The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-10-08
A MILLION AND A QUARTER
 IN THE HIGH SCHOOLS

AiN 4I1E k&144&0OA<y
 More than a million and 8 quarter hoys and girls will attend the Anneri- can high schools, public and private, during the school year 19e12-13, ac- cord4pg to the estimate of Dr. F. F. Eia1Ssn. United States Commissioner of Education Dr. Claxton has been
 assured by MT. Alexander Summers. statistician of the Bureau, who has made a special study of the matter that the estimate is conservative S,ne. Of the number given 1,100,00 are estimated for the public schools and s15o.0oo for. the private second
 Tks kmsFlc3s6 sRRaieBo95oor has grown phenomenally in the past dog en years. its development in the last two or three years being apparently greater than in the remarkaable de- cade 5uust preceding. Since the twentieth century opened the mum her of public high schools has almost doubled and the number of students is easily twice what it was at the be- ginning of the century. The most
 
 for the American citizen is the very great increase in the proportion of those who go from the grades Into the high school > Formerly {only very few years ago in fact), the high school was chiefly attended by chill dren of the rich and moderately we'll to-do- To-day nearly one-fourth of the children who enter the elementiary school eventually pass into the high school The exact figure is 22 per cent. if negro children are included and a5 per cent if whites only arel considered. This is particularly sig-1 nifcant, since certain critics of the public schools have, through 3 mis- understanding of the official reports, contended that a much smaller per- centage thann is here given had the opportunity of high-school training. The fact remains that from p to .5 of every hundred children who enter the schools at all go on into the high school
 q Almost equally significant for public education is the fact that by far the most rapid growth has been in the public schools. The private second ary schools show a healthy increase 25 per cent in attendance since 1900: but the same period. To make the comparison on another basis. Tn 1880 forty out of every hundred high schools were private.a and sixty pub lie: in 1900 the proportion had chang ed to 2S and TT: and to-day there are only 16 private secondary schools. far every s4 public high schools As to number of students: In 1890 B per cent of the pupils were in private high schools and 6S per cent. in pub nc;s to-day only 12 per cent of the pupils in private secondary 1 schools. the great bulk (sS per cent | it any wonder that the people believe | in their high school and give but l scant attention to the occasional hos tile criticism that is heard2 The pub l lie high school is winning because l the people are satisfied that it is doing its work: they realize what it has meant to the rising standard of Am erican citizenship.
 The people have shown their ap- preciation of their high school in the | most direct way possible-by support | ing it unfailingly and generously. They | have faith enough in it to pay huge | sums of money year after year that shs high school may do greater and z greater work More and more at- | tention fs being paid to high-school education. MiIiion-dollar school build ings are going up in American cit | ses-pa1aces, one might call them did | not the word suggest ,idleness, and there~is no i61eness in the present-day high school Industry, technical ability. home-making, together with the essentials of a cultural education, are being taught to our boys and girls in the splendid high schools of to- day on a scale that was never dream sd of in the civic life of any nation sefore our time
 Commissioner Claxton's widely quot ed statement of some months ago to the effect that he looked forward to the time when all boys and girls would have at least high-schoo1 cd ucaticn seems likely of fuld1lrnent sooner than even the Comm missioner himself anticipated.