SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMMES. 49 



particularly in science studies, have had to be greatly extended 

 or recast. The many admirable scientific schools and colleges 

 throughout the country have made demands for special prepara- 

 tion that have had to be met. Furthermore, it has come to pass 

 that the college prerequisites in the old classical studies even have 

 been very considerably increased. Altogether it may be stated 

 that the demands made upon the preparatory schools to-day are 

 probably at least twenty-five or thirty per cent in excess of the 

 demands of twenty-five or thirty years ago. Coincident with this 

 multiplication and extension of preparatory studies, there has 

 arisen in our country a sentiment which to no inconsiderable ex- 

 tent has reduced the hours devoted to study. A few decades since 

 a boy fitting for college with its limited requirements in Latin, 

 Greek, and mathematics, spent six hours per diem in school, and, 

 as a matter of course, expected to give two, three, or possibly 

 more hours to study at home. Now, he spends four or five hours 

 in the school-room ; and the sight of a text-book under his arm as 

 he idly saunters homeward excites comment in the community as 

 to the severe mental strain to which school-children are nowa- 

 days subjected by rigorous masters. 



The result of all this is a state of affairs to which President 

 Eliot, of Harvard University, has recently invoked the serious 

 attention of the American public* He states that the average age 

 of admission to Harvard University has been gradually rising for 

 many years, and has now reached the extravagant age of eighteen 

 years and ten months. He also notes that in view of the increased 

 time required for the completion of his professional education, 

 after leaving college, it follows that a man, thoroughly preparing 

 himself for life, finds himself unprepared for self-support much 

 before he is twenty-seven years old. This result is by no means 

 peculiar to Harvard or to Harvard graduates, but holds true as 

 to all colleges in the United States. Its remedy, in the opinion of 

 President Eliot, is in both shortening and enriching our second- 

 ary school courses of study. As illustrating what other countries 

 have succeeded in doing in this direction, he cites the school 

 courses of France. The hours of recitation of these courses, less 

 elaborate and difficult than those of Germany, are, he claims, so 

 far as hours of recitation are concerned, substantially the same as 

 those of this country ; yet, under them, the French boy is better 

 prepared for matriculation at seventeen years of age than ours are 

 at nineteen. He therefore calls for a serious examination of the 

 programmes of Venseignement secondaire class ique of France in 

 comparison with the programmes of American preparatory 



* A paper read before the Department of Superintendence of the National Educational 

 Association at Washington, February 16, 1888, published in the Atlantic Monthly, August, 

 1888. Remarks before the Commercial Club, Providence, R. I., March, 1889. 

 vol. xxxvn. — 4 



