So-called practical schools of agriculture and industrial arts are very common and are supported or subsidized by the state. They are of lower rank than the university profes sional schools and are for the training of over seers, foremen, artisans and farmers. The agricultural states have featured the practical agricultural school in recent years. Argentina has a score of them of different grade. Some are designed to emphasize the type of agricul ture in the region where they are located, fruit growing, cattle raising, sugar industry, etc.; others have a general curriculum. They admit boys with the mere fundamentals of in struction from the third or fourth grade, and continue their common school instruction, add ing the professional branches. The curriculum extends over three or four years. Many of these institutions are boarding schools. The system is very similar in other states. Chile maintains them in the agricultural region; i Cuba has one in each of the six provinces. In Brazil and Mexico it is the concern of the individual states, the national government con cerning itself only with the higher professional schools.
Industrial The practical in dustrial schools (Escuelas de artes y officios) have the same status and occupy a correspond ing position in the industrial field. They are supposed to reduce theory to the minimum and bend their energies to the practical. This is especially difficult, however, in Latin America since the tradition in education there for cen turies has been in favor of theory, and the racial mind is forcibly bent in that direction. In the most enterprising countries there are trade schools for girls as well as for boys. Chile, for example, has a great number for girls, one or more in almost every important town. The introduction of industrial and agri cultural education into the regular primary schools is uncommon. The tendency is to make them separate departments of instruction. Both at Buenos Aires and at Santiago, Chile, there is a school of industrial arts which occupies a middle ground between the ordinary elemen tary trades school and the engineering college. They are well equipped and train a high type of artisan and practical engineer. Many ele mentary trade schools are conducted by various orders of the Roman Catholic Church. The Salesian Brothers make a specialty of this type of education. Some of these schools combine elementary agricultural training with schooling in the industrial arts. They usually receive a subsidy from the local, provincial or national treasury. The pupils come from very poor
families or are orphans.
Theological Preparation for the Roman Catholic priesthood is given in church schools which are wholly removed from governmental supervision. At least one such school is maintained in each diocese• from whence the more gifted boys are sent to the arch-diocesan school in the capital for ad vanced instruction and training. The lesser priesthood may be recruited directly from the diocesan school. These institutions necessarily have a different curriculum from that of the state and state-supervised elementary and sec ondary schools, not only in the emphasis laid upon strictly religious instruction, but also in the inclusion of Latin which is seldom found in the Spanish-American curriculum; in fact, in many states the study of Latin in the state and state-inspected schools is forbidden by law.
Education in In Brazil little was done for popular education before the advent of the republic (1889). It is delegated wholly to the individual states. Some, notably Sao Paulo and other southern states. have made commendable progress; others have done very little. The type of instruction is much the same as in Spanish America. The same is true of secondary education. Brazil has two national schools of law (Sao Paulo and Recife) and two of medicine (Rio de Janeiro and Sao Salvador) but since 1911 their gradu ates have no rights not enjoyed by graduates of other standard institutions. The tendency now is to establish universities; i.e., groups of professional schools, in all the state capitals.
Popular education is re tarded in Latin America by various causes of which some are operative in some countries, others in others, and some in all. They maybe summarized as follows: (1) Apathy of Indian and Mestizo population; (2) lack of trained teachers; (3) opposition of church to secular schools; c4) greater relative importance and appropriations given to university and second ary instruction; (5) want of proper buildings, textbooks and equipment; (6) sharply accen tuated class distinctions •, (7) traditional cur ricula and inefficient methods of instruction.
Notwithstanding all the discouraging cir cumstances, there is everywhere a universal ambition to overcome illiteracy, a realization that an educated citizenry is necessary for political, economic and social progress, a will ingness to learn modern educational methods, and an ever-increasing adaptability of instruc tion to local and racial needs.