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LETTER.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,

BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, D. C., January 17, 1885.

SIR: It is frequently remarked by students of political history that some of the greatest defects of our form of government are developed in connection with municipal administration. Fortunately, in spite of this fact, some of the best school work in our country is found in the cities.

This is due very much to the comparatively early separation of school administration from other municipal business. In general the theory of this municipal educational administration has embraced a board of education, vested by the laws of the State with ample powers, selected from among the people of the city, so that the actual sentiments of the community shall be faithfully represented in the administration of the schools. The members of these boards generally perform their task gratuitously and have now well-nigh universally adopted the practice of committing the execution of their orders to one or more persons known as superintendents and assistants, who, by their abilities, attainments, and experience, are specially fitted for this supervisory work. Fortunately, some of the most eminent men of the land have given their most faithful service freely as members of boards of education, and it is a matter for still further gratitude and congratulation that some of the most eminent educators of the land or world have been engaged as superintendents of instruction of our cities.

Among the most prominent of these, earliest in the field, was John D. Philbrick, LL. D., who became the superintendent of Boston schools. January 10, 1857, having previously been a teacher in those schools, principal of the Connecticut State Normal School, and superintendent of public instruction for that State. It is acknowledged the world over that to him is largely and specially due the excellence of the Boston schools. A thorough man of affairs, accurate and broad in his scholarship, in the fullest sympathy with American institutions and ideas, he not only watched and guided the Boston schools that grew under his hands for twenty years, but, by travels and studies in different parts of this country and during two visits to Europe, one of which included official duties in connection with the exhibition at Vienna and the other the special organization, care, and management of the American exhi

bition of education in Paris in 1878, he had the rarest opportunities for extensive personal observation elsewhere in school matters and for phil. osophical deduction therefrom. In his retirement and with his accumu lations of literature, of observation, and of experience around him, in spite of a progressive disease of the eye that threatens complete blind ness, he has consented at my request to prepare the following report on education in cities, which I hereby recommend for publication. Every one will see that, to secure the fullest benefit to the millions interested in the administration of education in our cities and the millions yet unborn to be affected by it, the writer of this report, possessed of rare qualifications for the undertaking, should be accorded the largest freedom in bringing out his philosophical conclusions, whether they agree or not with the opinions formed in this Office; and I may add that I know of no more valuable study of city systems of public instruction than that presented in the following pages.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
JOHN EATON,

The Hon. SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

Commissioner.

Publication approved.

H. M. TELLER,
Secretary.

CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS IN THE UNITED STATES.

INTRODUCTION-DESIGN AND SCOPE OF THE REPORT.

An eminent pedagogue and savant1 of France finds one of the principal causes of the supremacy of Germany in the matter of popular education, in the exceptional division of the nation into so many independent sovranties. A sort of emulation was created among them, and thus the improvements realized at any one point were gradually adopted by the entire nation. The same emulation continues to this day. In like manner an emulation has been created among our cities which has greatly promoted educational progress; a constant compar ison is kept up by interchanges of visits and reports, and especially by the publications of the National Bureau of Education, the result of this comparison being to hasten the elimination of faults and the adoption of improvements of every description.

The object of this report is to strengthen this tendency to uniformity of excellence by a general survey, historical, critical, and comparative, of certain features and characteristics of our city systems of schools, more especially those features and characteristics in which there is found the greatest diversity in respect to progress towards the ideal standard. Comparison through historical criticism is the method of educational progress, and this is the method which it is proposed to follow in the present review. The aim is to set forth, so far as practicable within the assigned limits, such facts, figures, and opinions as may best enable each city to profit by improvements realized by other cities. It is not intended, however, to limit our observation to the systems of our own country. The educational experience of the civilized world is common property, and, while there is no danger of overrating the value and importance of home comparison, international comparison as illustrated in universal expositions is, perhaps, still more fruitful in good results. What the scientific educator needs to know is this, namely, the best things that have been thought and done relating to the matters in which he is concerned; not merely the best things that have been thought and done in his own neighborhood and in his own State, but in foreign countries as well, and especially in those countries which hold the first rank in civilization. The objector who tells us that the educational experience and opinion of foreign countries are valueless to us because of the divergence between their civilizations and ours, betrays his ignorance and reveals his incompetency for educational

'Michel Bréal, member of the "Institut," in the Dictionnaire de pédagogie.

direction. Modern civilization is rapidly tending to uniformity and unity. Each nation is hastening more and more to adopt the inventions and improvements of all the others.

