private school is a permanent part of our educational system, and that it carries on its task under its own peculiar conditions.

It is especially the academic influence of the private boarding school, and semi-boarding school, known as the country day school, that we wish to consider here. So long as people dwell in great cities where the atmosphere, physical and moral, is in large measure unwholesome, at least for young people, so long the boarding schools will continue to minister to the children of those who can afford to send them out of the towns. The present crowded conditions of these schools and their growth in number during the last quarter century suggest that they are regarded as members in good standing of the body politic. Some day they may be taken over by the State and form part of the system of public education. Until that time they have something to provide which is different from the products of the public school just as the endowed college supplies something other than that which comes from the State university.

The private day school, it is true, labors under certain disadvantages. Its pupils have in many instances begun their studies late. The custom of their parents is to return late to their city homes, still hoping that at the primary school their boys can, by some kind of "juggling," be taught a year's work in a little over seven months' time. They easily consent to the child's remaining at home if there is any slight indisposition. The result is that boys often reach the secondary school without having had any thorough training, and at twelve years of age are void of all power of concentration. The early preparatory schools cannot be held to blame for this. They have, many of them, high ideals of education, but they are sorely let and hindered by indulgent parents who are more interested in the health than in the intellectual development of their children.

Another handicap is found in the fact that nearly all, from seventy-five to one hundred per cent, of the pupils in the private schools, are destined for college and must therefore be brought up to a certain standard. On this account, we may point out in passing, it seems unfair to compare the public and private schools in the preparation of their boys for college. From the public high school comes a small percentage of its graduates. They are the pupils of the highest caliber and are the fittest of the scholars promoted from the grade schools. It is clearly comparing unlike things when we place these scholars alongside the entire output of the graduates from the private school.

The private school has the further disadvantage that its boys, as a rule, are not impelled by financial necessity or by the thought that their scholastic record will have a definite effect in helping or hindering them after graduation. We may add to this the fact that funds are often lacking to secure for the private school the fitting and attractive buildings and the complete equipment available for schools that can draw upon the taxes of the community.

On the other hand, the private schools are free from the interference of the politician whose influence can be secured for the appointment of teachers and for the fashioning of the curriculum. They have the advantage of commanding the services of men teachers alone. There are indeed many women who are altogether efficient instructors-some certainly superior to the men, but it is the belief of many parents that their sons during the period of adolescence, beginning at twelve or thirteen and continuing until eighteen years of age, should be under the direction and influence of the male mind and personality and they act accordingly. The boarding schools having their pupils with them all the time, morning, noon and night, the masters can determine to a great extent the amount of work that shall be accomplished daily and the hours that shall be devoted to it. The masters are not burdened by the great number of pupils that are assigned in the public school to each teacher and therefore come naturally more closely into touch with their pupils' minds. If the pupils be found unequal to the course of the private school and fall much below the required standard or show any serious lack of mental power, it is not necessary that they should be retained. They can be transferred to some school which cares especially for this type of youth.

Further, the private school has the privilege -denied inevitably to the public school-of

1

giving instruction in the theory of Religion. It is not true, as one often hears it said, that the public schools are wholly irreligious. Conscientious and spiritually minded teachers in these schools bring to their classrooms an atmosphere which influences the child's religious life profoundly; but there can be no fearless teaching of the history and philosophy of the Christian religion, no instruction in the influence of Christianity on human institutions, no definite exposition of the teachings and life of Jesus Christ. These can be given by the Sunday-school and sometimes they are so given, but it is not an uncommon thing for boys to reach the university without any knowledge of the principles of their religion.

The curriculum of the private school is naturally largely governed by the college requirements, inasmuch as a large majority of its students are destined for the university. This is counted a misfortune by some teachers; but the subjects in which a candidate may be examined today are sufficiently numerous to admit of almost any course in the school.