*fingers of one hand." Out of 148 city high schools reported in Table II of the present Report, 10 are in southern and 43 in western cities. These figures give but a small idea of the number of public high schools or of the growth of public sentiment in their favor, as they do not include all the city high schools and none of those in rural districts.

In the comparatively small proportion of the high schools tabulated, are enrolled 13 per cent. of all the scholars reported as receiving secondary instruction.

MEASURES FOR IMPROVING SECONDARY INSTRUCTION.

Among the most prominent subjects of discussion during the past two years has been that of the scope and conduct of that part of education which is intrusted to the schools classed as secondary or preparatory. The advance in college standards necessitates a corresponding advance in the preparatory work; the interests of science call for a great enlargement of the curriculum, while the public have become more exacting with reference to results that conduce directly to business and industrial

success.

Wise counsels, carefully elaborated plans, ample resources, and nice adjustment are more necessary here than in any other part of educational activity. Fortunately the need has already given rise to several important conferences, and to some permanent associations whose efforts are directed to the solution of the problems suggested. The Modern Language Association of America, whose organization dates from December, 1884, has already made valuable contributions to the discussion of the courses of study best suited to the preparatory schools. The Massachusetts Classical and High School Teacher's Association at the last annual session appointed a committee to consider what steps should be taken to promote co-operation between the colleges and the preparatory schools. Circulars were issued to the presidents of the New England colleges and other prominent educators, in response to which a notable gathering of college presidents, masters of schools, and others was held in the Boston Latin School in October. As a result of this conference the New England Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools was formed, having for its immediate purpose the equalizing of requirements for admission to the New England colleges.

The influence of the association will undoubtedly be felt in other sections of the country, and in reference to other problems pertaining to secondary instruction.

OVERWORK IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

One of the most important considerations that has been urged upon public attention in recent years is that of overwork in schools of the grade under consideration. There is a very general impression that the evil exists. The matter is one of such far reaching consequence that I deem it desirable to devote considerable space to the following reports of two investigations carried on abroad with reference to this matter.

SCHOOL HYGIENE.

In his work on overpressure in high schools in Denmark, Doctor Hertel gives the following results of his examinations of the pupils of the high (secondary) schools of Copenhagen, which are attended by children of the upper classes. Doctor Hertel obtained his information by sending printed forms to be filled out for each school by both teachers and parents. The points on which inquiry was made were the age and class of the pupil; the number of hours of school work, and the time employed at home in preparation; the amount of written exercises to be done at home; whether a private tutor aided the pupil, and for how many hours; whether the pupil had any difficulty on the whole or in any particular subject; his state of health; the hour he went to bed, and the number of hours' sleep he had. The teacher was also requested to state whether the pupil in question was one of the best, middling, or dullest in the class. All the columns except those for the first two points were to be filled up by

the parents. In describing his method of getting at the number of sickly children, Doctor Hertel said:

It is essential I should explain what I mean by sickly children. Many head masters have tried to prove to me from the school sick lists that the state of health in their schools is excellent; but the sick lists are of no value on this point, for they merely show the number of children who are absent owing to temporary illness. It is not to such cases of temporary illness that I refer when I speak of sickly children. By "sickly" I mean unsound children, who suffer from chronic complaints, but who are, nevertheless, able to attend school regularly; in short, children whose state of health is abnormal, and who require special care, both at home and at school, during their growth and development. It is only such cases that have been collected here and designated as sickly; properly speaking, they ought to be called cases of unsound or abnormal health. The information in regard to boys' schools was taken from 14 schools having the classical and modern sides, and including 3 of the largest preparatory schools. The 14 schools had a total of 3,141 boys, of whom 1,900 were healthy, 978 were sickly, and 263 were called non-returned, on account of insufficient returns or where returns were wanting. The percentages were, healthy, 60.5; sickly, 31.1; non-returned, 8.4. On entering school the conditions were, healthy, 74 per cent.; sickly, 18.4; non-returned, 7.6. These conditions were ascertained by taking the two youngest mixed classes, consisting of 369 pupils. In the third mixed class the proportion of sickly rose to 34 per cent., nearly double the amount in the lowest; while in all the 6 mixed classes, containing 1,742 children, the healthy were 62.2 per cent.; sickly, 29.9; non-returned, 7.9; showing a great increase in the proportion of sickly children, an increase obviously due to the influences of school life. At about twelve years of age the pupils leave the mixed classes, and pass either to the classical or the modern divisions. In the first modern class the proportion was, healthy, 49.7 per cent.; sickly, 38.8; nonreturned, 11.5, the highest proportion of sickly children in the modern division. It falls in the next 3 classes and the average of the whole division was, healthy, 56.5 per cent.; sickly, 31.1; non-returned, 12.4; the number of pupils being 300. In the classical division, second class, a rise in the percentage of sickly occurs, reaching 41.9 per cent., the highest observed percentage in any class. In the third class it drops to 31.8 per cent., and the average for the whole 783 pupils in the rhetorical section was, healthy, 58.5 per cent. ; sickly, 34.4; non-returned, 7.1. In the mathematical section, consisting of 85 pupils, 68.2 per cent. were healthy, 28.3 sickly, and 3.5 non-returned. In the two highest classes of the classical division, both rhetorical and mathematical, there were 63.3 per cent. healthy pupils, 31.1 sickly, and 9 non-returned; the sickly being thus one-third of the whole. The sudden rise and fall in the earlier classes of both the modern and classical divisions is due to the period of development, the pupils being then about thirteen years old. Of special complaints, anæmia, scrofula, nervousness, headache, bleeding at the nose, and diseases of the eye are the principal. The eye diseases increase from the youngest to the oldest classes.

