SECONDARY SCHOOL PROGRAMMES. 57 



given in this class has for its object the preparation of pnpils who 

 have completed the lyce'e course, and who purpose entering the 

 polytechnic, the superior, or the central schools. None are ad- 

 mitted to this course who have not previously manifested an apti- 

 tude for it. The hours of recitation per week are, mathematics 

 eleven hours, descriptive geometry three hours, physics and 

 chemistry five hours, natural history three hours, French lan- 

 guage two hours, modern languages two hours, history and geog- 

 raphy three hours, and drawing two hours ; total, thirty -one 

 hours. 



The instruction to-day given in France under the name of Ven- 

 seignement secondaire special has found a secure footing only 

 after many years of violent discussion and constant opposition. 

 Its career, however, has been steadily advancing and gaining in 

 public consideration ever since its organization in 1865. Its pro- 

 gramme was extended and revised in 1881, and in 1886 it was 

 organized on its present basis. The courses of study have been 

 framed with especial reference to the requirements of a large class 

 of pupils of good social position, who have neither the desire, the 

 tastes, nor perhaps the leisure for long years' study of dead lan- 

 guages. It is a response to the needs of a large class for a prepa- 

 ration for actual life in various careers, which the classical 

 courses are incapable of giving. The school is in a sense the 

 Realschule of the French, differing from its German congener, 

 however, by the entire elimination of Latin from its programme. 

 The course comprises six years of study, crowned, at its success- 

 ful termination, by the diploma of bachelier de Venseignement 

 secondaire special, the possession of which entitles the holder to 

 admission to the examinations for the baccalaureat es sciences, for 

 the military school of Saint-Cyr, and, with the exception of the 

 Polytechnic School, which still holds to its classical requirements, 

 to other national schools with requirements of a general similar 

 character. 



However interesting, as an illustration of French school meth- 

 ods, the curriculum of the secondary special schools may be, the 

 severity of the course, as a whole, renders it unlikely that it will 

 ever be very closely imitated in this country. The recitations 

 here range from twenty-five to twenty -nine hours per week, giv- 

 ing, for the whole course, 6,360 hours, against 4,360J hours in the 

 American representative of the same type of school.* The official 



* As the secondary special schools of France occupy about the same place in the 

 French system as the upper classes of grammar schools and the English high schools 

 occupy in ours, the French programmes of these schools have been brought by the writer 

 into comparison with a typical American school — the courses of the two upper classes of 

 the grammar schools and those of the English High School of Boston being employed as a 

 fair American representative. 



