intendent of the county in which the applicant last taught and the superintendent who gave the last certificate under which he taught.

In conformity with the requirements of the regulations examinations were held at Bedford City July 25, 26, and 27, 1892, and at Salem July 24, 25, and 26, 1893. At the first examination 9 or 10 applicants presented themselves, but none making the required marks on all subjects no certificates were issued. Several candidates acquitted themselves well. Credits were given for subjects on which the required percentage was reached. Last July 36 teachers presented themselves for the test. Two of those retired after perusing the first paper. Two withdrew after attempting one or two subjects. Twenty-four left part of the work for next year. Eight essayed answers on every branch demanded for the professional certificate, and one nearly completed the work for life diploma.

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These certificates should be held only by teachers of experience and ability, and it is a grievous error to encourage others to hope for them. At the examination last summer teachers appeared with the strongest indorsements whose educational qualifications scarcely entitled them to a third-grade certificate in a district where the teaching force is unusually weak.

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I believe that the granting of State certificates will give a vigorous impulse to larger academic and professional attainments and a more distinctive and permanent character to teaching as a profession.

WASHINGTON.

[From the report for 1893-94 of Hon. C. W. Bean, superintendent of public instruction.]

APPORTIONMENT OF SCHOOL FUNDS.

The manner of apportioning the common-school fund among the various districts is a matter that has often been the subject of interesting discussions, and, while the method at present in vogue seems not to have been very seriously criticized since its adoption, there are grave doubts as to its efficacy in accomplishing the best results possible with the fund at our disposal. It has been urged by a number of our experienced county superintendents that the average daily attendance at our schools might be largely increased by the policy of basing the apportionment upon the average daily attendance of the respective districts rather than upon their enumeration of children of school age. It must be admitted that there is a manifest justice in applying the school funds to the maintenance of schools in those districts where most children are inclined to attend school. It is also evident that with such a provision school officers and patrons would be much more diligent in the enforcement of our compulsory law in regard to attendance. There would be tangible inducements to them to see that all pupils of school age were not only enrolled in the schools, but that they were in actual attendance as many days as possible during the school year. It is sometimes urged against this method of apportionment that it leads to a wholesale falsification of register entries on the part of teachers with the connivance of district clerks. To this it may be answered that the present method presents equal temptations to false enumeration of pupils, and that the former class of false entries is much more easily detected than the latter. A more serious objection is the contention that an epidemic or serious contagion might disastrously reduce the average attendance in a district through no fault of the officers or patrons, thus cutting off a large portion of the appropriation from a district whose patrons, pupils, and officers had used their utmost endeavors to avert the calamity. While this argument is entitled to great weight, I am of the opinion that the great gain to the whole State by reason of its salutary effect on the attendance at our schools, renders the proposition worthy of the careful consideration of the legislature.

UNIFORM TEXT-BOOKS.

Whether it is best to have State, county, or school district uniformity, are questions upon which the best judges differ. In older States where the same pupils reside in a district from year to year, the only changes in the school enrollment being caused by the appearance of the younger children as they grow old enough to attend school, and the disappearance of the older as they complete the prescribed course or leave the school to engage in the work of breadwinning, it matters little what division is taken as the unit in the adoption of books. But in a new State where many families change residence at least once in a year, often leaving not only the district but also the county, it is very desirable that the division chosen as a unit for adoption should be larger. The first State legislature, after due consideration, decided upon State uniformnity, and I think that it has so far been, in the main, satisfactory. The plan of district uniformity has few advocates in a State so new as ours, and

about the only thing that can be said for county as against State uniformity is that the scandals connected with adoption would be less notorious, even if no less certain. It is a significant fact that among all the resolutions passed by teachers' institutes on the subject of text-books, not one has been reported to this department as favoring a smaller division as a unit. The principal argument used against State uniformity is the fact that the interests at stake in such extensive adoptions are so great as to vastly increase the temptation to corruption. In answer to this objection it may be said that only corruptible men can be bribed, whether the interests at stake be large or small, and it is evident that the probabilities are largely in favor of securing one small board of incorruptible men for State adoption, with the entire State from which to select, more easily and certainly than can one such small, incorruptible board be selected in each of the 34 counties or in each of the 1,800 districts. The same considerations serve as a complete refutation of the argument that corruption in connection with adoptions can be prevented by enlarging the board of adoption. This is to proceed upon the assumption that the probabilities of securing a majority of honest and incorruptible men increase with the number of men selected. A sister State, with a board of adoption consisting of more than two score men, has not entirely escaped intimations of crookedness in the matter of adoptions, and cases are not entirely wanting, indeed, where corruption has been suspected when books were adopted by an entire legislature. No, the fact of corruption can be prevented only by the selection of an incorruptible board, whether large or small; the intimations and charges of corruption can not be prevented by any means.

