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In the State, during the decade 1890-1900, while the growth in enrollment in the common schools was 16 per cent, the number of public secondary schools increased 140 per cent; the number of academies (including denominational schools) 34 per cent; the total net property of secondary schools and the number of secondary students more than 100 per cent. In 1903 secondary schools reported 95,096 students and a total net property of $33,771,006.27, with expenditures for the year of $7,106,999.90, as follows: High school property, $14,400,278.45; high school expenditures, $5,007,055.02; academic property, $19,370,727.82; academy expenditures, $2,099,944.88. Beyond this the State has entered upon the policy of making an allotment to the high schools for the tuition of pupils who may come from districts without high schools in order to equalize the State largess for secondary education to all of the people, and particularly to make sure of aiding the more aggressive pupils in the less fortunate districts. The appropriation for this each year equals more than half of the entire sum which the State appropriates annually for the encouragement of secondary education. From this it is clear that neither the State government nor the people in their local communities have been indifferent or unintelligent in the upbuilding of secondary schools. Taking the whole State together, in spite of the fact that the hindrances to the diffusion of higher education augment with the size and particularly with the congestion of population, New York justifies the splendid commendation of the author of The Making of the Middle Schools. If the special drawbacks which present themselves in the metropolis were to be eliminated the presentation would abundantly show not only the best organized system of secondary education developed on American soil, as Professor Brown puts it, but it would show about as abundant and energetic, and probably more evenly distributed, provision for secondary instruction as will be found anywhere in the land.

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But before passing from the city of New York it ought to be distinctly said that the rapidity of growth in the high schools located within the territory embraced by the boundaries of Greater New York since 1897 is altogether unprecedented in the history of education in this country. In 1897 the number of high school students was 2,360, in 1904, 27,824, an increase of 1,079 per cent. Within the same period the number of teachers increased from 111 to 841, or 658 per cent; the annual expenditures from $161,084 to $2,922,648, an increase of 1,714 per cent; value of grounds, buildings, and equipment from $637,245 to $5,761,004, an increase of 804 per cent. Nor is this all. There are in addition five high school buildings in process of erection, the aggregate contract price of which is above $3,000,000.

THE FUTURE.

Now, let us turn our faces to the future. A careful inquiry, with no purpose but the ascertainment of the truth, seems to make it clear that the people of this State have not been remiss in setting up secondary schools; that in the number of schools and of pupils we are above the average; that the advance in numbers in the last decade has been as remarkable as gratifying; that with the exception of New York City these schools are evenly distributed over the territory and are fairly representative of the population of the State, and that in the city the evolution is now going forward as heroically and splendidly as it ever did anywhere. This is not saying that there is not room for more, or that what we have are not to be made stronger. We are to ascertain what will accomplish both of these ends.

We have been speaking of numbers rather than of excellence. There is no reason known to me for imputations upon the character of these schools. I should be surprised to learn, after all that has been said or done, of any proof that the average of buildings, of equipment, of teaching power, and of work accomplished was not high. Yet I have seen enough of school work to know that it often happens that people who have very indifferent schools think that they have the very best because no one does them the service of telling them the truth. It would not be surprising if there are many schools registered for but a part of the high school course which make the serious mistake of being more ambitious for a high-sounding name and for appearing to do a lot of work rather than for occupying a minor place, which is just as honorable, if they will do what they may do just as well as it can be done. A school which is giving a 48 count diploma in less than four years and with indifferent facilities should not be allowed to think that it is doing it as well as it may be done. There is nothing to be said against and there is much to be said for starting schools before they are able to do four full years' work, but there is everything to be said against a 50-cent piece having the effrontery to try to pass itself off for a dollar.

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Much would be accomplished if a movement to standardize the work of the secondary schools in all parts of this State, which is now under serious discussion, could be successful. And if that could be identified with the standard for admission to college established by the College Entrance Examination Board of the Middle States and Maryland the need of State universities in the Eastern States will be less urgent and logical than it otherwise will be, while the advantages to the colleges will be very considerable and the placing of more exact values upon the work of all secondary schools will be more stimulating and steadying than we can now foresee.

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Massachusetts makes, as she has always made, secondary schools compulsory by statute, though I am unaware how far the statute has been executed against a reluctant community. Not until recent years has the State appropriated State funds for the support of these schools. New York has required an elementary school of at least reasonable character within reach of every home. It has tried to assure the quality of the teaching by keeping in its own hands the certification of teachers while in our excellent sister State to the east that has been left to the same local authority which employed the teachers. After doing as much as that, and it has been very much, our State has left all the rest, including the secondary schools, to community initiative and local pride. We have stirred local initiative by favoring legislation, and we have done what reasonably might be done through the liberal distribution of State moneys to give education in every town and hamlet in the State the advantages which the stronger and wealthier communities owed to it. We have compelled in nothing save that there shall be a suitable building and a qualified teacher for a common elementary school. To that extent we expect to maintain a compulsion which compels. Beyond that we encourage and aid, and then give to every community the satisfaction which must flow from its own accomplishments.

