592 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lower grades — the 'gap/ as it is often called, between 'the grades' and 

 the high school — still exists, very much as it always has. 



This curious break, in what is intended to be a thoroughly unified 

 educational scheme, is such a contradictory phenomenon, in spite of its 

 serious reality, that it would be incomprehensible if it had not fol- 

 lowed naturally from the different origins of our elementary and our 

 secondary schools. Our secondary schools originated as (Latin) grammar 

 schools, i. e., as college preparatory schools, designed for a particular 

 social class, and hence possessing no essential articulation with the pub- 

 lic elementary schools. The academies, although not class schools to 

 the same extent as the older 'grammar schools,' still concerned them- 

 selves little, if at all, with the elementary education of their pupils. 

 AVhen the high schools were founded on the combined model of the 

 'grammar school' and the academy, these traditions of secondary edu- 

 cation were perpetuated — below the high school not a real education, 

 only a preparation for education; education itself was deferred to- 

 the high school. Hence, the gap between the high school and the 

 lower grades — the artificial isolation of the high school from the lower 

 grades, which still persists in spite of our recent and contemporary 

 endeavor to bring them together. 



Nevertheless, the remedy is really not difficult to apply. We have 

 already made so much progress that the final steps ought not to be 

 difficult to take. We shall take them when we discontinue elementary 

 English grammar as a distinct study, at the end of the sixth grade, and 

 begin there a modern foreign language; when we cut out all the arith- 

 metic in and after the seventh grade, and substitute elementary geom- 

 etry and algebra; when we similarly cut out most of the political 

 geography in and after the seventh grade, and gradually transform all 

 our nature study during the same time into elementary natural science. 

 "When we make these and some other equally important changes seri ms- 

 ///, and add them to the other improvements already substantially ac- 

 complished in our contemporary pre-high-school grades, we shall bridge- 

 the gap between elementary and secondary education; and the artificial 

 isolation of the high school in a system of which it is really intended fo- 

 lic an integral part will he outgrown. 



1 should like to discuss the effect of these suggested changes more 

 at length, but I must content myself here with touching only one of 

 them. It will be noticed that 1 have spoken of a modern language, 

 not of Latin, as a suitable foreign language for pre-high-school pupils. 

 The reasons for this suggestion are not far to seek. Latin is a difficult 

 language, and when begun at an early age. and without any previous 

 study of a foreign language, is not economically acquired. By 

 economically, I mean the minimum expenditure of time and energy 

 required to make substantial progress in the language. This is be- 