FREE TEXT-BOOKS.

It is not generally known, perhaps, that a number of districts in the State have free text-books already, and yet such is the case. Without any specific warrant of law several districts have supplied their pupils with free books, and the plan is reported as entirely satisfactory. The least the legislature can do in this matter is to enact a law specifically authorizing boards of directors, when in their judgment it is feasible, to apply a portion of their school fund to the maintenance of a free text-book library for their respective districts. Even with this small concession, I venture to say that within the next year a large number of free libraries would be reported. But it is wise to go still further. A law may properly be enacted providing for the furnishing by the State, in such manner as may be determined by the wisdom of the legislature, of free text-books in one or more branches for all pupils in the State. A similar plan has worked admirably in at least one of the States. Such a plan would give the school patrons a foretaste of the benefits arising from free books, and would, in connection with the law before suggested, doubtless result in the establishment of free text-book libraries in most of the districts in the State within a few years.

EXAMINATION OF TEACHERS.

A system of examination and certification of those who wish to engage in the occupation of teaching has long been considered an essential part of the publicschool machinery of a State. Futile as is the attempt in many cases, and unsatisfactory as are the results, we still try to measure the teacher's grasp of mind, her knowledge of the various branches, and tact in administering school discipline by a system of set questions, record the results in terms of that great scientific touchstone, the centesimal scale, and certify therefrom that the applicant "is competent to teach any school in county for a period of years from date." The many absurdities of an examination as a test of a teacher's ability have often been paraded before the public, and superintendents, committees, and educators generally have long felt the need of a satisfactory test. So great is this unrest, indeed, that an open outburst of this sentiment against examinations is to be expected periodically under any system that undertakes to make it more than a formality. But what shall be done in the premises no sage appears to be able to say, and we continue to follow the old plan and hope for a deliverer.

UNIFICATION OF THE SCHOOL SYSTEM.

Section 2 of the constitution of Washington requires that "The legislature shall provide for a general and uniform system of public schools. The public-school system shall include common schools, and such high schools, normal schools, and technical schools as may hereafter be established." To complete the list of schools controlled by the State, we must mention with the above the State University and the Agricultural College and School of Sciences. Though the latter is supported mainly by the General Government, at present it is, with certain necessary restrictions as to the character of the work done, under State control. This list of schools is designed to constitute the machinery to be used by the State in furnishing her subjects not only a liberal education, but also such special training as is necessary for the successful following of the more common trades and professions.

Tuition in all of these schools is provided at public expense, and the poor man's child may pass from the primer to a degree in the university with no charge for instruction. Such a system, when fully completed in detail and properly directed, may with good reason be considered the crowning glory of any State. But it is not to be expected that such a system will be found to exist in a State so young as ours, without showing blemishes and defects of greater or less concern to its friends. Passing over the less prominent hindrances to the most harmonious and satisfactory working of our system, it must be apparent to a moderately close observer that one of the defects which can fairly be charged against our system is that, for lack of sufficient central control and general unity of plan, much energy is lost. While uniformity is certainly not desirable simply for the monotony it suggests, yet when the lack of it results in a serious loss of energy, it is a matter worthy of great concern and prompt attention.

A very good common-school course of nine years has been prepared for our rural and village schools; our larger cities have been provided with complete graded courses from the first year to the close of excellent high-school courses, the whole being of such character as not to suffer by comparison with any cities in the Union; our normals are conducted according to a uniform course; the university and the agricultural college have definitely prescribed courses worthy of such institutions. In fact each part of the system does its own work according to a wisely contrived scheme; but the articulation, or rather lack of articulation, of the various parts results in a vast amount of energy being dissipated by unnecessary duplication of work.

The courses of study in the larger cities, wherein they do coincide, are uniform largely by accident, and hence the high-school course in no one of them can be taken as a standard from which to measure the attainment to be prescribed for the graduate from the common school. There is no articulation between the high schools and the university and agricultural college, nor has the course for normal schools been prepared with any special reference to any high school or the common schools as a feeder. The boards of directors of the graded schools of our villages are left to prescribe such a course for their respective schools as may suit their fancy, and the result is great dissimilarity. As a consequence of this chaotic state, at every point where two departments of the system should articulate there is a more or less extensive duplication of work. The college and university find it necessary to maintain subfreshmen classes in order to supplement the work of weak high schools; strong high schools are tempted to do work properly belonging to the higher institutions; and in a degree probably unnecessary there is an overlapping of work among common schools, high schools, and normals. The student who has not yet learned there is no royal road to learning is thus permitted to flit about among all the schools, seeking a pleasant and easy road to knowledge and wasting golden moments and opportunities. He does so because the lack of unity in the system permits him to find work of his grade, at least approximately, in more than one class of schools.