The educational element of civilization forms no exception to this general drift of things. Methods of teaching have nothing to do with national boundaries. The best is the best everywhere. The essential elements of a good school system are the same in every country. There is only one best way of securing and retaining efficient teachers. A model primary school in Paris, with its appurtenances, apparatus, fittings, and program, would be no less a model primary school in Washington. If Germany has worked out the model school room, all nations must copy it. If America devises the best school desk, it must go to the ends of the civilized world. Prussia institutes the normal school; every other nation adopts it. The really good local thing, the outgrowth of educational laws, that stands the test of experiment, in time becomes general. In the mean time innumerable whims, fancies, and strange vagaries claim attention for a longer or shorter period, then disappear, leaving no beneficial trace; hence, reference to foreign examples becomes indispensable to our purpose.

Urban and rural schools are not and cannot be, and perhaps need not be, the same in all respects. In the large city and the small village or rural district the conditions of life in general and of school life in particular are not the same; that which is easy in the one is difficult in the other; certain results which suffice in the one, suffice not in the other. The rural district, more favorable in some respects, in others is less favorable than the city, and in some cases the figures in the statistical exhibits of city and rural systems are not easily harmonized. In the country there is a high degree of equality in the social condition of the inhabitants. In the city we find the extremes of wealth and poverty in one quarter we find tenement houses crowded with human beings whose earnings afford only the means of a bare subsistence, while another quarter is composed of princely dwellings filled with every luxury that wealth can buy. In the city the financial resources easily afford the means of supporting schools the year round, while the sessions of rural schools will perhaps scarcely average six months. The pupils in the city are almost universally destined to industrial or commercial pursuits, while in the country they are destined to the cultivation of the soil. In the country the pupils acquire, during the school period, habits of industry and labor; in the city they have little opportunity to become accustomed to manual labor. In the city or ganization specialization is the characteristic most prominent; in that of the rural district, on the other hand, the principal characteristic is the absence of specialization. The city system has different grades of schools; the rural has not. The former assigns to each teacher pupils of nearly the same age and advancement and, to a certain extent, those

only of one sex; the latter requires the teacher to govern and instruct pupils of all ages and both sexes. The cities draw to themselves the highest grade of teaching talent, and over the work of these teachers superintendents exercise a far more effective supervision than is enjoyed by country schools. These and other points of difference between the conditions incident to city and country schools make the administration of the former a different thing from that of the latter; hence it is evident that an advantage may be gained by a separate treatment of the characteristics and problems of city systems as herein proposed.

The reporter wishes it to be distinctly understood that he does not here attempt to present a complete statement of the organization, workings, or results of the city systems. The scope of the report is much more restricted, its aim being limited mainly to the consideration of peculiar excellences and defects which are local, for the most part, or sectional, with a view to the promoting of the generalization of the former and the elimination of the latter.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT.

In order to appreciate the extent and importance of our city systems of public instruction, it is necessary to consider the magnitude and growth, both absolute and relative, of the urban population of the country. The information for this purpose is contained in the following summary, taken from the Compendium of the Tenth Census:

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By "cities" is here meant municipalities, whether with town or city organization, containing a population of 8,000 and upwards. Of these cities, we find that there was in 1880 the enormous number of 286, containing an aggregate population of 11,318,547, or 223 per cent. of the entire population of the country; and it is safe to say that at the pres ent moment the ratio of the urban to the whole population has reached twenty-five to one hundred, or one to four. But the fact of growth, both absolute and relative, is, if possible, still more striking. If we go back only fifty years, we find that there were only twenty-six cities, or less

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