can be found in Bryce's "American Commonwealth." Reference to this' will show that such conditions must affect the public schools of these cities, however earnest the superintendents and teachers may be. The series of articles in The Forum, by Dr. Rice, also illustrates this point.

The writer paid particular attention to a school in New York, which appears to be in the transition state between a school conducted for private profit, and what in England would be a regular Endowed High School. Its pupils are drawn in great part from the highest circles of New York society, and its fees are correspondingly large, amounting to $350 (£70). This sum allows for a large staff, 24 to 200 pupils. It is governed by a Board of Directors, two of whom are women, the Chairman being the pastor of a leading church in New York.

It is difficult to furnish any statistics as to the proportion of girls and boys receiving secondary education in private schools, as compared with those attending the free public day schools. In Massachusetts 10.6% of the children are in parochial schools, and 24% in other private schools. The Bureau of Education Report for 1889-90 states that one-eighth of the pupils are in private schools; in older and wealthier sections one-sixth; in others in some cases one-thirteenth. We subjoin in the Appendix a detailed statement from the same report as to pupils receiving secondary education in private schools.

Experienced American educators say that private

1 Vol. ii. Part iii. (passim). Vol. i., Chaps. L., LI., LII.

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secondary schools are more numerous and important in the East and are comparatively unimportant (in some districts indeed entirely unknown) in the West.1 They also state that the rise of social distinctions has much to do with the development of private secondary schools, especially for girls. Other reasons of more weight from a pedagogic point of view are given for their success and popularity; these are, that the payment of fees, often very large fees,2 allows of a more expensive staff, and of smaller classes, and consequent greater attention to individuals. The good private schools employ a very large proportion of distinguished College graduates, including men and women who have taken high honours at the English Universities. It was the writer's experience, of course a somewhat limited one, to hear very much better teaching in private schools than in public schools, except in New England.

Preparation for College is largely the work of private schools, possibly because they can give more attention to individuals. We were informed by persons competent to give an opinion, that in New England and the West there is a closer connection between the public High Schools and the Colleges, than elsewhere. The writer visited five high-class boarding schools, which resembled women's colleges in their social life, in their atmosphere of culture and refinement, and in the freedom of their discipline. We

1 There is not a single private secondary school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a town of 8,000 inhabitants.

2 £20-£70 for tuition; £100-£200 for boarding.

also heard excellent teaching given in the schools, and formed a very favourable opinion of them, so far as a short visit could enable a stranger to judge. It is usual to have a separate staff of ladies, often of mature age and great social experience, to conduct any supervision that may be necessary out of school hours, the strain of teaching being considered enough for the ordinary teachers. At one school we visited there is a special system of boarding houses separate from the school, the founder considering that it is injurious to growing girls to be in the same atmosphere and to deal with the same persons during school, and out of school.

We visited one of the houses for the girls attending this school. It is a charmingly appointed building, arranged for ten or twelve girls, and headed by a House Mother, a lady of culture and social gifts, who makes a real home for the girls, the rules being only those of a well regulated family. This arrangement is valued for its refining and softening influence on the character of the pupils; they are dealt with individually rather than in the aggregate, and thus there is no need of the "military discipline" and the "incomprehensible rules which go far to blunt the child's finer nature.”

There is apparently not so much difference between the curriculum in private and public schools as might be expected. Perhaps there is a tendency to do less science, and more history and literature, in private schools. In both, Latin and mathematics are

studied.

METHOD.

THE method of actual teaching in American schools differs much from that in use in England. It centres in the text-book, at least for general High School work. For younger children the oral method is naturally the one employed; German influence in pedagogics has also done much in the elementary schools. But the young men and women of the High School are not children, to whom things have to be explained; the ideal for them is to teach them how to get knowledge for themselves. Nothing strikes an English teacher more forcibly on first listening to lessons in American schools, than the important place the text-book takes. Indeed the word "lesson" is rarely used; "recitation" is the phrase. This implies what is generally the case, that the period is to be devoted by the pupils to the recital of what they have learnt by their own study from the book. American educationalists claim that there is in this a special advantage; namely, that the varied minds of the pupils, each apprehending the subject in a different way, and each contributing his share to the common. recitation, give a greater width and interest to the work than if, as in the oral method, the teacher's personality were the only one active. If the teacher

gives the information orally, the class can only follow the subject from her point of view; and her way of thinking, it is said, is imposed on the mind of the pupil.

New work is not, as a rule, gone over in the class first; the pupil makes acquaintance with fresh knowledge by struggling with its difficulties alone. The cleverer pupils overcome these; at the lesson they recite for the benefit of their duller companions and for their own. The teacher questions the class, and it is supposed that all difficulties are thus cleared up, and that, by some additional private study, even the slowest will understand the whole matter.

In all the lessons heard by the writer the questioning was, without exception, good, whether its object was to bring out the knowledge self-acquired by the pupil, or to clear up difficulties. We did not, however, hear much of the pedagogic exercise known as eliciting a point.

This recitation method may seem to some to run counter to educational theory, and such persons would doubtless at once condemn it. It certainly has its faults; chief among these is dulness. Of course, in the hands of an especially clever teacher, it may be made lively, and may, as its supporters argue, bring the pupils' minds to converge on the subject and illustrate it from various points of view. But in general, these recitations seem to an English teacher to lack animation and interest, and she is surprised to find how attentive the students appear to be. There is also danger that the more backward and feeble pupils may never really understand the sub