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there are hundreds of free High Schools, on the same footing as 

 the most primary establishments. They are of one body with 

 the common schools, are administered by the same authorities, 

 supported by the same funds, and intended for the same popu- 

 lation ; and yet, instead of being limited to the strictly essential 

 studies, to the minimum of knowledge required to take children 

 out of the official category of the illiterate, these upper schools 

 are established on the basis of what may be called the higher 

 instruction. They are not professional schools, nor are 

 they bastard imitations of the classical college, nor yet low 

 grade universities — they are in the fullest sense popular 

 schools, intended to give the people the best, purest and 

 loftiest results of liberal education. They open up no special 

 pursuit — they lead to all pursuits, without exception and with- 

 out distinction. They do not make an engineer, an architect, 

 or a physician, anj more than they make an artisan or a mer- 

 chant, but they form bright, intelligent youths trained to stud- 

 ies of every kind, qualified to select for themselves among the 

 various professions, and skilled to succeed therein. One grad- 

 uate will enter the university, another will go into business ; 

 there will be differences of occupation among them, but there 

 will be no inequality of education. 



So far as social equality can possibly be 'reached on this earth, it 

 is attained by the American High School. In other countries it is 

 to be feared that the children of different classes of society, 

 though brought together for a while in the public school, must 

 soon find themselves separated by the whole distance between 

 their respective families ; indeed, it must be so, since one child 

 enters on his apprenticeship and thus stops short in his intel- 

 lectual development at the very time when the other is just 

 beginning his. In the United States every effort is made to 

 delay and to diminish this separation, to carry as far as possi- 

 ble, and as high as possible, that common instruction which 

 eflfac3s the distinction of rich and poor. 



If it be true that the prosperity of a republic is in the direct 

 ratio of the replenishment of its middle classes, of the abun- 

 dance and facility in the indefinite recruiting of these classes, 

 then the High School of the United States, whatever it may 

 cost, is the best investment of capital that can possibly be made. 



