HIGH SCHOOLS. The high school as commonly interpreted is distinctively an Ameri can institution. The term is applied to those schools which ordinarily give a four-year course of study to students who have completed eight years in the elementary school. The course is rarely longer and is sometimes shorter than four years.
These schools grew up in the early history of the United States to supply a distinct need. The state was providing an education for the people in the elementary schools. Those families which were intending to send their children to college sent them to Latin schools which received pupils at the age of 10 or 11 and gave them a course of six years. For en trance to these there was demanded a prelimi nary education of approximately six years.
To answer the demand of those who did not intend to send their children to college there grew up in the United States private academies which received pupils before they had finished their elementary course of eight years or after such a course had been completed. The academy therefore usually furnished a pre academic course for the former and the aca demic course of four years for the latter. Students could go from the academy to a col lege, but this was not the prime motive of the institution.
The academy was private, charged tuition fees and in a way was intended for people of means. A demand arose for an institution to which pupils could go who had finished the elementary school course, which should be free and prepare its graduates to enter the pursuits of practical life. The English High School of Boston, founded in 1821, was the first of its kind, and gradually, as free elemen tary schools were established throughout the country, the high schools soon followed. The academies gradually died out.
The high schools were essentially demo cratic in origin and were not intended to pre pare students for college. With the passing of the academy, however, and in view of the fact that, except in the older States along the Atlantic seaboard, the Latin school was un known, there developed a demand that the high school of the community should offer courses which would prepare students for college. As the principals and the teachers of the high schools were frequently products of the col leges, they lent willing ears to such demands and the high schools came at times to take on the character of college preparatory schools, and their original ends were lost sight of. Even the pioneer of them, the English High School of Boston, felt called upon to offer a special year to prepare its graduates for college.
The studies offered in the high school, too numerous to be mentioned here, Came to be grouped into the classical course, which had for its object the preparation of pupils for college, and the literary and scientific courses which aimed to prepare students either to go out into the world of business or to enter technical in stitutions.
The dominating influence, however, was col legiate and the introduction of business and in dustrial subjects was gradual, and was often met with active hostility by the teaching force. The students and the teachers in the classical course looked down on fhe pupils who pursued the business or commercial and manual train ing courses. The result was that these led a stifled existence. In communities, where the high school population became large enough, the commercial students were drawn off and placed in a separate commercial high school, others in a manual training or technical or me chanic arts high schools. Once separated from the classical, these new high schools began to develop rapidly into strong institutions. So large did they grow that the colleges, which had hitherto felt that the only kind of prep aration which could possibly fit students for collegiate work must be that of the classical high schools, now began to rearrange their entrance requirements so that graduates of not only classical but of the other high schools could enter their walls.
In size high schools now range all the way from institutions housing over 5,000 pupils, as in New York city, to small country institutions of only three or four classes. In a community where only one high school exists it is usual to find the classical, literary, commercial, manual and scientific courses all given in one building. The buildings and equipment of some of the high schools and the courses offered both in the East and West frequently rival and out shine colleges and universities, and so import ant are they in some communities that they are called the
colleges" Bibliography.— See that given under EDU CATION, His-roav or ; Brown, E. E.,