66 to improve of teachers can secure good behavior more efficiently than a single teacher. The system, and what is disparaged as its mechanism,” help this result. In many cities of the largest size in the United States, corporal punishment is seldom resorted to, or is even entirely dispensed with. (See appendix V.) The discipline of the school seems after the discontinuance of harsh punishments. The adoption of a plan of building better suited for the purpose of graded schools has had much to do with the disuse of the rod. As long as the children to the number of one or two hundred studied in a large room under the eye of the principal of the school, and were sent out to small rooms to recite to assistant teachers, the order of the school was preserved by corporal punishment. When Boston introduced the new style of school building with the erection of the Quincy school in 1847, giving each class-teacher a room to herself, in which pupils to the number of fifty or so prepared their lessons under the eye of the same teacher that conducted their recitations (i. e., "heard their lessons"), a new era in school discipline began. It is possible to manage a school in such a building with little or no corporal punishment. The ideal of discipline is to train the pupil into habits of self-government. This is accomplished partly by perfecting the habit of moving in concert with others, and by selfrestraint in all actions that interfere with the work of other pupils. That the public schools of cities have worked great and favorable changes to the advantage of civil order cannot be doubted. They have generally broken up the feuds that used to prevail between the people of different precincts. Learning to live without quarreling with school-fellows is an efficient preparation for an orderly and peaceful life with one's neighbors. The rural school, with all its shortcomings, was, and is to-day, a great moral force for the sparsely settled regions, bringing together the youth of the scattered families, and forming friendships, cultivating polite behavior, affording to each an insight into the motives and springs of action of his neighbors, and teaching him how to co-operate with them in securing a common good. The city school is a stronger moral force than the rural school because of its superior training in the social habits named regularity, punctuality, orderly concerted action and self-restraint. Take any country with a school system, and compare the number of illiterate criminals with the total number of illiterate inhabitants, and also the number of criminals able to read and write with the entire reading population, and it will be found that the representation from the illiterate population is many times larger than from an equal number of people who can read and write. In the United States the prevailing ratio is about eight to one-that is to say, the illiterate population sends eight times its quota to jails. In the prisons or penitentiaries it is found that the illiterate stratum of the population is represented by two and a half times its quota. (See part IV of this monograph.) School education is perhaps in this case not a cause so much as an index of orderly tendencies in the family. A wayward tendency will show itself in a dislike of the restraints of school. however, the wayward can be brought under the humanizing influences of school, trained in good behavior, which means self-restraint and orderly concerted action, interested in school studies and the pursuit of truth, what can do more to insure a moral life, unless it is religion? If, PART II - EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES The European student of education inquiring about schools always asks concerning the laws and regulations issued by the central government at Washington, taking for granted that things of such interest as education are regulated by the nation, as in Europe. The central government of the United States, however, has never attempted any control over education within the several states. It is further than ever from any such action at the present time. The idea of local self-government is that each individual shall manage for himself such matters as concern him alone; that where two or more persons are concerned the smallest political subdivision shall have jurisdiction and legislative powers; where the well-being of several towns is concerned the county or the state may determine the action taken. But where the interests of more than one state are concerned, the nation has ultimate control. While the general government has not interfered to establish schools in the states, it has often aided them by donations of land, and in some cases by money, as in the acts of 1887 and 1890, which appropriate annual sums in aid of agricultural experiment stations and increase the endowment of agricultural colleges, which were formerly established in 1862 by generous grants of land. The total amount of land donated to the several states for educational purposes since 1785 to the present have been as follows: I. For public or common schools: Acres Every 16th section of public land in states admitted 67,893,919 2. For seminaries or universities: Two townships in each state or territory contain- 1,165,520 At the rate of one dollar and a quarter an acre (the traditional price asked by the government for its lands) this amounts to about one hundred millions of dollars. Besides this a perpetual endowment by act of 1887 is made of $15,000 per annum for each agricultural experiment station connected with the state agricultural college, and $25,000 perpetual additional endowment by act of 1890 for each of the colleges themselves - this is equivalent to a capitalized fund of one million dollars at four per cent for each state and territory, or in the aggregate about fifty millions more. The general government supports the military school at West Point, established in 1802, to which each congressional district, territory (and the District of Columbia) is entitled to send one cadet, the president appointing ten additional cadets at large. Each cadet receives $540 a year to pay his expenses. (The course of study is four years. The number of graduates between 1802 and 1876 was 2,640, about fifty per cent of all admitted.) The United States naval academy at Annapolis was established in 1845. Its course of study in 1873 was extended to six years. Cadets are appointed in the same manner as at West Point. The general government provides for the education of the children of uncivilized Indians and for all the children in Alaska. There have been, besides the general grants referred to, special grants of land for educational purposes such as the "swamp lands" (Acts of 1849, 1850, 1860), by which 62,428,419 acres were given to 14 states (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin) and by some of these appropriated to education. By the act of 1841 a half million of acres was given to each of sixteen states (including all above named except Indiana and Ohio, and besides these Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada and Oregon). This gives an aggregate of 8,000,000 of acres, the proceeds of most of which was devoted to education. The surplus funds of the United States treasury were in 1837 loaned to the older states for educational purposes to the amount of $15,000,000 and this fund constitutes a portion of the school fund in many of the states. The aggregate value of lands and money given for education in the several states is therefore nearly three hundred millions of dollars. In 1867 congress established a national bureau of education "for the purpose of collecting such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several states and territories, and of diffusing such information respecting the organization and management of school systems and methods of teaching as shall aid the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems, and otherwise promote the cause of education throughout the country." This bureau up to 1898 has published 350 separate volumes and pamphlets including 30 annual reports ranging from 800 to 2,300 pages each. The policy of the national government is to aid education but not in anywise to assume its control. The several states repeat in the general form of their state constitutions the national constitution and delegate to the subdivisions— counties or townships counties or townships- the management of education. (See appendix VIII, The local unit of school organization.) But each state possesses centralized power and can exercise it when the public opinion of its population demands such exercise. Compulsory attendance - Even in colonial times as far back as 1642 a compulsory law was enacted in Massachusetts inflicting penalties on parents for the neglect of education. In the revival of educational interest led by Horace Mann in the years after 1837, it was felt that there must be a state law, with specific provisions and penalties and this feeling took definite shape and produced legislative action. A truant law was passed in 1850 and a compulsory law in 1852, requiring a minimum of 12 weeks attendance on school each year for children between the ages of eight and fourteen under penalty of twenty dollars. In the Connecticut colony in 1650 the Massachusetts law of 1642 was adopted. Amendments were adopted in 1805 and 1821. By a law of 1813 manufacturing establishments were compelled to see that "the children in their employ were taught to read, write and cipher [arithmetical calculation], and that attention was paid to their morals." In |