The hours of work, i. e., the number of hours spent at school and in home preparation, were 4.6 hours in the lowest mixed class, and rose to 7.7 in the highest. In the classical division, rhetorical section, the increase was from 8.2 hours a day in the lowest to 10.4 in the highest class. Besides the work done in and for the school, 28.7 per cent. of the pupils had private tuition, which increased the daily amount of work in the upper classes to eleven hours a day.

Information was also collected with regard to schools for girls belonging to the upper classes. Altogether 1,211 girls between the ages of five and fifteen were examined, the percentages being: healthy, 53.1; sickly, 39.4; non-returned, 7.5, the proportion of sickly being greater than in the boys' schools. Between the ages of twelve and sixteen the number of sickly girls increases. Dr. Hertel says, "Sickness among school girls here shows itself unmistakably to be so great thaż we must put aside all illusions, and openly confess that the present generation of young girls is weakly, anæmie, and nervous to an extraordinary degree." Taking the first two years, as in the case of the boys, as a criterion of the state of health of the girls on beginning their education, the following percentages were obtained: healthy, 71; sickly, 22;

non-returned, 7. Taking the numbers in the oldest classes as an indication of the state of health on leaving school, 78 pupils gave 32 healthy, 41 sickly, 5 non-returned, or 41 per cent. healthy, 53 per cent. sickly, and 6 per cent. non-returned. The particular complaints were substantially the same as with the boys. In both sexes scrofula increased up to about the fourteenth year, and then decreased rapidly. The hours of work increased from 5 hours daily for the youngest to nearly 9 hours for the oldest, including private tuition.

Doctor Hertel draws several general conclusions and makes valuable practical suggestions from the results of his investigations, which cannot be further alluded to

here.

Prof. Axel Key, of Stockholm, who has followed the same line of investigation with Doctor Hertel, delivered an address on the health of the students of Swedish schools before the international medical congress, held at Copenhagen, in 1884, of which the following is the substance. Professor Key says:

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In the schools of my fatherland, Sweden, as indeed in those of all the countries whose distinguished representatives I have had the honor to address, the study of the classical languages has always occupied a predominant and, indeed, an oppressive place. Realschule students are admitted to hardly any of the university examinations. Classical studies are regarded as possessing a special power of giving a formal training to the intellect, and even in our time it is deemed necessary to give a clear, objective, and living insight into the life of classical peoples, whether one desires a scientific or simply a general humanistic culture. Whether our young men have obtained such an insight when they leave school is a question which I will not now discuss. Modern life, bringing with it the new and rapidly developing sciences of our time, has been making new and higher demands upon the school, which after a long resistance can no longer be set aside, and an attempt has been made to satisfy them by constantly increasing the school work of our children. To such an extent has this increase been carried that it is no longer compatible with a sound mental and bodily development. The Strasburg commission said in their well-known report: "We can hardly restrain our astonishment that persons should have allowed themselves to lay such an unheard-of tax on the infant organism." In the same way physicians in all countries are uttering loud protests against the altogether too heavy load with which the development of our youth is burdened. Overpressure has come to be one of the questions of the day in our northern countries, as well as elsewhere. Doctor Hertel has shown the extent of work-time which is exacted from Danish children by the school. The following table shows that it is still worse in Sweden:

