Books Acknowledged for Review in Education

We acknowledge the receipt of the following books for our Book Review Department of Education.

Plane Geometry. By Walter Burton Ford, Junior Professor of Mathematics. The University of Michigan, and Charles Ammerman. The William McKinley High School, St. Louis. Edited by Earle Raymond Hedrick. The Macmillan Company. Price $.80F.

Lucita. A Child's Story of Old Mexico. By Ruth Gaines. With pictures by Maginel Wright Enright. Rand, McNally & Company.

The Four Wonders, Cotton, Wool, Linen, Silk. By Elnora E. Shillig. For ten years primary teacher in Columbia School, Seattle, Washington. Drawings by Charles Copeland. Rand, McNally & Co.

Macmillan's Pocket Classics. The Mill on the Floss. By George Eliot, Edited with introduction and notes. By Ida Ausherman, A. B., Dept. of English, High School, Springfield, Missouri. The Macmillan Company. Price $.25.

A Collection of Short Stories. Edited by L. A. Pittenger, A. M. Critic in English, Indiana Univ. The Macmillan Company. Price $.25.

Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D. An Abridgment. With annotations by Eminent Biographers and an Introduction and Notes. By Mary H. Watson. A. M., De Witt Clinton High School, New York City. The Macmillan Company. Price $.25.

Plane and Solid Geometry. By Walter Burton Ford, Junior Professor of Mathematics, The University of Michigan, and Charles Ammerman, The William McKinley High School, St. Louis. Edited by Earle Raymond Hedrick. The Macmillan Company. Price $1.25F.

Schatzkasteen des rheinschen Hausfreundes. von Johann P. Hebel. Edited with notes and vocabulary by Menco Stern, author of "Geschichten von Rhein" and Geschichten von deutschen Stadten." American Book Company. Price $.40.

Materials and Methods in High School Agriculture. By Wm. Granville Hummel, Assistant Professor of Agricultural Education, University of California, and Bertha Royce Hummel, B. L. S. The Macmillan Company. Price $1.25.

Gildersleeve-Lodge Latin Series.

Writing Latin. Book Two. By John Edmund Barss, Latin Master in the Hotchkiss School. Revised edition. D. C. Heath & Company.

A Short Course in Commercial Law. By Frederick G. Nichols, Director Business Education, Dept. of Public Instruction, Rochester, N. Y., and Ralph E. Rogers, New York Bar. American Book Company. Price $.80.

Lippincott's Fourth Reader. By Homer P. Lewis, Supt. of Schools, Worcester, Mass., and Elizabeth Lewis. In two parts. J. B. Lippincott Co. French Prose Composition. By C. Fontaine, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures in Columbia University, New York. American Book Company. Price $.35.

Heath's Modern Language Series.

Das Stelett im Haufe, von Friederich Spielhagen. Edited with notes and vocabulary by M. M. Skinner, Ph. D., Associate Professor of German, Stanford University. D. C. Heath & Company. Price $.45.

Periodical Notes.

The January number of The Century is the largest issue ever before printed. Eightyeight pages richly illustrated are devoted to fiction, the leading feature of which is the first comic story of May Sinclair, the author of "The Divine Fire", etc. Among the im portant papers in this number are, "Shall the Filipinos Have a Fourth of July?" by W. Morgan Shuster, and "The Political Consequences of Immigration," by Professor Edward A. Ross.

Agnes Repplier's paper, "Popular Education", which opens the January Atlantic Monthly. should effectively smother the present apparent conspiracy to turn our schools into vaudevilles for the entertainment of children. One of the excellent shorter papers in this January issue is an original article by Annie Nathan Meyer upon the effect which moving pictures are having upon the legitimate stage.

In the North American Review for January, Harold Williams, an authority on Thomas Hardy, whose mention as candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature this coming year has stimulated the interest in his books, has a charming essay on "The Wessex Novels of Thomas Hardy".

Among the special articles in the January issue of Lippincott's Magazine is the second of Samuel Scovill's series, "Trappers of Men," and it is, if anything, more entertaining than the first installment.

Devoted to the Science, Art, Philosophy and Literature

VOL. XXXIV.

of Education

MARCH, 1914

The Mission of the High School in the
Community

No. 7

FRANK P. BACHMAN, COMMITTEE ON SCHOOL INQUIRY, NEW YORK CITY.

ORIGIN AND EARLY FUNCTION OF THE HIGH SCHOOL.

..............................HE public high school of today had its origin on the one hand in the Latin grammar school of the colonists, and on the other hand in the academy of our fathers.

T

The Latin grammar school was modeled after the seventeenth century type of European secondary school, and had as its function the preparation of boys for college. The work of the colonial college was to fit men for the ministry and the law. The Latin grammer school existed consequently for the sake of those boys of the community who purposed to follow one or the other of these professions. Not only was the Latin grammar school a preparatory school, but it was indirectly controlled from above, inasmuch as the power of certificating its teachers was generally vested in the college. That there were boys, to say nothing of girls, who might have profited by an education of a type different from that afforded by the Latin grammar school, mattered not; the commanding need of the times was ministers to perpetuate the church and men to deal with the questions of state; these supplied, the institutions of higher learning of the day fulfilled their function.

