become a matter of social organization, with its very definite place in the life of the youth. The intermediate decades, which lack of space prevents our showing, present curves which show how gradually this change has come about. It seems, further, a safe conclusion to say that all the colleges that have not yet reached the high degree of concentration which some show are, nevertheless, distinctly destined to come to it, unless some unseen force changes their direction of development. It should be noted, in passing, that an anomaly, such as the curve of Syracuse for 1850-1859, is due to the small number of cases. There were but twenty-nine graduates in this decade. Plate II presents in graphic form the same facts that have been given in the tables. Division "a" shows in the upper line, marked "1," the average age of all graduates as presented in Table III, "Average of totals," plus the data for decade 1900, so far as available, also referred to above. The second line, marked "2," gives the actual median age of all graduates considered as students of one college. It will be noted that, while the median has remained practically uniform throughout, the average has varied, but with no marked tendency either up or down. Plate II "b" presents the same facts as "a," except the units of comparison are now colleges instead of individual students. While, as would be expected from the small number of cases, the fluctuations are greater than in the "a" division, the same absence of pronounced trend in either direction is easily observable. There is one tendency in American education which it seems we may accept as established beyond cavil, viz, that for the future the public high school will take the place of the old academy as the institution in which the average boy will receive his training antecedent to entering college. In the days of our grandfathers the prospective college student received his preparation for college either under the private instruction of his pastor or in one of the academies of the time. In either case the body of college-going boys was a highly selected one-a class who had both the tradition of the scholarly life and, to no small extent, the taste and opportunities to follow this tradition. Then, even more than now, the college turned out men whose future work was to be the ministry, law, or medicine. With the advent of the public high school and the growing tendency of colleges to accept its graduates for entrance to college courses, we should expect to find two or three changes in particular becoming manifest: First, we should expect to find the college-going students less selected along the lines of intellectual aptitudes and scholarly traditions; secondly, we should expect a greater scope of life employment among the college graduates, and, thirdly, we should anticipate a natural advance in the age at which boys would go to college as a result of the above-named circumstances, with all that they imply. Now, our public school system is, for the most part, so constructed that the normal age for a boy to finish his high school course is in his nineteenth year, making his age of graduation from college between 22 years and 22 years 11 months, inclusive. From this point of view it becomes important to examine our data with a view to finding out in how far these influences which would be expected to raise the age of graduation from college have been active over other conditions which have negatived them, or vice versa. Plate III shows the percentage of students that actually graduated in all colleges under the age of 23 years since 1850-the date at which the data for all our colleges become available. Comment is hardly necessary here. With the exception of decade 1860-1869, which evidently shows the effects of the civil war, the trend has been unmistakably upward. Even if we throw out the figures for 1900--which represent, as explained above, all the available data from the colleges that in 1890-1899 furnished over 81 per cent of all graduates-the trend is still unmistakably upward. Concerning the influences that have been instrumental in causing the marked rise in the median or average age of graduation in certain colleges in our list, it is not possible to speak with certainty for all. In the case of one or two, such as New York University and Bowdoin College, it would seem that the rise is due to an increase in the requirements for admission. In the case of certain other, pronouncedly denominational institutions, as DePauw and Syracuse, there is one element separable from perhaps others that may be surmised, which has played an important rôle. This is found in the decidedly high average or median age of those young men who go into the ministry. The following shows the conditions in the two institutions just named: It thus appears that our medians for these two colleges, as shown in Table II, would, with this element of disturbance removed, give quite different results. Thus, the median of the last decade for DePauw would be lowered by just twelve months, while that of Syracuse for the same decade, instead of remaining the same as that of fifty years before, would be lowered by nine months. While I have not been able to work over the data for the other denominational colleges completely enough to give the results here, there are nevertheless many indications that a similar state of