Page:Essays on the Higher Education.djvu/73

 the public schools is decidedly adverse to a truly liberal education. In some places the teachers of the public schools constitute as a body a kind of organized monopoly, secretly or actively employed in keeping out of all vacated positions every college-bred man, and exercising all possible influence to depreciate a college education. I have personally been cognizant of a system of public education, inaugurated in a large city, where, in the higher grade of instruction the pupils were taught at the public expense to dissect cats, to accept in toto Bain's psychology, and to despise the Christian religion; but not one of them could learn a word of Greek without the expense of a private tutor.

With the present uncertainty touching the ultimate fate of the high-school before my mind, I have only two remarks to make upon its use as a fitting-school. First: The tax-payers and voters are not likely to consent much further to multiply the variety of optional courses to be taught in the high-schools at the public expense. Second: If they are not forced by political influences greatly to restrict the amount and variety of instruction which they at present aim to impart, the high-schools of the better quality in the larger places will probably see the propriety of continuing instruction in the classical languages.

In speaking of the public high-school as a fitting-school, it is not necessary to espouse either of two