Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/72

 Their difficulty is also greatly increased by the fact that they can scarcely hold most of their pupils long enough to do a thoroughly good work with them. The fact that the pupils come crude and unformed to such schools, even in all matters of the most elementary training, is coupled with the greatest haste on the part of the same pupils to pass through the intermediate stage of education, into the freer, larger, and more varied intellectual (and social and athletic) activity of the college.

And now let us consider separately each one of the three kinds into which the general grade of schools called "preparatory" may he divided. The case of the public high-school as a fitting-school is, under the present circumstances, exceedingly peculiar. Indeed, the very existence in the future of the public high-school in this country, not only as a fitting-school, but also in any shape whatever, cannot be predicted with much confidence. But at present the attitude and relations of the different schools of this grade toward the colleges vary greatly. In a few public schools the preparation given for college or for the scientific school is as good as can be obtained anywhere; in a somewhat larger number the influences are on the whole in favor of a truly liberal education. But in a very large and, I fear, increasing number of cases, especially in the West, the influence of