affairs prevails, though probably in different degree. In conclusion, we may sum up our findings as follows: The increase in age of graduation from college in general has been tremendously exaggerated. It exists only for certain institutions, while others show a corresponding decrease. The normal age of graduation, as our school system is constituted, is below 23 years and above 22; our results show that more students graduate now within those limits than ever before; that the gradually organizing secondary education tends to make this percentage increasingly larger. (Nearly 85 per cent of all graduates of the Johns Hopkins University in the twenty years since its founding to 1899 have been within these limits.) If entrance into professional life is later than formerly, the cause must be sought elsewhere than in the college and preparatory school. Whereas it was once possible for a boy to graduate from college at 16 or even younger, though very few really did so, this is true no longer. But the young man now, as a consequence, leaves college with very much higher academic attainments, and but little, if any, older than was his father or even his grandfather. All colleges show, in different degrees, an increasing diminution of range in age of graduation. This shows that the secondary education is becoming better organized. If, now, the age of graduation which we have shown to be the prevailing one, viz., 22.5 years, be deemed still too old, three means of reducing this would seem to be possible: First, cut off one year from the college course, without lowering the entrance requirements; secondly, in view of the far greater efficiency of the secondary school, reduce the entrance requirements to college and, retaining the four years' course, permit the boy to enter college, say, a year younger; thirdly, drop one year from the college course, increase the length of the actual weeks of residence and instruction to thirty-eight or forty, and endeavor to disabuse the mind of the average collegian of the belief that college is a place to dawdle and loaf four years for the sake of a degre that he does not earn, but which he generally gets just the same. The college would then have a serious opportunity to prove its right to existence, and if it succeeded the present diletantism of college life would tend to disappear. One further suggestion we may venture to make. Every boy that has the native capacity to do college work should be put into the high school in the fall after he is 14 years old, regardless of whether he has done all the prescribed grammar school work or not. If he can not then get ready for college by 18, don't let him go to college. He is not cut out for the strenuous intellectual life. CHAPTER XLIX. REPORT ON SCHOOL STATISTICS, MADE BY A COMMITTEE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. [This report, reprinted from the Proceedings of the N. E. A., appeared in the Annual Report of this Office for 1897-98, Chap. 29. It is here again reprinted for information and suggestions.] THE DEPARTMENT OF SUPERINTENDENCE. GENTLEMEN: Your committee, consisting of the undersigned and Messrs. James MacAlister and George P. Brown, holding over from the last year, conclude their reporta a PRELIMINARY REPORT, MADE IN FEBRUARY, 1891. GENTLEMEN: Your committee, appointed at the last annual meeting for the purpose of considering and reporting on the subject of school statistics, beg leave to offer the following preliminary report, setting forth the results of their studies on the subject, and postponing for another meeting, or for the work of another committee, if it be your pleasure, the completion of the details of a scheme of statisties which will afford the data required for a comparative study of domestic and foreign educational systems. Your committee would first call attention to the object and purpose of collection of statistics, which they conceive to be the following: Statistics reveal the nature and efficiency of the powers and forces involved in a process. Forces and powers are revealed in their results. Their results are of little moment, if dead results, except as they indicate what the living power has been and still is. In matters of education we inquire into the aims and purposes of the educative process, and learn this by a quantitative study of the means employed and the results obtained. It is evident, therefore, at the outset, that the quantities given by our statistical tables can have no significance except in connection with the qualitative elements involved. We pass over at once from the how many to the what kind. We seek again new quantitative data that may indicate the quality, but we never reach quantitative data that are significant in and for themselves. Your committee would suggest as the four principal heads under which school statistics may be grouped: First, attendance of pupils; second, course of study; third, teaching forces and appliances; fourth, support-revenue and expenditures. Under these four heads they would group the following details: I. Statistics of attendance should answer questions like the following-(a) How many? (b) How long? (e) Who? That is to say: (1) How many pupils in the aggregate? (2) How many relatively to the entire population? (3) How many relatively to the population of the school age, say 5 to 21, 6 to 14, or some other period agreed