The table is based partly on legal requirements (programmes), and partly on accurate information obtained from individual pupils and checked by consulting teachers and parents. It refers to the schools which give maturity diplomas, and which comprise 9 classes for pupils between 9 and 18 years of age. Beginning with the fourth class, the schools are divided into a real and a classical, or Latin, division.

The table shows that the average time required by the schools is approximately 7 hours a day, even for the youngest pupils. The length of time increases rapidly and constantly until in the Latin division it is nearly 114 hours a day for students in the class next to the highest. Students in the highest of the real classes have the same length of time. Gymnastic instruction is included in the table; if we deduct the time allotted to that (about half an hour a day, approximately), the average working time for pupils of all the last four classes of the Latin division, and of the last two of the real division, is between 10 and 11 hours a day, and in the last two classes nearly 11 hours. Since these figures express the average time, without taking account of private instruction and elective studies, it is easy to see that there must be a large number of boys who devote much more time to study. Indeed, one of the schools shows an average time of 14 hours of obligatory work, after deducting gymnastics, during the day and night. How can children find under such circumstances the time necessary for meals, rest, bodily exercise in the open air, and above all, for sleep? Must not their mental powers be fatigued and dulled by such a burden, and their bodily development suffer or be checked? What are the actual facts as to the health. of the school children?

Notwithstanding the clamor that has been raised in different countries of Europe about the overpressure question, and the numerous commissions which have busied themselves with it, the opinions hitherto expressed have, in general, treated the subject too subjectively. Thorough and varied examinations of the condition of the health of the school population have not been instituted. Even the idea of overpressure is very differently understood, and consequently the question receives as many different answers as there are different views. It is high time to approach this subject more closely, in order to lay a substantial foundation for an opinion.

To Doctor Hertel belongs the honor of having first attacked the question in the proper way, in his investigation of the condition of the schools of Copenhagen, by a method which proved to be very suitable and which he has brought to the knowledge of persons interested in the subject. About two years ago a commission was appointed in Sweden to examine into the organization of the entire secondary school system. Although a hygienic investigation of the schools was not the only object of the commission (in which respect it differed from the Danish commission appointed at the same time), yet it was decided to make such an investigation, and as thoroughly as possible, in order to take its results into account in making the new organization, as well as in determining the time to be allotted to school work. Hertel's method was generally followed, and the investigation was made easier for us because attendance of a school physician at nearly every secondary school in Sweden is required by law, so that we could enter into more details than would otherwise have been the case. Our investigation was to be confined to secondary schools for boys, but we also examined 36 schools for girls. Altogether 14,722 boys and 3,246 girls were examined. We made no examination of the common schools. The principal results for boys' schools are given in the following summaries.

Out of 11,227 boys examined, 5,025, or 44.8 per cent., were out of health. The distribution of the sickly among the different kinds of instruction shows that 50.2 per cent. of the Latin students were suffering from some complaint, 39.6 per cent. of the real students, and 40.9 per cent. of the younger pupils who attended the three lower or mixed classes. The percentages of particular complaints were, anainia, 12.7 per cent.; nose bleed, 6.2 per cent.; nervousness, 2 per cent.; loss of appetite, 3.2 per cent.; headache, 13.5 per cent.; near-sightedness, 15.2 per cent.; unspecified, 9.9 per cent.; besides 1.5 per cent. of cases of curvature of the spine, and 2.7 per cent. of scrofula. In the Latin division there was a steady increase of the percentages of sickly pupils from the lowest to the highest class, viz, from 43.9 per cent. in the lowest class to 58.5 per cent. in the highest; but none of the special complaints showed such an increase, except nervousness and near-sightedness, the latter of which rose from 9.8 per cent. in the lowest to 37.3 per cent. in the highest class. In the real division the percentages were, 38.1 per cent. of total sickly in the lowest class, which increased, but irregularly, to 50 per cent. in the highest. In this division near-sightedness increased from 8.9 per cent. in the lowest class to 26.3 per cent. in the next to the highest, and fell to 21 per cent. in the highest, while there was no regularity in the relations of the particular complaints. In the three lower or mixed classes the percentages of total sickly pupils were 37.6 per cent. in the lowest, 41 per cent. in the second, and 43.2 per cent. in the highest, while the near-sightedness was 6.1 per cent., 6.4 per cent., and 9.6 per cent., respectively.

