Page:Education and Life; (IA educationlife00bakerich).pdf/73

 boys and girls to begin their preparation for college at least two years earlier than they now do. If our high schools could receive the pupils at eleven or twelve, instead of fourteen, preparation for college would be completed at sixteen instead of eighteen, as is now generally the case."

The custom in European countries supports the view that high-school methods should reach down into the grades. In Prussia only three years of elementary work precede the gymnasium, and the pupil can enter the gymnasium at the age of nine. The gymnasium itself covers a period of nine years, extending five years below the period of our high schools. Examining the course of the Prussian gymnasium, we find in the first five years, or before the age of fourteen, Latin, Greek, French, history, geometry, natural history; and it is conceded by many educators that more is attained by the age of eighteen in Germany than in this country; that at the age of fourteen in Germany the development of the pupil is more mature, and that in essential features of education he has made more desirable progress.

If our high schools should be made equivalent in length and rank to the Prussian gymnasium, the change would involve the entire reconstruction of our school system, from the primary school to the end of the university. The high schools would become colleges, and the colleges would become high schools, and the graduates from them would enter the university prepared to take up professional or other special university work. That there are many leading educators who advocate these changes for the universities is well known, and there are some