Final Comparison of Results. 
275 
of the scholars for the upper standard, and justifies one of our 
inspectors in saying that, ‘the charge of over instructing is 
wholly groundless; only 16.5 of the children receive instruction 
in specific subjects, the remainder, 83.5 being taught merely 
the three R’s, and in the case of those above Standard I, a few 
simple facts relating to geography and grammar.’ ” 
Dr. Wm. T. Harris's Method .— Dr. William T. Harris, United 
States Commissioner of Education, has for many years given 
thought to this subject. He was one of the earliest, apparently, 
to have a keen appreciation of the importance of determining the 
amount of schooling received by pupils; and has evidently based 
certain conclusions in his more famous papers of recent years, 
such as the determination of the course of study in his Report 
of the Committee of Fifteen upon the fact, that most pupils 
leave school with only a primary education. As long ago as 
1872, while Superintendent of the St. Louis schools, he ex¬ 
pressed a similar idea: “The average number of pupils in the 
lowest three years of the course was about 72 per cent, of the 
entire number enrolled. It was exactly the same for the year 
previous. The fact, that nearly three-fourths of all the pupils 
of the public schools are in the studies of the first three years 
or in the primary studies, exhibits the importance of making 
the instruction in those years the most efficient possible. On 
the supposition that a large percentage of our population will 
receive no other school education than what they get from the 
primary grades, pains have been taken to make the course of 
study not only disciplinary, but comprehensive in the subjects 
taught.” * 1 More positive was a statement in his first annual re¬ 
port as United States Commissioner of Education, in the follow¬ 
ing words: 2 “Six-sevenths of the population on arriving at the 
proper age for secondary education never receive it. Thirty out 
of thirty-one fail to receive higher education upon arriving at 
the proper age. ” The results reached in this paper are much 
the same. 
Charles Reed: “Ten Years’ Results of the London School-Board,” Jour¬ 
nal of the Statistical Society , Vol. 43, p. 67(5, December, 1880. 
1 St. Louis Report for 1871-72, p. 25. 
2 Report of the Commissioner of Education for the year 1888-89, p. 
xviii. 
