historian must be utterly indifferent to right and wrong, that he may be impartial. He leaves no inspiration, no incentive, no hope, nothing but a dreary waste on which only selfish thorns can grow. There is in him nothing in common with the struggling, toiling, hopeful multitude; away "up in the steeple" he delights "in rolling on the human heart a stone." As superintendents, we sometimes need to be reminded that our work is something more than mere criticism in its degraded sense of fault-finding. It is our duty to commend and strengthen what is good, to point out the right path, not always to be warning against the wrong. Analysis, even in the philosopher, too often degenerates into mere destructiveness; we must be both instructive and constructive. Our work is to form and to lead the lines-not to throw mud at them. The superintendent who poses as a critic has been lured by the culture-monopolists into the ranks of the enemy. HOW WELL PREPARED FOR LIFE IS THE AVERAGE GRADUATE? BY ALSTON ELLIS. There is no law in Ohio which makes it the duty of a board of education to establish and maintain a high school, yet one exists as a part of the public school system of every grade of city in the State. Many incorporated villages, and a few townships, have schools in which some secondary instruction is given. There is a reason for the growth of these schools other than the desire of teachers to elaborate a system and open up an avenue to higher work and better pay. The people have demanded free high schools with voice enough to lead their representatives to establish them and make a somewhat liberal provision for their support. The high school has been in operation long enough to afford some evidence as to its usefulness in preparing those who seek its advantages for the duties of life. The outcome of this higher instruction is, and ought to be, a matter of concern to every one interested in the welfare of our people. It is my desire to consider some of the many phases of the highschool question candidly and as fully as the time allotted to me will permit. The most enthusiastic advocate of higher education can not be ignorant of the fact that the desire of our people to educate their children beyond the common branches is not on the increase. It is patent to every intelligent observer that there is something begetting, in the minds of our young people, a distaste for the work and discipline of the high school. Figures are so frequently manipulated to give apparent proof of widely divergent statements, that they have lost their convincing power when placed before our eyes by the statistician. Here are a few figures, however, bearing testimony to the amount of support, in the way of school attendance, given to the high school by the citizens of the largest fifteen cities of Ohio. The census of 1880, showed that these cities had an aggregate population of 701,691. The Ohio School Report for 1882, showed the school enumeration (6-21) of the same cities to be 255,159, or 36 per cent. of the population. Of the number enumerated, 110, 136, or 43 per cent., were enrolled in the public schools. The high-school enrollment, included in the foregoing, was, boys, 1,829; girls, 3,008; total, 4,837, or 4 per cent. of the total enrollment. The enrollment record showed the ratio of highschool boys and girls to be as 1 to 13. The number of high-school pupils graduated was, boys, 109; girls, 253; total, 362, or 7 per cent. of the high-school enrollment, or about of 1 per cent. of the whole school enrollment. Do not understand me to say that only one of every three hundred pupils that enter the lowest primary passes through the high-school course. The truth is bad enough, but it is not so bad as that statement would signify. This explanatory remark will suffice to make clear to the minds of all the true significance of the figures I have given: Were an equal number of pupils to enter the first primary grade for twelve years, and were there no withdrawals, from any cause, until the first class graduated, the graduating class could not number more than 8 per cent., and the whole high school, more than 33 per cent., of the total enrollment. It will be seen that only 30 per cent. of the small number of graduates are boys. This inequality of the sexes is also seen in the enrollment of the higher grades of the grammar school, but not in such a marked degree. Ascend through the grammar-school grades up to the graduating class of the high school and you will find the disparity between the sexes begin and terminate in the result before stated. The most discouraging feature of my school work, and the one that has given me more real concern than any other connected with it, is to see the evidence just given corroborated and made emphatic by my home experience. The city across the Bay claims a population of 22,000. I am sure that not more than fifty of its male residents, of school age, received any other than rudimentary instruction, either at home or abroad, during the last school year. There is reason for regret, if not alarm, at this state of things. For some reason, the young, especially the boys, are learning to look with indifference upon the knowledge and