Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/60

50 schools, as likely to yield results which, can not but be conducive to educational progress in this country.

As might be expected from the eminence of its author, the paper of President Eliot has excited much interest in regard to the French secondary school programmes. Much comment has resulted both as to the facts and the conclusions arrived at. The facts represented in the address as to the age of matriculates in American colleges are only too patent. The defects of the programmes of the preparatory schools of this country are unfortunately equally patent. The great need of some readjustment of existing methods of our fitting schools and schools of grammar and even primary grades, for the benefit of boys preparing for modern collegiate, scientific, and university training, is so imperative that no friend of educational advance in this country can fail to welcome this valuable contribution to the literature of the subject given by the President of Harvard University. But, notwithstanding his admirable paper, and the comment which has followed, so far as one can judge from the literature of the controversy, no one has apparently made haste to follow President Eliot's advice and make any serious comparative examination of the French and American school programmes. On the contrary, there are indications that, with true American inconsequence, many persons are already either clamoring for the adoption of the French curricula forthwith, as a panacea for all our secondary school deficiencies, or, with great lack of knowledge and accurate information, are condemning them outright as a foreign growth quite unsuited to American soil. This is to be regretted; for assuredly the comparative study of the programmes of the two countries would give American school boards and American parents much information that should be known and accurately known. This examination is additionally desirable from the fact that, in his felicitous presentation of some characteristics of the lyce'e curriculum, Dr. Eliot seems to have omitted to note some of the more important features of the programmes that give them their strength, and has quite failed to point out how it happens that the French boy is really enabled to pass his examinations for the baccalauréat ès lettres at the early age of seventeen years. It may also be said that the examination is likewise desirable for the reason that President Eliot has inadvertentlv made some statements as to the French courses of study that the official programmes hardly seem to warrant.

In the present paper the attempt will be made to present, in a somewhat more precise manner than has been undertaken by President Eliot, certain details of the curricula of not only the classical lycées, but also of the secondary special schools of France. In connection with this, the attempt will also be made to