Returns were received from the following cities, 70 in all:

Albany, N. Y.
Allegheny City, Pa.
Atlanta, Ga.

Baltimore, Md.
Birmingham, Ala.
Boston, Mass.
Bridgeport, Conn.
Brooklyn, N. Y.

Buffalo, N. Y.
Cambridge, Mass.
Camden, N. J.
Charleston, S. C.
Chicago, Ill.
Cincinnati, Ohio.
Cleveland, Ohio.
Columbus, Ohio.
Denver, Colo.

Des Moines, Iowa.
Detroit, Mich.
Evansville, Ind.
Fall River, Mass.
Fort Wayne, Ind.
Galveston, Tex.

Grand Rapids, Mich.

Harrisburg, Pa.
Indianapolis, Ind.
Jersey City, N. J.
Kansas City, Mo.
Los Angeles, Cal.
Louisville, Ky.
Lowell, Mass.
Lynn, Mass.
Memphis, Tenn.
Milwaukee, Wis.
Minneapolis, Minn.
Nashville, Tenn.
Newark, N. J.
New Haven, Conn.
New Orleans, La.
New York, N. Y.
Oakland, Cal.
Omaha, Neb.
Paterson, N. J.
Peoria, Ill.

Philadelphia, Pa.
Pittsburg, Pa.

Portland, Me.

Portland, Oregon.
Providence, R. I.

Reading, Pa.
Richmond, Va.
Rochester, N. Y.
St. Louis, Mo.
St. Paul, Minn.
San Antonio, Tex.
San Francisco, Cal.
Savannah, Ga.

Scranton, Pa.

Springfield, Ill.
Springfield, Mass.
Syracuse, N. Y.
Terre Haute, Ind.
Toledo, Ohio.

Topeka, Kans.
Trenton, N. J.

Troy, N. Y.

Washington, D. C.

Wheeling, W. Va.

Wilmington, Del.

Worcester, Mass.

The writer is greatly indebted to the superintendents of these cities for their willing response to the inquiries submitted. The information received throws a clear light on several of the questions considered. It will be introduced from time to time as it may be needed, and it will form the basis of many practical inferences and suggestions.

It must suffice to say here that these returns show that important changes are taking place in school administration-changes that are full of promise. The progress made within the past ten years is certainly much greater than that made in any prior decade in the history of public education.

It has seemed best to confine inquiries chiefly to the management of graded schools in cities, but it is hoped that the principles reached may be of wider application. The close relation between the public school and the college has justified glances here and there at college practice. The writer desires to say at the outset that nothing in these pages is written in the spirit of criticism. He is too well aware of the fact that school supervision in cities is beset by limiting conditions, and that these must be considered in each city in determining what is practicable and best. It has rather been his aim to set forth as clearly as possible different school policies, and then to subject the same to the test of principle to ascertain what is ideally best, rather than what may now be universally attainable. No information is so helpful in school administration as that which presents the results of sound principles embodied in successful practice.

A GRADED COURSE OF STUDY.

The first and most important duty in the administration of a system of graded schools is the arrangement of a true and properly graded course of instruction and training. Happily our present inquiry does not necessitate a full discussion of this difficult question. A clear statement of a few of the guiding principles involved will sufficiently prepare the way for an intelligent consideration of the special problems now before us. The preparation of a true course of study involves a clear grasp of the ends to be reached by school training, and, what is quite as important, the proper union and subordination of these ends. It is a common mistake to make the acquisition of knowledge the chief end of school training, and this is followed by the mistake of making knowledge, often the verbal expression of knowledge, the measure and test of teaching. This results in cramming. It must ever be kept in mind that the chief intellectual end of teaching is mental power-power to acquire, power to express, power to apply knowledge-and that the proper test of mental power is mental action. A clear grasp of this principle makes teaching an art-the art of training.

A course of study must also recognize the fact that there is a natural order in which the mental powers are to be trained and the different kinds of knowledge taught. This sequence of mental activity and knowledge is fundamental. Instruction must be adapted to the capability of the learner, and, to this end, it must not only follow the natural order of mental activity, but it must wait on the growth of the mind. Much time is wasted in the schools in the attempt to teach children what they are not yet capable of learning, and this fault sometimes appears even in the kindergarten.

Happily, every branch of knowledge has successive phases which correspond to the successive phases of mental activity and power, and this correspondence is necessary, not accidental, since the successive processes of knowing result in corresponding kinds of knowledge. True teaching involves the presenting of the objects of knowledge to the learner's mind in harmony with this principle.

It is also to be observed, in passing, that this natural sequence of knowledge is not its scientific or logical order. It is the order in which the child acquires knowledge, and this is usually the reverse of the logical order. This explains the failure of all attempts to teach scientific knowledge, logically stated, to young children. The scientific statement and the formal definition have a very small place in the primary school. An elementary course of training must contain not only subjects to be known, but arts to be acquired. In teaching these arts, as writing, drawing, and music, knowledge is not the end but only a means to the end--the acquisition of skill. Knowledge is the eye that guides practice. Hence, the elementary course raises not only the question of the proper sequence of knowledge but also of activity.

It is thus seen that the mapping out of a course of training, even for an individual child, involves a knowledge of its educable nature, the laws of its activity and growth, the natural sequence of knowledge, and other difficult questions. Every step of such a course must contain those disciplines that will give the needed strength and impulse for the next step, and it must also afford the best possible training; and this goes to the very root of education as an art.

But in a course of study for graded schools the element of time must be considered. The course must be so arranged that it can be completed in a given number of years, and then it must be divided into sections which can also be mastered in prescribed periods of time. This is made necessary by the fact that the course is to be pursued simultaneously by many pupils under different teachers, and often in different buildings. As the pupils pass upwards in the course the union of classes becomes necessary, and, to this end, there must be some uniformity of progress and attainment.

