Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/49

 This latter section is supposed to constitute the "higher" or highest education. Neither of these two sections of what, in its entirety, virtually represents the secondary education of the country—the education which must be required in preparation for the university—is in a satisfactory condition.

No one who is acquainted with the subject would think of claiming that (with a few exceptions) the high-schools and academies and other places for fitting youth for college are doing their work in a satisfactory way. This fact, however, is by no means wholly due to fault or deficiency on their part; indeed, education is so much of an organic unity that, if any of the stages or elements of it be defective, the deficiency is felt throughout all the subsequent growth of the entire organism. The secondary education is so unsatisfactory partly because of the condition of that primary education on which the secondary must be built. For, here again, no one acquainted with the subject would think of claiming that the public and private schools which start the process of education are in anything like a satisfactory condition. Probably the average public school of the primary grade is, on the whole, more effective than the average private school of the same grade. But what is the condition of the public schools of the primary grade in this country? To speak the truth plainly,