training derived from the study of what are termed the higher branches. I say the young, and not the parents, for in most cases the wish of Young America, whether in trousers or gown, is a law to the nominal heads of the household. There is no good reason why the girls of the land should enter upon life's duties with more knowledge, better training, and broader views than their brothers. There is truth in the remark of Holmes that "the education of our community to all that is beautiful is flowing in mainly through its women." Visit the church, the prayer-meeting, the lecture-room, the library and art-gallery, or any agency that has to do with the upbuilding of the minds, the characters, the souls of the people and you will find women leading in attendance, interest, and work. Yes, it is true that the high school is doing more for the girls than for the boys. These statements are also true : That few who leave the public schools have ever entered a high-school class; that many who go into the high school withdraw before they have fairly entered upon its work; that an absurdly small number of those who do enter the high school complete the course; that some who obtain the highschool diploma receive it as an act of grace from the management rather than a testimonial worthily won; that some, of both sexes, finish their education and lay aside their ambition to be and to do, with their graduating essays; and, finally, that some who pass easily and creditably through the domain of study bounded by the high school course find the path of life, outside of the school-room, uncongenial or beset with obstacles which they have not the strength or will to remove. This paper has only incidentally to do with the number who enter or leave the high school. The fact that the number is small is sometimes stated as an argument against the high school and in favor of putting an end to it as a part of the free school system. "High school or no high school," is a question our law very properly leaves for the decision of the people themselves. Whenever the opponents of the high school can outvote its advocates their wishes will, no doubt, become law. Before a decision unfriendly to the present organization of the high school is reached, it is proper to view its internal workings by the light of reason and experience. It may be remarked that the work of the high school is not fully shown by the number of its graduates. Many who go out from it while holding no diploma in their hands have yet received substantial benefits from its studies and training. Some of these may go forth better equipped for the work of life than others who remain a few months longer working for the coveted parchment. The diploma gives surer evidence of the time its possessor spent in school than the strength of brain and soul he acquired while there. The Greek simpleton who went about the streets of his native city with a brick from his house as a sample by which to sell it, was not less wise than he who carries about a high-school or college diploma as an unfailing evidence of his physical, mental, moral, and practical fitness for the every-day work and duties of the average man. The boy or girl who does not realize the real significance of "commencement" day is unworthy of a diploma. If faithful work has been done by the pupil during his school life, who is foolish enough to assert that he does not "commence" life with a better hope of success, in the truest and highest sense of the word, than one deprived of the privileges he has enjoyed? If a graduate leaves school with broken-down health, bankrupt morals, and an aversion to every kind of honest work upon which he enters from choice or to which he is called by force of circumstances, he goes forth to failure. There is a wide-spread belief that the requirements of the school course, especially that of the high school, make fatal drafts upon the health of the pupils and send many from the school, both at graduation and before that period, with physical powers wholly shattered or so impaired as to require time and a physician's aid to restore them to a normal condition. The maledictions of some of the medical profession are hurled against the forcing system, as it is popularly called, of the public schools, and the public mind is in a state of unrest at the testimony adduced to show that our school regime is an important factor in the noticeable increase of numerous diseases that often terminate in insanity. Dr. Holland calls the honors, awarded to superior scholarship, "prizes for suicide," and makes use of this language in describing the appearance of some young men he once saw called up to receive the highest honors of their class: "Physically, there was not a welldeveloped man among them; and many of them were as thin as if they had just arisen from a bed of sickness." It is not to be doubted that the practice of giving class honors unduly stimulates the aspiring, conscientious pupil, and not infrequently forces him into becoming a book-worm instead of a discriminating, thoughtful student of the studies marked out in the course. The "honor" boys or girls of a large graduating class are rarely its most robust members. Pale