CHAPTER XV.

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.

This chapter presents in tabular form the salient particulars relative to elementary schools of different countries, so far as these schools are under public supervision or aided by public funds. All modern nations have endeavored to provide for the elementary education of the people, and this provision becomes, therefore, a means of comparing their status in respect to efforts for overcoming illiteracy. Such comparison is established by column 8 of the foreign table, giving for each country the percentage of the population in its elementary schools.

For comparative purposes the figures for the States of the German Empire present certain difficulties, due to a change in the method of compilation on the part of the imperial Government. The enrollment and other items in the table are those given in the statistical report issued by the imperial office for the Volksschulen alone. The Mittelschulen and Vorschulen, both of which give some instruction of elementary grades, have not been included, though in the corresponding table in previous reports the statistics of the Mittelschulen were added to those of the Volksschulen. Because of this change, comparison between the presentation for the German States, on the new basis, and that in previous Reports of the Commissioner of Education does not give the German States their true standing in the comparative scale. Including the schools omitted from the table, the ratios of enrollment to population for the States seriously affected by the change in the method of reporting would be raised as follows: Prussia, from 16.5 to 17.2 per cent, including Mittelschulen and Vorschulen; Saxony, from 16.2 to 17; Baden, from 15.8 to 16.2; Mecklenburg-Schwerin, from 14.6 to 15.5; Oldenburg, from 17.2 to 18; Anhalt, from 12.8 to 13.3; Reuss J. L., from 15.3 to 16.8; Lippe, from 16.3 to 16.9; Lubeck, from 11.8 to 15.4 (because of the unusually large number of Mittelschulen); Bremen, from 13 to 13.6; Hamburg, from 12.1 to 12.6; and Alsace-Lorraine, from 13.6 to 14.1.

Attention is also called to the fact that in European countries, as a rule, there is a social cleavage between the public elementary schools and secondary schools, and hence the children who are sent to the secondary schools do not receive their preliminary instruction in the public elementary schools. Since, however, the latter are schools