The question is, can statistics show that the length of time devoted to school work has a definite influence on the health of school children? His first examinations of

the schools of Copenhagen gave Hertel positive results on this question, but subsequent examinations of the schools of all Denmark led to negative results. I am of the opinion that the method employed by Doctor Hertel in making the examinations was not adapted to produce more accurate results, and we followed another method.

The conditions for making the comparison are, that the boys to be compared must live as nearly as possible under similar sanitary conditions; they must be examined in a uniform way and as closely as possible; and their number must not be too small, and, if possible, equally great.

We examined only the schools of Stockholm, with about 2,000 boys. We found the average working time of each class and arranged the boys in two groups, those who worked more than the average time and those who worked less. It then appeared that 50.8 per cent. of the boys who worked less than the average time were sickly, and 56.1 per cent. of those who worked over time-a difference of 5.3 per cent. We were unable to make any comparison with the common schools of Sweden, because they did not enter into our plan of examination. From Doctor Hertel's report we learn that the pupils of the Danish common schools are nearly as sickly as those of the secondary schools, and that is probably the case in Sweden. But this circumstance should not, as Doctor Hertel pointed out, relieve our solicitude. We should not say that this high degree of sickliness belongs to youth. Sickliness is never physiological, least of all in youth; and whenever we meet it, it is our duty to seek for its causes and combat them with all the means which knowledge and experience have placed in our hands. A physician or hygienist who finds a bad sanitary condition in one family or locality should not content himself with reflecting that the same condition is to be found in another family or locality; he must oppose it wherever found. That the home and family are more to blame for sickly children than the school may well be true, and school teachers often find consolation in the fact. But the school is still responsible for a portion of the evil.

Let it be our effort to improve the sanitary conditions of the homes as much as possible, but we can never get such a hold upon them as upon the school. The Government has the power to make the requirements of physiology and hygiene recognized in the school. Sound hygienic principles, through which the harmonious development of the bodies and minds of the children is promoted, will then flow back from the school to the home. The school must become a hygienic model. Aside from all other circumstances, which must be taken into account in order to attain this object, it is necessary, first of all, to place the school under strict hygienic control. It gives me pleasure to state that the Swedish commission has recommended the appointment of a school physician to attend every school. He is to make a thorough examination and report upon the health of all the scholars at the beginning and end of every school year. This will require measuring and weighing of the pupils, in order to discover the degree and progress of their development, and an examination of their eyes will also be made at the end of every school year, with special reference to near-sightedness. Once a month the school physician will make an inspection of the schools with special reference to everything connected with hygiene. The physician is to be a member of the school direction and will be qualified to take the initiative, and his opinion must be regarded in all questions of hygiene, even in arranging the school programmes. Moreover, one of the teachers will be appointed hygienic assistant. He will be charged with the daily supervision of the hygienic conditions of the school, and will assist the physician in the more mechanical details of the work, or attend to them himself. The Swedish commission expressed itself as follows: "It is much to be desired that every school teacher should have the necessary knowledge of hygiene. It is hoped that this knowledge will soon be required of teachers by law."

Activity in the direction of school hygiene in this country during 1885 was shown in several quarters. An address on school hygiene, by Dr. Middleton Michel, professor in the Medical College of the State of South Carolina, was delivered before the State Normal Institute at Charleston, S. C., in August, 1885.

Doctor Michel opened his address by calling attention to the increasing public interest in sanitation, and to the importance of disseminating the principles of hygiene through the teaching of physiology. He enlarged upon the general ignorance of physiological and hygienic principles due to the neglect of instruction on those subjects, and then spoke of the importance to the community of a knowledge of the prevention of disease, which he considered greater than the knowledge of cure. This importance he illustrated by considering the economical side of the question. It appears from statistics that every death costs the community about $1,000, part of which would be saved by a knowledge of prevention, which would make the number of preventable deaths smaller. In this connection Doctor Michel made the following