With the breaking away from European customs and standards, with the general recasting of institutions and modes of life, and with the rise of new individual and social needs incident to the close of the Revolution, there appeared a new type of secondary school, the academy. In contrast to the Latin grammar school, which was as a rule supported and controlled by the public, the academy was a private, or at most a quasi-public institution. Furthermore, in the Latin grammar school instruction was limited practically to Latin and Greek, while the academy taught arithmetic, accounting, reading, English grammar, literature, science, etc., as well as the ancient languages; it not only assumed to fit for college, but to prepare for life. Recognizing that those not going to college might profit by higher instruction, the academy sought to serve the community in a larger way than the Latin grammar school, and did much to bring a broader training to the people. The weakness of the academy lay, therefore, not so much in its aim, as in the fact that being a private institution, it was a tuition school, and for this reason did not offer equality of educational opportunity; its advantages were open more especially to the well-to-do; it became consequently a school for a class, rather than for the whole people.

With the crystallization in the forty's of the sentiment that this is a government for the people and by the people, the demand arose that there be established a school higher than the elementary which should be controlled by the community, and serve the needs of the people. It was this demand that gave birth to the free public high school. In the same way that the Latin grammar school gave place to the academy, so the academy, with here and there an exception, gave way to the public high school. Just as the academy assumed to do the work of the Latin grammar school and more, so the free public high school assumed to prepare young people for college, but was pledged, first of all, by the forces that gave it being, to serve the needs of the whole community supporting it, rather than the interest of a few.

THE DOMINATION OF THE HIGH SCHOOL FROM ABOVE.

Notwithstanding it is a public institution and by virtue of the forces giving it existence pledged to serve the whole community,

the public high school has been dominated in its development from above. Like the Latin grammar school, and to a less extent the academy, it has been determined in its purposes and courses of instruction by the college, rather than moulded by the needs of the people.

What determines today in the main the standard of a high school? Is it the degree to which the high school is adjusting itself to the needs of the whole community? Is it that it is turning out young men able within limits to do scientific farming, to become scientific stock raisers, fruit growers, or gardeners? Is it that it is preparing young men to take their place in productive industry, or business? Is it that it is sending forth young women equipped for homemaking? No. The standard of judging the high school, of rating it, is whether its course of study, size of classes, number of teaching periods, meet the requirements of the college association.

This domination from above is even reflected in the basis of classifying high schools. What makes a high school of the first, second, or third class? Is it a splendid course of a technical or commercial character, a well-rounded course in agriculture, fruit growing, stock raising? No. It is, when all verbiage is dropped, whether the course in Latin is two, three or four years in length. Indeed, this domination from above is reflected even in the motives that lead to the improvement of high school conditions. If there is need of more teachers and better high school equipment, is it held before the people that if these are provided the high school will be able to offer more practical training, be able to do more for the community, give more direct return? Or, is it that the high school may be put upon the accredited list of the college association, or of the state university, that the boys and girls of the community may enter higher institutions without examination?

This domination from above has come about naturally. Both principal and high school teachers are, as a rule, college graduates. Many of them come directly to high school from the academic college. Fresh from college, they bring collegiate ideas to determine courses of study, length of session, methods of instruction, standards of work, number of hours of teaching per day, size of classes. Moreover, the promotion of high school prin

cipals and teachers often depends upon the good will of college authorities; both principal and teachers strive to make the high school stand well with them, and unconsciously, if not consciously, modify its work in accord with their requirements. All this has been productive of certain excellent things, but it has at the same time done much to turn the high school from its larger field, to narrow it to a fitting school, and to make it an institution that serves only a part of the community.

HIGH SCHOOL PROBLEMS ARISING FROM EXTERNAL CONDITIONS.

When there were but two professions, as in colonial times, the ministry and the law, and when the ability to read, write, and cypher was not essential to carry on successfully other activities, it is easy to understand how the high school might well restrict its work to the fitting for institutions which prepared for these professions. Even after the rise of medicine and of certain technical callings, such as civil and mechanical engineering, so long as the conditions of life were simple, and it remained easy for one to provide for himself and those dependent upon him, there was little in the social order to prevent the high school from becoming a fitting school.

Conditions of life have, however, changed radically within the last decade or two. Farming can no longer be carried on in a haphazard fashion, but to be successful, must be scientific; so with stock raising, fruit growing, gardening. Productive industry has become complex. The simple hand trades are gone; the small plant is giving way to the organized factory, which presupposes on the part of the management executive ability of a superior order, and on the part of workmen technical knowledge and specialized skill. So also is it with business. To be sure, we still have the small shop, but the bulk of the trade of the day is carried on by large companies, which demand of those responsible for their management, good judgment, a broad knowledge of men, of the conditions of production, and of trade, and require even of those who assist in business enterprises a considerable degree of intelligence. In short, so altered have the conditions of life and of making a living become within the past score of years, that the lines between the so-called professions and the