features, a nervous manner, and an enervated physique generally point them out to observant persons long ere they are called before the audience to receive the costly evidences of their class triumphs. It ought to be easily possible, and it is in the large majority of cases, for a pupil to secure a desirable knowledge of what is taught in our schools without wrecking his physical powers. That is an unwise zeal for education that loads down our high-school course of study with so many branches. The prudent, thrifty farmer never leaves more stalks of corn in a hill than the soil will bring to perfect and profitable maturity. It is the belief of not a few that the concentration of the high-school pupil's efforts upon a less number of subjects would be to the advantage of bodily health and in the interest of mental strength. The hurry of immature minds over a multiplicity of subjects, some of them recondite, results in superficial scholarship and arrogant literary pretensions. The pupil who has been the victim of this system, if he have not native sense enough to see the folly of it, will leave school with an exaggerated idea of his mental power and what it can accomplish when brought to bear upon the rugged issues of life. Is it strange that a pupil so trained, or rather untrained, is often lacking in power to concentrate his energies upon any selected business and hold them there until its wise or unwise choice is made obvious? He flits from one vocation to another in continuation of the policy that pushed him hurriedly through the study-ladened course at school and has not the sense to elect that for which he is fitted or to pursue it to any favorable outcome. The work of a pupil pushing his way up through the grades to the hour of graduating ought to be practical, cultural, healthful, and pleasurable. If he takes no interest in his work, it becomes the worst kind of drudgery and must necessarily influence health unfavorably. No profit to mind or body goes with the study to which the pupil must be driven. "To teach one who has no curiosity to learn," says Bacon, "is to sow a field without ploughing it." What we study from loving choice, becomes a pleasure, and pleasurable study, unless pushed beyond reasonable limits, is invigorating to both mind and body. To a pupil who comes to it with the proper preparation, the work of the average high school is not too arduous. It may be made so, however, by the inconsiderate zeal of teachers and parents in inciting ambitious weaklings to struggle for prizes and class honors. Those who waste vitality in the pursuit of these school gewgaws are few in number. The lustrous eye that grows dim, the blooming cheek that loses its freshness, the dragging step that tells of failing vigor, are taken by physicians as unfailing evidences of the ravages made by school-room confinement and over-study upon the physical vitality of the pupil. What a God-send it is to medical ignorance to have the public schools as a scape-goat upon which to lay the cause of the disease which it fails to fathom or remove ! The home life has some influence upon the health of the young. It is an assertion of what every teacher will recognize as a self-evident truth, when I say that the pupil who is burdened with special studies out of school or who is permitted heedlessly to plunge into the excitement of our modern social life, is on the road that leads away from interest and success in school work, and to most of that derangement of the bodily powers that is thought, by some, to be the result of overpressure in school. The relation of the pupil's school work to his physical well-being, is a question that needs more intelligent investigation at the hands of scholarly, reputable medical experts than it has yet received. The pretensions of the quack who pretends to see an overplus of geometry or history in the trivial ailment of the pupil merits ridicule, contempt and rebuke. It is impossible to measure the harm that has been done to sound learning by such charlatanry. Those who are best acquainted with the changes that have taken place in school policy know that the present tendency is to lift the weight of school work from the pupils' shoulders and transfer it to those of the teachers. Some one has said that the prime distinction between the old and the new in education is, that under the old system the pupils were sacrificed for the teacher, while under the new the teacher is sacrificed for the pupils. The teachers of to-day do far more and the pupils far less than they did when most of us attended school as pupils. If the health of the average graduate is not normal, or what it might reasonably be expected to be, let the investigation of the cause be no less thorough as regards his school life, but let it also reach to all his environments. Why trace the nervous prostration of the young girl to the mental worry incident to getting three lessons a day in school and fail to take notice of the hours spent in piano practice or the evenings given over to fashionable parties, theater-going, and ballroom excitement? True, the young man's health may be failing, but it is just as well to search his pockets for tobacco and cigars as his |