upon? Then this item should be further defined in five items: (1) How many enrolled during the annual session of school? (2) How many as average belonging? (3) How many in actual average daily attendance? (4) How many were dropped and afterwards readmitted? (5) The number of cases of tardiness. Under the second item of attendance (How long?) we wish the number of daily school sessions for the year, and the hours of a school session, the length and hour of recesses and intermissions. Under the third item of Who? we include such items as-(1) How many of each sex? (2) How many at each year of age, and the average age? (3) Race. (4) How many born in the town or State where the school is situated? (5) How many born in other parts of the same nation? (6) How many born abroad? (7) Occupations of parents. II. Under the second of our four chief heads we should ask for statistics regarding the course of study, and thus determine by this grade of schools as follows: (a) Kindergarten; (b) primary and grammar schools; (c) secondary education; (d) higher education. We should ask very carefully as to the relations of these items to the first class of items, especially age, sex, and average attendance. The primary and grammar schools are to be distinguished from the secondary schools by the fol on statistics by offering, first, a list of the items which, in their opinion, should be collected to show the workings of a school system. They have arranged these items in three classes. The first class includes the essential data which should be taken every year, and from all schools. This first list contains the essential and indispensable items for every annual report. The second list contains the more important of what we may call occasional statistics, and should not be expected every year, perhaps, nor from all schools. A State superintendent may, for example, collect statistics one year regarding the place of nativity of pupils and parents, another year he may take occupations, and another year he may collect items regarding the preparation of the teaching force. In our third list we have included still less essential items, which may be collected at still rarer intervals. In the next place, we have given a tabular summary showing in detail the items actually collected in the several States of the Union, and side by side with it an exhibit of the statistical items collected in the several countries of Europe. As these details can not be read before an audience, your committee submit the same for printing in an appendix, hoping that they will be found useful to State officers in the preparation of their forms and blanks for collecting these returns. All of which is respectfully submitted. W. T. HARRIS, Chairman of Committee. APPENDIX I. SCHOOL STATISTICS. I. FUNDAMENTAL ITEMS. 1. Number of children of legal school age, classified by race and sex (school population): a, White males; b, white females; e, colored males; d, colored females. NOTE. These letters, a, b, c, d, are used in these tables always to indicate race or sex as here indicated. lowing tests: The introduction of algebra, or of an ancient or modern language, marks the beginning of the secondary course of study. The higher course of study should be marked by analytic mathematics, or by logical and philosophical studies, or by advanced language studies. III. The third general head, "The teaching forces and appliances," includes: (1) Buildings and accommodations; (2) size of schools under one principal teacher (or else number of pupils per teacher); (3) number of teachers; (4) supervision; (5) means of training teachers; (6) examinations of teachers; (7) methods of discipline and instruction used by teachers. IV. The fourth general head, "The support of schools," includes (1) Revenue. Items of. (a) Receipts from State and local taxation; (b) receipts from funds or productive property; (c) receipts, if any, from tuition. (2) Expenditures. (a) For teachers' salaries, including supervision; (b) incidentals, including janitor hire, fuel, apparatus, and other current expenses; (c) permanent investments, including building and repairs. Your committee would call attention to the importance of a detailed discussion of the use to be made of these several items, in studying the effective forces of educational systems, and in comparing one with another. Such discussion is not here attempted, but is suggested as a proper subject of a supplementary report. Moreover, your committee have observed the prime necessity for such a definition of the several items as to prevent misunderstanding. A description of the best methods of keeping and tabulating the several items would also be a very useful addition to such a report. In dealing with reports, not merely reports from a foreign country, but with reports from different sections of the United States, your committee has been impressed with the necessity of a glossary of terms used in tabulating statistics. There should be a careful collation of all terms and designations used here and abroad, and so minute a description given of the processes of ascertaining the data under the several heads as to leave no doubt in the mind as to the exact meaning of each. Without this accurate information there can be no satisfactory comparative study of school systems. All of which is respectfully submitted. W. T. HARRIS. JAS. MACALISTER. |