EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION There were, in 1914, 19,561,292 children in the elementary schools, of which 17,934,982 were in public schools. The school curriculum under which these children are taught is practically the same everywhere in the United States. The elementary school maintains a course of eight years preceded in many cities and towns by a year in the kindergarten. The child usually enters the elementary school at six and gradu ates at 14, if he passes through according to rule. But careful studies of elementary educa tion made by experts during the past decade have demonstrated the existence of excessive retardation and elimination of pupils. This dis covery has resulted in two movements which are gaining in strength daily. One is a change in the subject matter of the elementary school curriculum with the object of emphasizing the useful and eliminating the purely academic. The amount of time allotted to the so-called disciplinary subjects like formal grammar and arithmetic has been reduced in favor of such subjects as manual training and domestic science. The other movement which is a corollary to the first, is to complete the gen eral elementary course in six years and devote the last two years to vocational courses, com mercial, industrial and academic, leading re spectively to business, the trades and the pro fessions. This in turn has caused, as we shall now see, changes in the organization of the secondary education.
About 7 per cent of the children who enter the elementary school pass on to the high school. In 1914 there were 1,373,661 pupils in the secondary schools, of which 1,218,804 were in public high schools. Until about the beginning of the 20th century the curriculum of the high school was everywhere the same, being organized for the few who intended to go to college. In other words, the high school was a preparatory school whose content of study was dictated by the college, although less than 10 per cent of those who entered the high school went to col lege. As a result of the strong movement in favor of industrial and vocational education that arose about 15 years ago, most of the large cities now maintain, in addition to the regular academic high school which prepares for col lege entrance, a commercial high school and a manual training high school designed respec tively for business and technical pursuits.
Smaller cities and towns maintain in their high schools commercial and technical courses in ad dition to the academic course and most States are now supporting agricultural high schools.
Until about six years ago, the standard high school course of all kinds was four years in length and was built upon the eight-year elemen tary school course, but as a result of the move ment mentioned above in connection with the elementary school, viz.: to finish the general elementary course in six years, another move ment has arisen in the past few years which bids fair to have an important influence. This is the junior high school movement sometimes referred to as the six-and-six plan. The prin ciple at the basis of this movement is excel lent pedagogically as well as as administratively. It is felt that the study of certain subjects should be begun earlier than in the present aca demic high school, e.g., algebra and geometry, and particularly languages in order to take ad vantage of the greater plasticity of the vocal organs. Our practice would then conform to that of the European countries. It is also maintained that were the courses leading to vocations differentiated at 12 years of age and their elements well organized for a three-year period, many boys and girls who find the ordi nary academic course unattractive would re main to the close of the period and perhaps be induced to continue their studies in the three years of the senior high school. In a large city the junior high school would also have the ad ministrative advantage of relieving the conges tion in many elementary schools by removing the boys and girls who must stay 'under com pulsory education laws until they are 14 into a few buildings scattered about the city. Although the junior high school is a very recent experiment in secondary education and chiefly popular in the West, it is in accord with present tendencies and will probably be generally adopted in its present form or in some modified form.