5 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



French, school authorities non-essential to that particular course, 

 but which with us are still firmly intrenched in every prepara- 

 tory school programme ; in brief, that the results obtained under 

 the French programmes, in both the classical and scientific pre- 

 paratory schools, are due to honest hard work, persistently con- 

 tinued for a term of years on a well-defined plan, which is char- 

 acterized by a complete disjunction of the courses that lead to 

 college, from those that are intended for youth for whose antici- 

 pated career in life a knowledge of the classical languages is not 

 deemed essential. 



A comparative examination of the programmes of the Boston 

 Latin School with the French lyce'e course brings out this excess 

 of hours in the French school very prominently. The French 

 boy, in his ten years' sojourn in the lyce'e, spends 8,560 hours in 

 the recitation-room, while in the corresponding course in Boston * 

 the recitation hours are 7,790 only. With a ten-per-cent excess 

 in recitation hours, and a corresponding increase of study, it is 

 evident that the two courses can not be considered " as substan- 

 tially of the same strength." However much we might " enrich " 

 our curricula by imitating French methods, it seems quite clear 

 that we certainly could not, by this process, hope to " shorten " 

 them any. 



Turning to the relative assignment of time to the subjects 

 taught in common by the two schools, there is to be noted also 

 one other point where the statistics and Dr. Eliot are at variance. 

 One searches in vain for that " preponderance " of time given to 

 the French language in the lyce'es as compared with the instruc- 

 tion in the English language in the Boston Latin School. In fact, 

 the " preponderance " is, on the contrary, altogether on the side of 

 the Boston schools, where over twenty-eight per cent of the whole 

 course is devoted to the mother-tongue, to only 20'8 per cent in 

 the lyce'es. This is an interesting fact, which will doubtless be 

 surprising to most readers. It is a prevalent opinion in the United 

 States that in our schools too little time is devoted to the study of 

 our own language. And lest it may be urged that this " prepon- 

 derance " is offset by the nine hours' course per week in philosophy, 

 given in the last year, where, President Eliot states, " French re- 

 sumes almost exclusive possession of the programme," it may be 

 said that, according to the official programme, this claim can not 

 be legitimately made. The course of philosophy in question em- 



* The programme of the Boston Latin School, embracing six years of study, and that 

 of the French lycees ten years, there have been prefixed to the tables of the Latin School 

 — for purposes of comparison — the recitation hours of four years of the grammar-school 

 courses preliminary to it. All references to the Latin School courses in this paper will, 

 therefore, be understood as embracing the result of tabulation of ten years' school work — 

 not that of the six years' course of the Latin School proper. 



