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��The Free High School.
��THE FREE HIGH SCHOOL.
By Frances Abbott.
��Of all the taxes which our citizens annually pay for the promotion of the common weal, there is none whose necessity is more unquestioned than that which goes for the support of the public schools. The benefits of free education have been so long the theme of newspaper and orator, that nothing new can be said in its praise ; yet probably not one person in a hundred realizes the good and the possible evil that may be implanted in a commu- nity by the public schools.
Our pride in the free school system as a whole has made us neglectful of criticizing it in particular, till, like most flourishing exponents of Amer- ican progress, it is bearing consider- able defective fruit. Of late there has been much uneasiness about edu- cational methods and results. Charles Francis Adams's arraignment of the college policy is not the only expres- sion of dissatisfaction with the un- practical training of our institutions of learning. The college is the goal of the academies and fitting-schools, the crowning difficulty in the acquire- ment of a liberal education. But, however large its indirect infiuence, it is not the institution of immediate concern to the majority of our citizens. The public school system is of inter- est to the whole people. No occasion attracts larger audiences than the final exercises of the high schools, which every year dispense their blue ribbon- ed diplomas, and scatter a grist of graduates upon an unfeeling world.
It is a truism, that whatever you wish to appear in the life of a nation,
��you must p»t into the education of the children. Let us see how a part of the public-school money is spending for the benefit of the country. The high school is the critical point in our free school system. It is the apex toward which all the rest is built. The fact that a majority of the public- school children never reach its grade, does not prevent its exercising a shap- ing infiuence over the whole system. Its graduates, though proportionally they may be few, are numerically so many, that their future is every year becoming a matter for more serious consideration. That we may better understand the work of the high school, let us compare it for a mo- ment with its predecessor, the old- fashioned academy. The last thirty vears have brousfht about the rise of the one and the decline of the other. To estimate their value we must com- pare also their dependent and sup- porting institutions.
Our fathers and mothers '^ picked up" their early education in country district schools. They got their learn- ing, like everything else, by "hard knocks ;" — it cost them an effort. The long spaces between the terms were not simply vacations to be filled up with play : they were the most serious part of the year to the boys and girls, who spent them developing their muscles and their faculties in work on the farm. In school there was no routine and no fixed course. The advancement of the pupils de- pended chiefiy upon their individual capacity and willingness to work —
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