SCHOOLS, EVENING, schools open in the evening to en able those working during the day to continue their education. Evening schools in Great Britain are discussed under COMMER CIAL EDUCATION, CONTINUATION SCHOOLS and TECHNICAL ED UCATION. The following article describes the work in the United States.
Evening schools in the United States for apprentices and others were opened in New York (1833) and Louisville, Ky., (1834). Ohio (1839) enacted legislation requiring towns to provide evening schools for males over 12 years of age. Massa chusetts (1847) permitted towns to appropriate money for in structing adults in reading, writing, English grammar, arithmetic and geography. By 1862 Cincinnati, San Francisco, St. Louis, Chicago, New Orleans and other cities to the number of at least 15 had conducted free public evening schools. Thirty-two cities reported such schools in 1881, and the report of the U.S. bureau of education for 1887-88 showed a total enrollment in cities of 8,000 or more of 135,654. The enrollment for 1925-26 was 937, pupils, of whom slightly less than half were girls.
Classes are maintained in Americanization work, elementary, high school and vocational subjects. The objectives of Ameri canization work are to teach immigrants to speak, read and write English; to aid them to get an understanding of American insti tutions; and to prepare them to take out citizenship papers. Many employers co-operate helpfully in this work, and sometimes pay part or all of the expenses of these classes. Elementary classes are for those who wish to obtain further instruction in subjects usually covered in day grade schools. High school classes enroll pupils who wish to pursue work of high school grade in English, history, mathematics, science and classical or modern languages, and also offer courses in such fields as choral singing, dancing, art work and business law. Vocational courses range from work which appeals to an avocational interest in fancy work or manual arts to specific vocational training for office workers, house keepers and apprentices and journeymen in industrial trades. A typical relative demand is shown in a registration of 200,000 different persons in one year in New York State schools. About 3 were enrolled in Americanization classes, in academic high school subjects, -I in commercial subjects, in home economics, in industrial, and in in elementary subjects.
Pupils usually attend evening school two hours per night for two or three evenings per week, from Oct. 1 to April 1. By in creasing the time allotment, Cincinnati, Chicago, Boston, Phila delphia and other cities offer an evening school diploma equiva lent to that of the day high school. Rural evening schools have developed an enrollment of more than 15,000. This work is essen tially for adult men, and is strictly vocational. The growth of evening schools, more than seven-fold in 5o years, has been phenomenal.
The evening school in the United States, excepting American ization classes, is chiefly for young working people. The pupils average about 19 years in age and are about equally divided as to sex. (0. D. E.) SCHOOLS OF ART. As institutions, art schools are com paratively recent. The first signs of organization were perhaps in the Middle Ages when the arts and trades were controlled by guilds. Courses of instruction, promotions, competitions, and gen eral advisory councils were in existence at that time in the more im portant art centers of England, France, Germany, and, especially, Italy. However, such organizations did not take the place of per sonal instruction by the masters of the arts, fine and applied. It was to the great artists that pupils looked for supervision, and the term "school" as applied to these masters (such as the school of Michelangelo) has no connection with organized institutions. The 19th and early loth centuries have seen the birth and develop ment of innumerable art schools, especially in countries where the government has made appropriations for such educational work, but this advancement has not meant the obliteration of personal instruction under pre-eminent artists and it is not uncommon to find students who have never attended an art school. This "per sonal supervision" system of study has its weaknesses, chief among which is the tendency toward imitation. The artist, in im parting the secrets of his craft, as well as certain generally estab lished laws and traditions, stands pre-eminent, and it is often difficult for his pupils so to forget the tricks and mannerisms of their master as to become individualists themselves.