SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMMES. 63 



encouragement to the hope of more enlightened procedure as time 

 rolls on — we find that modern languages enter into but three of 

 the four years' course. Leaving the modern languages, and look- 

 ing at the time devoted to science studies, the same desultory 

 treatment is found. There is encouragement to be had in the 

 assurances of laboratories erected and in course of erection, and in 

 the information that in some fitting schools Harvard's require- 

 ments in experimental physics and chemistry can be fully met ; 

 but, so far as the curriculum itself of the scientific course is con- 

 cerned, we have but the hope of something better in the future. 

 If one glances at the time allotted to the education of the hand 

 by means of drawing, or if one is curious in the matter of history 

 and mother-tongue instruction, almost equally unsatisfactory 

 work is encountered. Yery properly, any intelligent parent, 

 studying such courses with a view of submitting to one of them 

 a boy whom he has decided to educate on modern methods, hesi- 

 tates. It is not strange that in his extremity he finally concludes 

 that a serious, well-defined course in the ancient languages is of 

 more value than the olla podrida preparation presented him on 

 the " scientific " side. As this is precisely what the makers of the 

 programmes themselves believe, this conclusion is applauded — and 

 there is rejoicing over the rescue of another boy from a " one- 

 sided education " ! 



A comparative examination of French and American prepara- 

 tory school programmes, therefore, at least yields this much ; that 

 our educational methods are in great need of thorough revision if 

 we are to hope to stand well alongside the French in all that per- 

 tains to judicious preparation for college, for scientific school, or 

 for the general demands of modern life. This examination further 

 shows that we stand in pressing need not only of fitting schools 

 that meet these demands as they exist to-day, but so untrammeled 

 and free from all sort of sectarian or educational bias that they 

 can freely expand and respond to the demands that will assuredly 

 follow as years roll by, and colleges and universities still further 

 yield to the influences that are slowly but surely liberating them 

 from the traditions of the past. An honest home fitting school, 

 firmly founded on the principle of responding to the demands as 

 they exist to-day — not as they existed a century or two ago — suffi- 

 ciently endowed to render it free to maintain firmly all the re- 

 quirements of its different rational courses of instruction, seems 

 to be the great educational need of the day. As the weakest link 

 of dur educational chain lies most undoubtedly in the earlier years 

 of the preparatory course, this school should be prepared to take 

 pupils at twelve years of age ; it would be better if they could be 

 taken at ten, and the course be made to embrace eight years in- 

 stead of six. It should be a home school, for the reason that, with 



