scarcely one can be found which allows girls to be educated. The object of the pious founders was almost wholly to teach boys Greek and Latin, together with religion.
But if the women of a nation are practically uneducated, the educational system of that people is insecure. If the man vetoes the education of the woman, the ignorance of the woman forbids the education of the child. If the child has not that home education which, as Plato said, is of all things most valuable, the vicious circle of ignorance is complete. Does that account partly for the past of our educational deficiencies?
At any rate, whatever the explanation, the history of our education up to the closing decades of the nineteenth century is not merely a record of stagnation but even of lamentable and painful decline. That statement is not speculative or hypothetical. It can be proved to the hilt by a perusal of the conclusions of the Commissions which sate in the 1860's, and reported respectively on our elementary and secondary education. Altogether, these documents stand to the pedagogic world as the report of 1843 stands to the industrial. They revealed a deplorable condition of ignorance, chaos, and decay.
As touching elementary education at that date, it was required for 4,300,000 children. Of these no less than 2,000,000 were not at school at all; while another 1,000,000 were at schools of utter inefficiency. The rest were distributed among