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The simplest and most natural arrangement is the division of the course of study into years, and the assigning of the first or lowest division to the first year, the next division to the second year, the next to the third year, and so on. These year divisions of the school period are called grades, the division for the first year being called the first grade; for the second year, the second grade; for the third year, the third grade, and so on. In some graded schools each year's course is divided into half-year sections or semesters, and in others it is divided into three terms of twelve to sixteen weeks each. A few graded schools divide each year's course into quarters of ten weeks each.

It is obvious that this grading of the course of study to correspond to time divisions introduces new difficulties, and the greater the number of time divisions the greater the difficulties involved. Each division or section of the course must not only be made up of knowledge and disciplines adapted to the mental condition of the pupils, but the amount or aggregate assigned must neither be too much nor too little for successful mastery within the assigned time, and this involves a wide acquaintance with the capabilities of children as a class in the successive years of school training. Moreover, the course for each grade must be an adequate preparation for the work of the next. Such a grading of the course involves psychical conditions that bring us back to the child for guiding knowledge, and it must also consider the results of experience; and here, unfortunately, experience is found to be a varying and often perplexing factor. While the courses of study in different cities have many elements in common and a general similarity as wholes, the variations are many and often conflicting. This is due, in part at least, to a condition often overlooked by the framers of school courses—the method of teaching. A course of instruction based on the natural and inductive method of teaching must necessarily differ from a course based on the memoriter and deductive method. Pupils can memorize the verbal state

ment of facts much earlier than they can apprehend or know the facts, and hence the memoriter method introduces the scientific statement of knowledge much earlier in the course than the training method will permit. It also ignores exercises or disciplines which the training method makes essential elements of the primary course.

The difficulties involved in the grading of a course of instruction and study may be somewhat lessened by making longer time divisions and fewer points of marked transitions. This is effected in practice by grouping the year grades into three or four periods or departments. In most American cities the school period of twelve years is divided into three equal periods, the first four grades being called primary; the next four, intermediate or grammar, and the four upper grades, high school. This division has been recommended by the National Educational Association and adopted by the United States Bureau of Education, and several of the State departments of public schools. It has not, however, been universally adopted by the cities. In Boston, the primary schools include only three years of the course, the grammar schools six years, and the English high school three years. In Cincinnati the "district" schools include five years of the course, the intermediate three years, and the high schools four years. In Philadelphia and several other cities, the grades below the high school are divided into three groups or periods, the first two grades being called primary, the next three grades secondary, and the next three grades grammar. Two of the larger cities, Wheeling, W. Va., and Camden, N. J., have no separate high school, but higher classes are formed in the ward or district schools. In St. Louis and a few other cities the primary schools are preceded by kindergartens for younger children.*

The division of the school period into three equal subperiods, now generally adopted, has a practical rather than a pedagogical basis. There are, as we think, good pedagogical reasons for the division of the school period into four subperiods of three years each. This grouping would put the several points of division more in harmony with the quite sharply defined transitions in the successive phases of mental development, and hence would be helpful in grouping studies and exercises in the course of instruction. There are, however, practical objections to the including of the ninth school year in the grammar school. It would bring both algebra and Latin into the grammar course, and this would involve practical difficulties in most cities. The only alternative is the postponement of these studies to the tenth year, and this is too late, if the high school is to fill the place of a preparatory school. The relation of the high school to the college calls for the introduction of the study of Latin as early as the ninth school year. This difficulty is avoided in Boston by its separate Latin high school which admits boys even earlier than the ninth school year.

* For a recent discussion of the theories of gradation and the plans that embody them, see "Pickard's School Supervision," D. Appleton & Co., New York.

All things considered, it seems best to permit the elementary course to end with the eighth school year, the high school including four years, and then to divide the course for the eight lower grades, called elementary, into three subcourses or groups, to be called primary, secondary, and grammar. This would permit a better grouping of studies and disciplines than is possible with two equal divisions. Besides there is a practical objection to including the fifth and sixth grades, certainly the fifth, in the grammar division. The term grammar school, notwithstanding its historical meaning, carries the presumption that the study of English grammar may properly begin with its course, and in many graded schools it is introduced thus early, in the fifth school year, to the sacrifice of greatly needed synthetic training in language. English grammar (the science) does not properly fall below the seventh school year.

It may be added that in a few cities the primary grades are in separate buildings, and when the course therein is completed the pupils are transferred to the grammar school. In most of the cities the primary and grammar grades in a given district are accommodated in the same building or group of buildings, and the pupils remain during their elementary course under the supervision of the same principal.

Enough has been said to indicate that the preparation of a course of study for graded schools is the most difficult duty in school administration. Happily, the courses of study in most of the cities have not been 66 'made to order," but have been evolved by successive modifications of prior courses, and so embody, in a measure, the results of experience, such as it may have been. The more progressive and rational of these courses embody the results of a much wider experience than any one city affords, and the best of them bear the marks of the thoughtful and competent superintendent. Too many school courses are the results of tinkering and patchwork by men who have no clear knowledge of the aims or principles of education and little acquaintance with the capabilities or needs of children. It requires more than an educational cobbler to frame a progressive, rational, well-adjusted course of instruction for graded schools. The one test of school courses is the highest good of the pupils, and this is the radical test of the school itself. This brings us to the principle, which may be more than once repeated in these pages, that the school exists for the pupils and not the pupils for the school.

THE CLASSIFICATION OF PUPILS.

The next problem in the administration of graded schools in cities is a proper classification of pupils. In an ideal classification the pupils in the several classes are so nearly equal in attainments that they can be taught together with common advantage and can move upward in the course with equal step. The progress of the brighter and more capable pupils is not hindered and the less capable are not unduly hurried.