As there are 25 Cantons and half-Cantons, each with its own independent government, there are 25 school systems. With many divergencies, the systems of the best Cantons, like our best States, tend to uniformity of organization and machinery. Some Cantons have councils and ministers of education; some have councils and no ministers, and some ministers and no councils. The ministers, where they are found, are always members of the Cantonal Executive Councils; for it must be remembered that in Switzerland there are no presidents and governors. The teaching body has a decided influence upon educational administration, but the minister is usually a politician and not a teacher. Books and courses of study are uniform throughout the Canton.

The schools are immediately controlled by the Cantonal government, or by boards similar to our boards of education; but both councils and boards, particularly in the more democratic Cantons, are closely limited in power by the popular assemblies. Teachers are sometimes chosen, as in Geneva, by the executive council; sometimes by the local board, as in the City of Bern; sometimes by the people themselves, as in many rural districts. In Bern the election is for six years. A high authority tells me that in this Canton the teacher's tenure is good when once he is elected, but that first elections are sometimes controlled by other considerations than fitness. For example, he says when the people elect, the teacher is pretty apt to belong to the church of the majority. This gentleman condemns the popular elections of teachers, as he does also the furnishing of books by the State, which is sometimes done, and the teaching of more than one language in the primary schools.

Measured by American standards, salaries are low. No elementary teacher in Bern receives as much as $1,000,

and many receive less than $200. However, a majority of teachers are furnished a house, a piece of ground, and wood, in addition to the salary set down in the list. Then the preference for male teachers is strong throughout the Confederacy; even in the primary schools there are 6,180 male teachers to 2,970 females. In the secondary schools the respective numbers are 1,168 and 205. In the primary schools, at least, no difference is made in salary on account of sex. It must be remembered that the whole scale of incomes and expenditures is low in Switzerland as compared with the United States. Members of the Federal Legislature receive but 20 francs a day; members of the Federal Executive but 12,000 francs a year. The maximum university salary is 12,000 francs, the minmum 300 francs, while the average ranges from 3,156 francs in Zürich to 4,580 in Basel.

Such is an imperfect survey of one of the groups of facts that rendered the August anniversaries important events. Switzerland has an area of about 16,000 square miles, and a population of about 3,000,000 souls. Together, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island are somewhat less in size, and somewhat more in population. An educational parallel between the Confederation and the three States would be extremely interesting. This certainly would appear in both cases, that the essential elements of greatness in States are not material but spiritual.

XX.

THE BACKWARDNESS OF POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND.1

WO facts stand out with prominence in modern educational history. The first is that England has been very slow to enter on that general movement towards universal education which is one of the most significant facts of recent times. The other is that England has also been very backward in respect to the organization of such education as she has had. To an extent these are but different aspects of one grand fact. Had the efficiency of public education at any time equaled that of Scotland, Germany, the United States, or France, it would have compelled more order and system; while, on the other hand, a properly organized and administered system would have carried instruction to a far greater height. It is not easy to say in which particular the inferiority of England is the more marked. Whatever the truth may be, it will conduce to a good understanding of the state of things that long existed, and that has not yet been wholly changed, to state some of the more important causes that produced it.

The first thing to be considered is the English Church. The Protestant Reformation gave education and schools an enormous impulse. "The Reformed religion rests on a book, the Bible," De Laveleye has said. "The Protestant therefore must know how to read. Cath

'London, May, 1892.

olic worship, on the contrary, rests upon sacraments and certain practices, such as confession, masses, sermons, which do not necessarily involve reading." In England alone, of all the countries where it prevailed, the Reformation marks no real educational era. Much of the explanation of this anomaly is found in the character of the Anglican Church and in the manner of its establishment. The Church of England was a compromise. Anglicanism lays less emphasis than other Protestant bodies upon preaching and teaching, and more upon rites, ceremonies, and tradition. Its appeal to the æsthetic nature is more direct and powerful, but its appeal to the intellect is less so. Accordingly, high popular intelligence is less important. Parliament is supreme alike over creed and canons. Church government is from above, not from below; the laity have nothing whatever to do with the appointment and the installation of their ministers. Furthermore, the English Church originated largely in State questions and policies, and its form was shaped far more by the Crown and Parliament than by the people themselves. Anglicanism did not touch the springs of the national life in England as Calvinism and Lutheranism did in Scotland or in Northern Germany.

Dissent, however, prevailed from the very beginning, and tended to increase as time went on. As a rule, Dissenters have taken far more interest than Churchmen in the education of the masses, but the constantly multiplying ecclesiastical and theological divisions, begetting different educational ideas, as well as great sectarian strife and bitterness, have tended powerfully to retard the erection of a State system of schools.

The second fact to be considered, and one closely connected with the one just dismissed, is the original genius of English society and the English government. This is

aristocracy.

Until recent years the freedom of which

England so well boasted rested on an aristocratic rather

than a democratic basis. Church dignitaries who him the charter of 1215.

It was the great barons and the resisted John and wrung from Afterwards the middle classes were slowly admitted to a participation in political affairs; but it was not until the Reform Bill of 1832 that the center of gravity in the English system began to shift, and even then it shifted so slowly that the nation was not democratized until the great Enfranchisement Act of 1867. And still there is no other country in Europe where education is so distinctly organized on class lines.

The third fact, which lies behind and conditions both the others, is the character of the English mind. It is common for Continental writers to berate Englishmen for their practical mental habit and their lack of ideas. M. Guizot, for example, said whoever observed with some degree of attention the genius of the English nation, would be struck, on the one hand, by its steady good sense and practical ability and, on the other, by its want of general ideas and of elevation of thought on theoretical questions. M. Taine depicts this aspect of the English mind at much greater length and in much stronger language. "The interior of an English head," he says, "may not unaptly be likened to one of Murray's Handbooks, which contains many facts and few ideas; a quantity of useful and precise information, short statistical abridgments, numerous figures, correct and detailed maps, brief and dry historical notices, moral and profitable counsels in the guise of a preface, no view of the subject as a whole, none of the literary graces, a simple collection of well-authenticated documents, a convenient memorandum for personal guidance during a journey." And again: 'The word 'to organize,' which dates from the Revolu