in the high schools located within the territory embraced by the boundaries of Greater New York since 1897 is altogether unprecedented in the history of education in this country. In 1897 the number of high school students was 2,360, in 1904, 27,824, an increase of 1,079 per cent. Within the same period the number of teachers increased from 111 to 841, or 658 per cent; the annual expenditures from $161,084 to $2,922,648, an increase of 1,714 per cent; value of grounds, buildings, and equipment from $637,245 to $5,761,004, an increase of 804 per cent. Nor is this all. There are in addition five high school buildings in process of erection, the aggregate contract price of which is above $3,000,000.

THE FUTURE.

Now, let us turn our faces to the future. A careful inquiry, with no purpose but the ascertainment of the truth, seems to make it clear that the people of this State have not been remiss in setting up secondary schools; that in the number of schools and of pupils we are above the average; that the advance in numbers in the last decade has been as remarkable as gratifying; that with the exception of New York City these schools are evenly distributed over the territory and are fairly representative of the population of the State, and that in the city the evolution is now going forward as heroically and splendidly as it ever did anywhere. This is not saying that there is not room for more, or that what we have are not to be made stronger. We are to ascertain what will accomplish both of these ends.

We have been speaking of numbers rather than of excellence. There is no reason known to me for imputations upon the character of these schools. I should be surprised to learn, after all that has been said or done, of any proof that the average of buildings, of equipment, of teaching power, and of work accomplished was not high. Yet I have seen enough of school work to know that it often happens that people who have very indifferent schools think that they have the very best because no one does them the service of telling them the truth. It would not be surprising if there are many schools registered for but a part of the high school course which make the serious mistake of being more ambitious for a high-sounding name and for appearing to do a lot of work rather than for occupying a minor place, which is just as honorable, if they will do what they may do just as well as it can be done. A school which is giving a 48 count diploma in less than four years and with indifferent facilities should not be allowed to think that it is doing it as well as it may be done. There is nothing to be said against and there is much to be said for starting schools before they are able to do four full years' work, but there is everything to be said against a 50-cent piece having the effrontery to try to pass itself off for a dollar.

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Much would be accomplished if a movement to standardize the work of the secondary schools in all parts of this State, which is now under serious discussion, could be successful. And if that could be identified with the standard for admission to college established by the College Entrance Examination Board of the Middle States and Maryland the need of State universities in the Eastern States will be less urgent and logical than it otherwise will be, while the advantages to the colleges will be very considerable and the placing of more exact values upon the work of all secondary schools will be more stimulating and steadying than we can now foresee. Massachusetts makes, as she has always made, secondary schools compulsory by statute, though I am unaware how far the statute has been executed against a reluctant community. Not until recent years has the State appropriated State funds for the support of these schools. New York has required an elementary school of at least reasonable character within reach of every home. It has tried to assure the quality of the teaching by keeping in its own hands the certification of teachers while in our excellent sister State to the east that has been left to the same local authority which employed the teachers. After doing as much as that, and it has been very much, our State has left all the rest, including the secondary schools, to community initiative and local pride. We have stirred local initiative by favoring legislation, and we have done what reasonably might be done through the liberal distribution of State moneys to give education in every town and hamlet in the State the advantages which the stronger and wealthier communities owed to it. We have compelled in nothing save that there shall be a suitable building and a qualified teacher for a common elementary school. To that extent we expect to maintain a compulsion which compels. Beyond that we encourage and aid, and then give to every community the satisfaction which must flow from its own accomplishments.

Our plan has prevailed from the beginning of our educational history and it prevails nearly everywhere in the country. Under it we have as excellent schools, both primary and secondary, as we would have had under a more mandatory system of legislation, while we have an educational system which is altogether unique in its flexibility and adaptiveness to all local conditions as well as in the stimulus which gives to the intellectual self-activity of a community and to willing popular support because of free popular proprietorship.

Now and again it has been proposed that we shall adopt some compulsory policies which will assure the universality of the secondary schools. Any step in that direction would be necessarily disturbing in the affairs of a system now grown great and in my judgment would remove from it its finest flavor and the features which make for its best efficiency. It should not be done unless necessary, and the necessity is not apparent. A secondary school is not necessary to safe citizenship. It may or it

may not be necessary to the child's best chance in the world. That depends upon conditions. I can conceive of conditions in which compulsory attendance upon a secondary school might be what I would think an interference with the right of the parent and the best interest of the child. Whether or not that is conclusive of the question as one of policy, it is conclusive of it as one of principle. Going on just as we are we shall have secondary schools quite as universal as they can be useful, and wherever they are they will stir the pride and hold the affections of a people.

New York recently began in paying from the State treasury $20 per year for the tuition of each nonresident pupil attending an established high school, a policy which proves her intelligent interest in a great subject and may easily be the instrument of very great results. But it seems to me that this movement needs some guidance to the end that it may do the most good, indeed that it may do more good than harm. Very possibly the legislation has not yet reached its final form, and it needs generous and unselfish treatment to the end that its enduring state may be free from danger and full of good. I am confident you will agree with me in these propositions.

1. The point of this legislation is not to aid established high schools. That is done otherwise and very amply. If not sufficiently, the remedy is upon application alleging the fact and by legislation which avows the purpose.

2. The State has not intended to change its thoroughly established policy of only encouraging secondary instruction. It has not begun the policy of wholly providing such instruction without cost to pupils in districts without high schools. If it had, the logical result would be absolute State support of all high schools, which would be mistaken, if not absurd.

3. The point of this movement is to aid deserving pupils in nonhigh school districts, through equalizing to them the advantages which State appropriations now give to pupils in high school districts.

4. The State must not make it to the interest of a district without a high school to refrain from establishing one. It must not set up a policy which would develop great secondary schools, really small colleges, at central points by taking away the strength of existing schools in smaller places or at the cost of preventing additional schools.

5. The State ought not to put upon existing schools the burden of instructing nonresident pupils at much less than actual cost, and ought not to encourage boards and principals to do this, in the interest of the mere largeness or prominence of schools.

6. The movement should have in mind, not one interest as against another, but every educational interest of the State. It must aid the weaker district and the specially deserving youth. The new stream of financial support must be made to help the interests of secondary education, not where it needs no help, but where it really needs help, and most where it needs most help, and particularly to help boys and girls who will not get help without it. And it must be done so that the particular help afforded will not injure general or continuing interests.

Without any wholly confident judgment as to next steps in this connection, the foregoing propositions seem sound, and it is not certain that the existing legislation exactly squares with them. But time and discussion will point the way for us. We have never yet been unable to put an appropriation where it would do the most good, and we are not likely to be derelict now.

THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND THE CERTIFICATION OF TEACHERS.

The recent determination to accept the standings gained in the secondary schools for admission to the teaching profession affords an added reason, if any were needed, for universal interest in these schools, for giving the best attention to their affairs and for standardizing their work with the closest exactness. The fact illustrates, if it does not measure, the advantages of the educational unification movement in the State.