CHAPTER I

THE PRESENT POSITION OF LATIN AND GREEK

The heat of the strife over the position of the ancient classics in our curricula has died away. Only rarely nowadays does either the advocate or the opponent of the study of Latin and Greek indulge in polemics. The latter is satisfied because he knows that in most schools and colleges the student has no reason to take instruction in Latin unless he elects the study of his own free choice, and that in the great majority of public high schools, now more than 10,000 in number, no opportunity is afforded to study Greek even if the pupil desires to do so; and the friends of the classics, engaged meanwhile in adjusting themselves so far as may be to the new conditions, have observed that the questions relating to the status of Greek and Latin are, for the most part, merely phases of a much broader problem, which has to do not only with the determination of educational values but also with the adjustment of the limits of prescription and election of studies. The chaotic condition of the courses in many of the larger institutions of secondary as well as of collegiate rank must eventually, for administrative if not for educational reasons, give place to a more systematic grouping of subjects; and a general movement in that direction has already begun. The time has come for the fresh consideration of course-making along constructive lines; we are justified, therefore, in entering upon an inquiry as to the place which Latin and Greek now have, and should have, in our courses of study.

The statistics giving the enrolment of students in the

studies of secondary schools, which have been published in the Reports of the Commissioner of Education since 1890, have been much discussed and variously interpreted. Whatever may be the difficulty of drawing from them correct inferences in regard to matters of detail, it is safe to use them as a gauge or register of general tendencies; but before presenting the figures showing the enrolment in Latin and Greek it will be necessary to take account of the statistics of attendance.

In 1889-90 the total attendance in public and private high schools and academies in the United States was reported as 297,894; fourteen years later, 1903-4, it had reached the surprising number of 739,215. While the population of the country in this period increased about 28 per cent, the attendance of the secondary schools was more than doubled. The rate of increase, however, was not the same in the two classes of schools. In 1889-90 202,963 students were enrolled in 2,526 public high schools, and there were 94,931 students in 1632 private high schools and academies; in 1903-4, the public high schools numbered 7,230, their students 635,808, while the other secondary schools were only 1,606 in number, with 103,407 students. The rate of increase in the enrol

In the Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1908-9 the total enrolment of secondary students in the United States is given as 1,034,827; in 1909-10, the number 1,131,466 was reported. In this number are included students in "public high schools, public normal schools, public universities and colleges," "private" high schools, normal schools, universities and colleges, "private colleges for women," and manualtraining schools. "While the number of secondary students in the preparatory departments of colleges and other institutions is given," says the Report for 1904 (Vol. II, p. 1729), "it has been found impracticable to collect complete statistics of such departments." For this reason statistics showing the number of secondary students enrolled in various studies are limited to the public and private high schools and academies. In 1908-9 the students enrolled in public and private high schools and academies numbered 934,929.

ment of students in the private high schools and academies fell considerably below the rate of increase of population; but there were more than three times as many students in public high schools in 1903-4 as there were in 1889–90. In 1909-10 the total attendance in public and private high schools and academies was 1,032,461;1 915,061 (398,525 boys and 516,536 girls) in 10,213 public high schools, and 117,400 (55,474 boys and 61,926 girls) in 1,781 schools of private support. In the decade 1900 to 1910 the population of the continental United States increased about 21 per cent; the enrolment in public high schools more than 60 per cent. The enrolment reported in public high schools in 1909-10 was more than four and one-half times as great as that reported twentyone years earlier, in 1889-90.

The phenomenal growth of the public high schools is significant from several points of view. The causes to which it is due cannot even be enumerated here; but of immediate bearing upon our subject is the consequence that the drain upon the resources of taxpayers occasioned by the necessity of providing buildings, equipment, and instruction to meet unanticipated demands has been so great as to retard the normal increase in the compensation of teachers, which should keep pace with the increase in the cost of living and of professional preparation. The inadequacy of compensation has driven from the high schools many of the strongest men on the staff of instruction, who have been forced to abandon teaching for less congenial but more lucrative pursuits; and it tends to deter young men of promise from entering the profession.

1 The writer is indebted to Mr. Elmer E. Brown, Commissioner of Education, and to Mr. L. A. Kalbach, Acting Commissioner, for these and other statistics kindly furnished in advance of publication.

The enrolment of students in Latin in the secondary schools of the United States in 1889-90 was 100,144, or 33.62 per cent of the attendance; in 1898-99 the number had risen to 291,695, or 50.29 per cent; in 1903-4 to 369,329, or 49.96 per cent; in 1909-10 to 405, 502, or 49.59 per cent of the attendance in the schools reporting enrolment by studies.1 In 1889-90, then, one student in three was studying Latin; from 1898 to 1906 about onehalf of all the students were enrolled in Latin classes. But here again there is a line of cleavage between the public high schools and the private high schools and academies. Up to 1905-6 the proportion of the students who took Latin was slightly lower in the latter than in the former; the Latin students in the public high schools from 1898 to 1906 averaged more than 50 per cent of the entire attendance. In 1903-4, 46,301 students were enrolled in Latin in the private high schools and academies, less than one-half of the number being girls; in the public high schools 323,028 were enrolled, of whom, in round numbers, 198,000 were girls and 125,000 boys. For the three years 1906-7, 1907-8, and 1908-9 data relating to the enrolment in secondary studies were not collected. In 1909-10, 362,548 students (147,598 boys and 214,950 girls) were reported as studying Latin in the public high schools, and 42,954 (20,976 boys and 21,978 girls) in the private schools.

A relatively large enrolment in Latin in private high schools and academies might have been anticipated, because the work of these institutions as a class is definitely

1 The number of public high schools reporting enrolment by studies in 1909-10 was 8,097; of private high schools, 1,281. Of these, 7,298 public high schools and 1,191 private schools reported students in Latin; only 353 public high schools and 413 private high schools and academies reported students in Greek.

specialized in the direction of preparation for college, and the college-entrance requirements have generally made Latin a leading subject. The large enrolment in Latin in the public high schools is not so easily explained.

In the central and western states the majority of the public high schools have from the beginning aimed to give preparation for college; and as high-school systems were developed in the Atlantic states they too shaped their courses in conformity with college-entrance requirements. Nevertheless in 1889-90 only 14.44 per cent of the students in this class of schools were recorded as preparing for college, and in 1903-4 the proportion was less than 10 per cent, while in other secondary schools between a fourth and a third of the boys and about oneeighth of the girls were enrolled in preparatory courses; in 1908-9 less than 7 per cent of the students in the public high schools were preparing for college. The enrolment in Latin in the public high schools has beyond doubt been greatly influenced by the prominence of this subject as a college-entrance requirement; even in schools in which the percentage of preparatory students is small, the classical preparatory course, though more diversified than formerly, presents a standard of attainments attractive to ambitious students who do not look forward to collegiate work. At the Michigan Classical Conference in 1906 Principal F. L. Bliss showed that the falling off in the number of students of Latin in certain of the central states, as well as a proportionately greater decline in the number of those pursuing the subject for four years, was caused chiefly by changes in the entrance requirements of the state universities and colleges in those states.1

1 Proceedings of the Michigan Schoolmasters' Club, forty-first meeting (1906), pp. 61-64.