Our plan has prevailed from the beginning of our educational history and it prevails nearly everywhere in the country. Under it we have as excellent schools, both primary and secondary, as we would have had under a more mandatory system of legislation, while we have an educational system which is altogether unique in its flexibility and adaptiveness to all local conditions as well as in the stimulus which gives to the intellectual self-activity of a community and to willing popular support because of free popular proprietorship.

Now and again it has been proposed that we shall adopt some compulsory policies which will assure the universality of the secondary schools. Any step in that direction would be necessarily disturbing in the affairs of a system now grown great and in my judgment would remove from it its finest flavor and the features which make for its best efficiency. It should not be done unless necessary, and the necessity is not apparent. A secondary school is not necessary to safe citizenship. It may or it

may not be necessary to the child's best chance in the world. That depends upon conditions. I can conceive of conditions in which compulsory attendance upon a secondary school might be what I would think an interference with the right of the parent and the best interest of the child. Whether or not that is conclusive of the question as one of policy, it is conclusive of it as one of principle. Going on just as we are we shall have secondary schools quite as universal as they can be useful, and wherever they are they will stir the pride and hold the affections of a people.

New York recently began in paying from the State treasury $20 per year for the tuition of each nonresident pupil attending an established high school, a policy which proves her intelligent interest in a great subject and may easily be the instrument of very great results. But it seems to me that this movement needs some guidance to the end that it may do the most good, indeed that it may do more good than harm. Very possibly the legislation has not yet reached its final form, and it needs generous and unselfish treatment to the end that its enduring state may be free from danger and full of good. I am confident you will agree with me in these propositions.

1. The point of this legislation is not to aid established high schools. That is done otherwise and very amply. If not sufficiently, the remedy is upon application alleging the fact and by legislation which avows the purpose.

2. The State has not intended to change its thoroughly established policy of only encouraging secondary instruction. It has not begun the policy of wholly providing such instruction without cost to pupils in districts without high schools. If it had, the logical result would be absolute State support of all high schools, which would be mistaken, if not absurd.

3. The point of this movement is to aid deserving pupils in nonhigh school districts, through equalizing to them the advantages which State appropriations now give to pupils in high school districts.

4. The State must not make it to the interest of a district without a high school to refrain from establishing one. It must not set up a policy which would develop great secondary schools, really small colleges, at central points by taking away the strength of existing schools in smaller places or at the cost of preventing additional schools.

5. The State ought not to put upon existing schools the burden of instructing nonresident pupils at much less than actual cost, and ought not to encourage boards and principals to do this, in the interest of the mere largeness or prominence of schools.

6. The movement should have in mind, not one interest as against another, but every educational interest of the State. It must aid the weaker district and the specially deserving youth. The new stream of financial support must be made to help the interests of secondary education, not where it needs no help, but where it really needs help, and most where it needs most help, and particularly to help boys and girls who will not get help without it. And it must be done so that the particular help afforded will not injure general or continuing interests.

Without any wholly confident judgment as to next steps in this connection, the foregoing propositions seem sound, and it is not certain that the existing legislation exactly squares with them. But time and discussion will point the way for us. We have never yet been unable to put an appropriation where it would do the most good, and we are not likely to be derelict now.

THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND THE CERTIFICATION OF TEACHERS.

The recent determination to accept the standings gained in the secondary schools for admission to the teaching profession affords an added reason, if any were needed, for universal interest in these schools, for giving the best attention to their affairs and for standardizing their work with the closest exactness. The fact illustrates, if it does not measure, the advantages of the educational unification movement in the State.

SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND DISTRICT SCHOOLS UNDER SAME SUPERVISION.

Let me add that I have been giving considerable thought to the interests of the country schools, and I am impressed with the belief, which I have heretofore expressed to the State Association of School Commissioners, that those schools would be much benefited if they and the union schools and the town secondary schools could be actually related to each other in the same supervisory district. A like advantage would accrue to the higher schools.

I am not unaware that under the law they are commonly in the same supervisory district now. But it is more a legal fiction than an actual fact. The manner in which school commissioners are chosen and the entire absence of statutory requirements or accepted understanding as to qualifications, results in the election of many commissioners who have aptness for public affairs, but who can not be actually accepted as superintendents of the technical affairs of the larger and higher schools. To say that this is always so would of course be unjust, but that it is widely so will not be denied. I shall be wholly within the limits of truth if I go further and add that in many a whole county taken together there is no actual supervision of the rural schools, and we all know well enough that schools are not likely to get on as well without it as with it.

