REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C., January 1, 1894. SIR: I have the honor to submit herewith my fourth annual report, the same being for the year ending June 30, 1892. GENERAL STATISTICS.' The total number of pupils in schools of all grades, public and private, including all who attended for longer or shorter periods at some time during the school year, is given (p. 2) at 14,714,933, or 22.69 per cent of the population. This number, however, does not include the pupils enrolled in evening schools, nor in schools of art or industry, in business colleges, in schools for defective classes, nor in the Indian schools. These make an aggregate of more than 300,000 pupils, and increase the total in school to over 15,000,000 pupils. The average annual increase of the school enrollment for the six years next preceding (1885-1891) was nearly 250,000 pupils (249,260). This is about the same ratio as the increase in population. But the average increase for the twenty-one years, 1870-71 to 1891-92, has been something greater (268,780), and also in excess of the ratio of the increase in population. GRADE OF PUPILS. Of these pupils 14,165,182, or 96.27 per cent of all pupils, were enrolled in the elementary grades included in the first eight years of school work. In the secondary schools, including public high schools and private academies or seminaries, there were in all 402,089 pupils (or 2.73 per cent of all) engaged on studies belonging to the third period of four years of school work (ninth to twelfth year). Only 147,662 pupils (or 1 per cent of all) were enrolled in the higher studies included in the fourth period of four years' school work, carried on in colleges, universities, professional and technical schools, including normal schools for the training of teachers. Out of an average number of 1,000 pupils 963 are in the elementary schools, 27 in the high school, and 10 in the college or professional school. See Chapters I and II, pp. 1-72. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS. Out of every 100 pupils in the elementary grade (or first eight years of school work) 91.54 pupils are in public schools and 8.46 pupils in private schools. But in secondary education (ninth to twelfth years' work) the proportion in private schools is much greater, reaching 38.41 per cent, while in the higher education 64.61 per cent of the pupils are in private institutions, and only 35.39 per cent in State universities and normal schools. The private schools enroll nearly one-sixth of the pupils in the North Atlantic division of States (including New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania), but only one-fourteenth of the pupils in the Southern and Western States, and less than one-tenth of all the pupils in the nation. As I remarked in my last report, the private school assists the public school in the way of making useful educational experiments, and in providing a safeguard against a parsimonious management on the part of public school directors. When teachers' wages are reduced private schools increase in number and excellence, and a healthy reaction sets in on the part of the friends of free schools. Moreover, a certain proportion of the children of the community have, or are supposed by their parents to have, need of special concessions either in regard to regularity of attendance, hours of schooling, course of study, or methods of instruction, and these pupils often find their requirements met in private schools. I have pointed out elsewhere that a certain proportion of private schools, say from 5 to 15 per cent of the whole teaching force, is desirable for the best progress of the whole school system. The pride of the public school system is its culivation of the virtues of regularity, punctuality, self-control, and industry; its thoroughness of instruction and its democratic association of rich and poor, of high and low in the same school. But its danger lies in the direction of too much mechanism. In its school discipline this is generally healthy unless secured by harsh punishment; but in the matter of instruction it is sometimes an overcultivation of the verbal memory and a corresponding neglect of the more human training in power of thinking, the taste for literature and art, and the ability to make the most of the gifts peculiar to the individual pupil. The private school sometimes discovers and develops better methods. in these particulars, and the teachers of the public schools profit by adopting them. Especially is this the case in that feature of work called "thoroughness." It is often the case that pupils who have mastered the new thought of a study and gained all that it gives in the way of culture or mental nourishment are kept back in their course of study for the sake of more drill in mechanical accuracy in details. It will be seen on the inspection of school programmes that pupils are sometimes kept five years on studies that can not nourish the mind of youth for more than three or four years. The elementary course is lengthened out to nine or ten years when pupils would do much better to take up secondary studies after seven or eight years devoted to elementary studies. In these matters the private school is apt to make the opposite mistake, it is true, and begin the secondary studies before the pupil has a sufficient acquaintance with elementary work. In the former case the pupil is deadened by too much mechanical perfection in dealing with details; in the latter case he is discouraged by attempt ing subjects too difficult for him to grasp. LENGTH OF SCHOOL YEAR. The average length of the annual school term increases with the growth of cities. In the North Atlantic Division the average length of the last scholastic year was 169.1 days of actual school sessions. In the South Central Division (including the Gulf States and containing few cities) the average annual term was 94.5 days. The average for the whole country was 137.1 days, the same being an increase from 132.1 days in 1870-71. The average length of annual term is slowly approaching 200 days, which is the maximum length of the school year according to present opinion. TOTAL AMOUNT OF SCHOOLING, PER CITIZEN, AT PRESENT RATES. In the table showing the actual average amount of attendance on school in the public schools (Table No. 8, p. 46) it is seen that the total number of days' attendance reported for the year is 1,172,261,842, or an average of 88.8 days apiece for the 13,205,877 pupils enrolled. In my report for 1889-90 I showed that at the present rates of attendance each inhabitant is receiving an average of four and three-tenths years' schooling, counting full years of two hundred days each, the ratio for each section of the country being as follows (counting both public and private schools): Schooling to each inhabitant, in years of 200 days each. Whole country.... North Central Division. Years. 4.30 5.89 2.52 2.56 5.15 4.40 But it should be mentioned that the above estimate does not take into consideration the fact that the proportions of children and adults vary largely in the different sections. In former reports (for 1888 and for 1889) these variations have been fully discussed. The school population of six to fourteen years was on the average for the whole country and its divisions according to the census of 1880 as follows for each 100 of population: |