GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. In the Middle Ages, when the existing schools were entirely under control of the monastic or the secular clergy, a distinction was drawn between the singing schools, or those in which instruction was limited to the elements of reading, writing, and singing, and the grammar schools, in which attention was directed to the study of language and literature, usually of a religious character. These gram mar schools were, in fact, a survival or revival of the old Roman grammar schools, or schools of the grammatists. In England the term was in turn applied to the secondary schools that were established on independent foundations, and were free from direct ecclesiastical control. Such schools were also called public schools. The earliest of these was Winchester, founded in 1837, by William, Bishop of Wykeham. During the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Eliza beth many such schools were founded, for the most part out of the spoil of the monasteries. The most important of these schools, and hence often called the nine great public or grammar schools of England, are Winchester, Eton, Rugby, Charter House, Saint Paul's, Harrow, Westmin ster, Merchant Taylors, and Shrewsbury. These schools were devoted wholly to the study of Greek and Latin grammar and rhetoric, and hence the title, grammar schools. The English colonists carried this type of school to America. Such an establishment was attempted in 1621 at Charles City, Va., but, owing to the troubled character of the times, it had no permanency. In 1635 the Latin Grammar School was established in Boston, and it has had a continuous existence to the present time. Many such schools were estab lished in Massachusetts, and in 1647 a general school law was passed which contained the fol lowing provision: "It is further ordered, that where any town shall increase to the number of 100 families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the university." Similar schools flourished in
most of the colonies until near the close of the eighteenth century, when a type of secondary school, called academies, took their place.
Toward the middle of the nineteenth century the term grammar school again came into com mon use in the United States to indicate a type of intermediate school devoted for the most part to the study of English grammar with some at tention to geography, advanced arithmetic, and history. Previous to this time the only school inferior to the Latin grammar schools and the academies was the elementary school, devoted to the study of the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic. The system of grading was gradually introduced about the middle of the century in the larger towns of Massachusetts. The elementary and the (English) grammar school were divided into from two to four, usually three, grades each, and were amalgamated into a system under one administration—that of the superintendent of schools. The term 'grammar school' is now com monly used to designate the upper grades, ordi narily the fourth to the eighth, inclusive, of the common school, in which not only grammar, but also arithmetic, geography, history, elements of natural science, usually drawing, some form of manual training, and sometimes elementary alge bra or geometry, with a foreign language, enter into the curriculum. See COMMON SCHOOLS;