The fact that it would be impossible of success if there were not an even stronger reason, as there is, is enough to make any movement to abolish the district system uninviting. It is hardly worth while to entertain ourselves with things that can not be done or ought not to be done. But a movement to relate the secondary schools with the elementary schools in a unit of supervision which is small enough to make supervision possible, and under a superintendent who can superintend the largest and the highest as well as the smallest and the weakest to their advantage, is possible of attainment and would be beneficent in its consequences.

Kindly give this matter the benefit of your reflections, as it may quite possibly be a subject of future discussion.

TRAINING TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

The unprecedented growth of our secondary schools has created a demand for teachers of advanced work which it has been difficult to meet. The graduations from college are more than ever before, but high schools want a large proportion of men teachers, and the number of thoroughly prepared men who want to teach is small. Boys who have been taught by women all through the elementary grades must at least hear a masculine voice and get things from a man's point of view by the time they get into the high school.

But the difficulty is rather deeper than that not many men incline to teaching. The work of the colleges does not incline them. Other callings seem more inviting, and the colleges do but little by way of corrective. The colleges do not take much stock in educational theory about the professional training of teachers. College managements are more worldly wise than they used to be, so they nod to this theory in a polite way rather than lose any practical advantage which might result from ignoring it. But such interest as most of them take in it comes from prudence rather than conviction. And it must be admitted that when a university does establish a separate department upon the theory that education is a science and teaching a profession, unless it makes a separate school with considerable autonomy of its own, it finds difficulty in securing professors who can justify the theory and stir the efforts of ambitious men students. Yet you and I know that one can hardly hope to become a successful teacher without deep study of educational history, theory, and practice.

But if one can not teach without knowing how to teach, he surely can not teach without knowing the subject he is to teach. The courses in the State normal schools

(excepting the State Normal College) are not broad enough in subject-matter to prepare for teaching in the secondary schools, and it seems to me can not be made so without an unwarrantable expense and the probability of lessening the attendance and withdrawing their direct and imperative aid to the elementary schools.

Now, I have no doubt about the need of college-bred men and women, with a good proportion of men, who have been prepared to teach, for the work of the secondary schools. We are not getting a sufficient supply. There is a hiatus in the educational system. The academies have rather the better of this because of their independent self-control, because of their somewhat greater exclusiveness, and because of their closer college connections. The high schools are suffering. It is time to do something, and the something might as well be decisive. Why not set a date when no teacher without an approved college degree shall be newly appointed in any secondary school while the school shares in State appropriations?

This would help the high schools most decisively. And it would do much more. It would help the colleges to a really serious appreciation of their responsibility for the plane of work in the secondary schools, and it would accentuate and vitalize the college influence in the educational system and in all the intellectual life of the State.

This State has been splendidly aggressive in uplifting the learned professions. It is no reflection upon any other work of recent years in the regents' office to say that the best things done have been the development of additional secondary schools and the closing of the doors to the learned professions against persons who are not learned. Not one whit of anything accomplished is to be lost. All we have gained we are to hold, and more. There is to be no slacking of the pace. But let us be specific. In view of the high ground gained for all of the other professions it ought not to be difficult to do as much for the teaching profession. It is an absurdity to protect the other professions · and neglect the most important teaching positions. The truth is we are, relatively speaking, protecting against incompetency in the elementary schools, even the little ones at the crossroads, more than in the highest and largest schools we have, if I except certain cities where special or local laws apply.

The educational system must balance. The work in the upper schools is the hope of all the schools below them. There must be universal recognition of the worth of scholarship-not merely of its form or its pretensions, but of its juices and its flavor and of its power to apply itself to the real concerns of life. Where shall this be if not in the schools? Surely where, if not in the policies of an ambitious State system of education? It will be unfair to accept this as a general imputation against the teachers of our middle schools. They have met the demands of their day. They have carried us over a transition period in the evolution of a great system. They are in most cases better prepared to serve us still than other or younger teachers can be. No criticism upon them and nothing but compliment for them is intended. They brought all that they could get into their work and it was much. They have supplemented it with experience and study. Nothing more could be asked of them. Nothing shall be done which could reflect upon them now. But we are facing new conditions and a new outlook. We must provide for an opening era. And we must make that era as great as we can through the sagacity of our plans and the abundance and forehandedness of our provision for it.

CONCLUSION.

I must thank you for your patience, as I do very warmly, and speak my concluding word. The educational territory between the elementary schools and the colleges has come to be well occupied, and it will be as completely occupied as it is possible for occupancy to serve the ends of a free people. This educational territory is historicas engaging as the middle ground which stretches through the valleys of the Hudson and the Mohawk is enticing in the fascinating story of the Revolution. Upon this ground educational exclusiveness has met the democratic intellectual advance and