But a still worse feature is the fact that the same work which is being done in one school or class of schools, perhaps to the partial exclusion of the legitimate work of those schools, is being paid for unnecessarily in another.

It seems to me this useless waste of money and energy might be prevented in large measure by the appointment of a competent commission to so unify the courses of study in the various schools of the same grade, where necessary, and so arrange for the proper articulation of the different grade of schools, from the common school to the university, that the whole would constitute what the constitution really designsa uniform system. The board of education could be utilized as a part of that commission, and to it could be added representatives from the different schools of the system. Under more auspicious conditions I would recommend that the board of education be permanently enlarged by the addition of representatives as above indicated, and constituted a general board of regents or supervisors with power to control the graduation of candidates from schools of all kinds, and to fix the conditions of admission, promotion, and graduation. The temporary commission for the purpose of unification of the work seems more suitable, however, to present conditions. Economy alone, all other considerations aside, calls for some action of the legislature at a very early date.

WEST VIRGINIA.

[From the report for 1893-94 of Hon. Virgil A. Lewis, State superintendent of free schools.]

A GRADED COURSE OF STUDY FOR COUNTRY AND VILLAGE SCHOOLS.

Of the 282,933 children of school age in West Virginia it is fair to assume that more than 200,000 either attend or are enumerated in country districts. The city and town schools are carefully graded, and in this particular the State need have no conED 94-91

cern. But ever since the establishment of our school system, the work in the country and village schools has been as diversified almost as the teachers employed therein could make it.

Thousands of these country schools have been in operation nearly a quarter of a century, and for the greater part of that time not so much as an effort was made to secure systematic work and consequent uniformity of method in them. But in later years the attention of the leading educators of the State has been turned to the subject of a proper course of study for country and village schools, and to such an extent was it advocated and agitated by the school men of the State that our lawmaking power has caused such a course to be prescribed; but, with an exception in Jefferson and a few other counties, year after year the same routine work has gone on, and instead of one teacher beginning where another ended, all have begun and ended at the same place.

The time has gone by when our system of free schools can be regarded as a kind of charitable institution, and it must now be regarded as the vastest business enterprise of the State, for it to-day invests more money in it than in all other interests combined. There is an implied contract existing between the State as the one party and every child on the soil of the State as the other party, and this contract obligates the former to give to the latter the opportunity to secure, at least, a commonschool education. The State is now endeavoring to comply with its part of the contract. Heretofore our school work has been of the most fragmentary character; but now, when so much money is being invested in it, it is time to systematize it. "The greatest possible return for the money invested," has long been a business maxim, and now it has become an educational maxim. Realizing this, almost every one of the American States is acting upon it, and at last, in the interest of economy, is looking in the right direction-viz, toward the country schools. Our own people are in line with the most advanced thought upon this subject, and in 1891 our lawmakers amended our school law so as to read as follows:

It shall be the duty of the State superintendent to prescribe a manual and graded course of primary instruction to be followed in the country and village schools throughout the State, arranging the order in which the several branches shall be taken up and studied and the time to be devoted to them, respectively, with provisions for advancement from class to class; also for the examination and grad uation of all pupils who satisfactorily complete the prescribed course.

PREPARATION OF THE COURSE.

In preparing this course of study in compliance with the legal requirement, the aim throughout has been: First, to supply a plain, practical, and progressive outline, which, if followed carefully, will give the pupils a thorough common-school education and secure a systematic development of their intellectual powers; second, to unify the work of teachers and superintendents throughout the State; third, to introduce the common-school branches only; fourth, to simplify classification and regulate gradation and promotion, thereby making the work of the teacher lighter, but more systematic and effective; fifth, to divide the entire course into definite portions, so that a record of the progress and standing of each pupil may be preserved and the confusion and loss of time usually resulting from frequent changes of teachers avoided.

BRANCHES TO BE TAUGHT IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOLS.

These are enumerated in the school law, as follows: Orthography, reading, penmanship, arithmetic, English grammar, physiology, general United States and State history, general and State geography, bookkeeping, civil government.

The work of grading and classifying the village and country schools goes on rapidly, almost the entire teaching force of the State having engaged earnestly in its introduction. Here the work in the primary schools of the State is being unified and system and order have taken the place of disorganization and disorder.

