Circular of Information of the Bureau of Education, for ...

would give to the country a reliable account, not only of their institu tions for the education of girls, but of their general methods of instruc tion, discipline, moral, religious, and social training; also the movement of the Church in educational work among the Negroes. Many of these schools are understood to have introduced industrial training with excellent results.

Fourth. It is especially important that the great central American agency for the education and training American children for good American citizenship, the common shool, should have the benefit of all successful experiments in every department of school life. The entire realm outside the common school is in one sense, in our country, the realm of liberty.

Many suggestions for the general improvement of educational affairsmoral, religious, industrial, and social-can there be tested and, when their value is fully demonstrated, adopted by the common school as far as possible. In this direction alone must we look for the final solution of the present conflict between public, private, denominational, and collegiate systems of education, and to this end all good schools. may "work together for good."

CXXIX.

Fifth. But perhaps the most serious obstacle to a just estimate of the extent and value of the educational opportunities now offered to young women of the white race in the Southern States is the confusion arising from the habit, originally formed in the States west of the Hudson River, of bestowing the highest educational titles upon schools of secondary and often merely elementary character. Whatever may have been the defects of the original system of education in the New England States, the name of the school from the beginning to the present time has been a correct exponent of its grade and character. The district, high, and normal divisions of the common school; the academy, institute, and seminary; the college, and later the university and school of technology, mark the fixed departments of educational work as understood and administered at different periods. But with the great movement of population westward came in the mischievous, confusing, and untruthful practice of nailing a sign with an imposing name over the door, especially of the private and denominational schoolhouse. From the Berkshire hills to the Pacific these great States have thus been filled with educational establishments whose names were no correct indication of their quality. The common-school system alone has been free from this vicious habit, preserving the legitimate names: District school for the ungraded collections of children in the rural districts; with kindergarten, primary, intermediate, high, city training and State normal, and university, to indicate the established divisions of educa tional work.

The same excellent habit adheres to the new common-school system of the South, the term "graded" being used to distinguish village and city systems from the district school of the open country, and high, normal, and university being fitly applied to the upper story of the public-school structure. But the entire region of the private and denominational system of education through these sixteen States, at present and for years to come perhaps destined to even a greater relative importance than in the North, is so involved in this confusing and unreliable nomenclature, itself largely implicated in personal, sectarian, and local pretensions, that it is simply impossible, even for the most careful and fair-minded observer, to convey to the educational public abroad a reliable impression of the actual value of the schooling im parted under these various names.

This, however, can honestly be affirmed that the foremost educators and the leading educational public of the South are following the heroic movement of the Central and Western States out of this jungle of unveracity up to the high ground of a substantial and truthful basis for all grades, especially of the private and denominational systems of instruction. In this laudable effort the United States Bureau of Education is now in condition to coöperate, and each of its forthcoming reports will be more satisfactory than ever, not only as a reliable source of information concerning the actual condition of public education, and a catalogue, as complete as possible, of private and denominational schools of every character, but, what is equally desirable, will be able to furnish a reliable educational map, in which the different grades of schooling will be accurately represented in the educational landscape.

CXXX.

TABLE No. 7.

List of Catholic schools for girls, with number of parochial schools, and whole number of pupils in fifteen Southern States and District of Columbia and Territories.

[Copied from Sadlier's Catholic Directory for 1891.]
ARCHDIOCESE OF BALTIMORE, MD.