December 24, 1886.J 



SCIElSlCJbJ. 



577 



excluded from the colleges, are to form as large a 

 proportion of the teachers as heretofore. In 1880 

 the census showed that 154,375 of our 327,710 

 teachers were women, and the proportion has not 

 been materially altered since. The problem is, 

 how to train these female teachers, quite as much 

 as how to train their colleagues of the male sex. 

 And the training of female teachers is of especial 

 importance, because they are very generally the 

 teachers of primary schools and kindergartens ; 

 and their pupils, being at the most tender and 

 impressionable age, require the most careful at- 

 tention and training. 



Of course, two ways for avoiding the difficulty 

 indicated by President Magill suggest them- 

 selves. The first, and the one that he probably 

 had in mind, is the opening of colleges to women 

 on equal terms with men. The other is to provide 

 all female colleges, training and normal schools, 

 with competent instructors in the history, theory, 

 and practice of education. The former method is 

 the more likely to arouse opposition, while the 

 latter requires the greater j)ecuniary outlay ; for, 

 if a ijrofepsor is attached tc a college already, he 

 can just as easily teach women as men. We 

 fancy that President Magill's point is one that has 

 escaped the attention of most of our educational 

 reformers. 



The present status of the gymnasium and real- 

 schule controversy in Prussia cannot remain long 

 unchanged. The gymnasial students have too 

 many unfair advantages ; and because of this, 

 and despite the excellent and practical character 

 of the education given in the realschule, there are 

 to-day in Prussia 257 gymnasia, as against 89 real- 

 schule and 14 higher realschule. The desire to 

 limit the military service of boys holding certifi- 

 cates from these schools to one year, is the single 

 point on which all the controversialists agree. 

 Those who desire to equalize matters, and deprive 

 the gymnasia of their privileges, point, and forcibly 

 too, to the fact that only one-fifth of the pupils 

 from the gymnasia pursue their studies any 

 further, the rest falling back to inferior posts, or 

 going into a business career. Moreover, until the 

 re-organization of 1882, it was necessary that a 

 boy's path in life should be chosen for him at the 

 absurdly youthful age of nine ; and now, since the 

 first three years of the curricula in the gymnasium 

 and real-gymnasium have been made identical, 

 this choice is only postponed until the age of 

 twelve, still far too early. 



There are two ways of escape from the diffi- 

 culty : more of the two courses may be made 

 identical, or a new sort of school shall be devised 

 to take their place. Prevalent opinion favors the 

 latter alternative, the idea of an einheitsschule. 

 Some of the teachers in the real-gymnasia have 

 expressed themselves in favor of some such plan 

 as this. The school-life should be unified by pro- 

 viding, that, after a preparatory course of three 

 or four years, a six-years' course shall follow, 

 made up of instruction in German, religion, draw- 

 ing, arithmetic, geometry, history, geography, 

 and, during the first three years, physiography 

 and either English or French ; in the second three 

 years, mathematics, natural science, and a second 

 modern language or Latin, according to circum- 

 stances. On completing such a course satisfac- 

 torily, the pupU should have the right to the one- 

 year military service. Then, after all this, the 

 plan provides for two parallel courses of three 

 years, — one based on the classics, and one on 

 modern languages and science. After all the 

 absurd things that have been said in Prussia and 

 elsewhere on this subject, it would be somewhat 

 of a surprise to see so excellent a plan as the above 

 adopted as the outcome of it all. 



Among the vaeious branches of technical in- 

 struction that are coming to occupy a very impor- 

 tant place in our educational system, instruction 

 in architecture is certain to claim for itself con- 

 siderable attention. Architecture, affording as it 

 does scope for the exercise of both speculative and 

 practical temperaments, is very attractive to that 

 numerous class of minds which combines imagi- 

 native power with constructive ability. Moreover, 

 we must remember that certainly a quarter of a 

 million of buildings are erected in this country 

 every year, and the tendency is to obtain trained 

 architects to design them and superintend their 

 construction. For all of these reasons, informa- 

 tion concerning instruction in architecture is of 

 interest and value. There are only four schools 

 of architecture in the United States, none of them 

 long estabhshed, and therefore our sources of in- 

 formation concerning methods of instruction are 

 limited. But in a recent number of the Sanitary 

 news, Professor Ricker, of the chair of architecture 

 in the University of Illinois, has a paper on archi- 

 tectural education which is very suggestive, be- 

 cause, instead of being a theoretical dissertation, 

 it is a simple account of how he conducts the 