Far above these schools stand the State university and normal schools at the head of our educational system, but there is a great gap between them. The almost entire failure of

OUR HIGH-SCHOOL WORK,

with the causes of the same, is matter for the most serious consideration on the part of our legislators. Secondary education or high school work has been sadly neglected, so much so that there are at this time 30 counties of the State that have neither high nor graded schools. The failure has been so complete that there are but 17 high schools in the State, and only 7 of these have been established under the provision of the general law, the other 10 having been organized in independent districts under the provisions of special statutes creating the said independent districts. Why is this? The answer is plain. The magisterial districts into which the counties are divided have been, in many instances, overburdened by tax

ation necessary to defray the expenses of primary schools, and they have been therefore unable to support a high school, and thus the great middle link in the educational chain which should connect our primary school work with the higher school work of the State has never been present and never will be under the present law.

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The remedy lies in the establishment of thorough high-school work upon a different basis. "If it be true that in 1892 there were but 17 free high schools for the 200,000 children and youth of the State, only 5 of these maintaining a three years' course, the other 12 comprising the higher grades in graded schools, the amount of work being quite limited and irregular;' and that 'only 11 per cent of the school population of the State enjoy the advantages of high-school instruction,' there is evidently a loud call for a movement in this direction. This deprivation is all the more felt by reason of the comparatively small number of reliable academies in West Virginia, which in this respect seems to lag behind all the States of the South. It is difficult to understand why the prosperous city of Wheeling-foremost in the days 'before the war' in the organization of public schools-should still 'linger shivering on the brink and fear to launch away' in the establishment of a high school that would be a model and inspiration to the Commonwealth. The admirable service of the superintendent and able principals of the several grammar schools of that city in caring for the higher grades in these buildings seem to have persuaded the educational public to let them go on indefinitely trying to perform this double duty. But sooner or later, despite the most conscientious service of teachers in the primary and grammar grades, a school system bereft of its proper arrangement for the secondary education will become like the fabled tribe of men who go about 'carrying their own heads under their arms.' God created the head to rise above the shoulders; and the idea of an educational system that has not the high school in a community able to bear its expense is supplying one illustration more of the favorite doctrine of the small politician-knocking out the brains of things to save money. The feet do not move the head, but the head moves the feet, is a maxim as true in the common school as in physiology. Without an effective head, any common-school system inevitably falls under popular disrepute, as an efficient arrangement that looks up to another and a radically different system to piece out its work. The State of Massachusetts has followed out the irresistible logic of the common-school idea, by making the support of a high school, with a classical department of forty weeks, compulsory on all places of a certain population and valuation; and of an English high school in all towns of a certain lower standard, with the provision that any one of its 350 towns not included in these two classes may, by vote in town meeting, establish a school of the same grade. By the act of the legislature in the past season, every town in the State is now compelled to pay tuition for the high-school instruction of all its children who may require and are prepared for it.

"Of course no State of the type of West Virginia, with a people so dispersed over a wide area, and few towns of sufficient size and valuation to support a proper high school, can expect to adopt a system of this sort. The deprivation of the children of all the Southern States of high-school opportunities is one of the chief disabilities of their educational system. We have always hoped to see in these States a fair trial of the support of a proper free high school by each county, in which all youth of suitable acquirements could be educated. Established at the county town, with a department for instruction in pedagogics and arrangements for industrial training, it would easily become the most attractive institution in the county, and be a constant stimulant to the entire system of rural district instruction. Especially in West Virginia, where the present system of grading and graduation for country schools is in operation, it would be practicable, and place the State in the front rank of educational commonwealths. The proper way to begin would be that some enterprising county should try the experiment. One year's success-and with proper management there need be no failure-would put the movement on wheels and send it 'booming' up and down the State.

"Meanwhile, as already suggested, it behooves the cities and districts that attempt to sustain a public high school to make it so efficient that it will attract a larger number of pupils. One of the most serious features of the school life of the South is the small number of boys over 15 years of age found in the schoolroom. One reason we believe is the weariness and disgust of the average boy at a great deal of the 'fooling' in the lower grades, from the inexperience and weakness of the teachers. Long before he reaches the perilous age of 14, this youngster has a very definite idea that he will get out of that sort of life as soon as may be. But a good high school, presided over by a competent man or an exceptional woman, will be an elevator to lift up large numbers of boys who need especially that school training between the years of 14 and 18 which will tell on their entire future life. The chronic defect of the present English system of public instruction, established the same year as the public schools in Virginia, is that it can not obtain parliamentary aid above the elementary grades. As a consequence, it is regularly avoided by the 'middle class,'