High Schools
a term which a The means, in the United States, the schools supported by the public, in which the tuition generally is free, and which prepare both sexes for their higher education in the universities and colleges. The German equivalent of the term (Hochschulen) is the name officially given to the German universities. A school established in Edinburgh about 1575 which was below a university in its standards was termed a high school.
But practically the term now means a component part of the public school system of the United States. It is here used to distinguish it from the private schools or academies which before 1825 were the only schools in the United States beyond the elementary and grammar schools. Between 1820 and 1830 the high schools came into existence, among the first being the Central High School of Philadelphia, the Free Academy of New York which later became the College of the City of New York, Vol. V-Cyc-A HIGH SCHOOLS and the English High School of Boston. Horace Mann and Henry Barnard were Horace Mann and Henry Her Barnard were the pioneers in the movement to establish high schools in every large city of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and it is largely due to their zeal that the movement spread beyond New England and by the time of the Civil War had taken a firm hold on the Central and Western States.
The latest available figures give the number of high schools in 1913 to be 11,277, in which are enrolled 1,134,771.
The private schools were long ago eclipsed in point of numbers by the public high schools, there being but 2,168 of them with an enrollment of 148,238.
Since 1914 the number of pupils going to private school has been largely in- HIGH SEAS course of study. The colleges have and steadily increasing number of tion in this particular, offering a large and steadily increasing number of ticular and the colleges followed. The The high schools led the way in this particular and the colleges followed. The trance into college and at the same dents in the high schools for their ennot enter college an education that shall time give to the vast majority who do not enter college an education that shall be useful and function in their everyday life. In recent years many high schools in addition to becoming what reached to lower grades to secure their life of a child is divided into three parts:
THE DE WITT CLINTON HIGH creased, because the private school more effectively meets the college entrance requirements, and also the increase in wealth of great numbers of the population of the United States augmented the class of people that can afford the exclass of people that can afford the exmated that even with the rapid increase in the number and size of the high schools only 23 per cent. of the children have at any time in their lives attended a school higher than the grammar grades.
The percentage of those completing a school higher than the grammar grades. The percentage of those completing a number who enter.
Many high schools still have as their number who enter. for college, but as the greater part of the children who attend the high schools SCHOOL BUILDING, NEW YORK From 6 to 12, elementary education, from 12 to 14, grammar school education, and from 14 to 18 high school education. A still more recent tendency has ! been to establish what is called the "Junior High School" with a course covering the six years from 12 to 18, eliminating the division of grammar school education. This has been adopted mainly to give those children who can only get one year of the four year high school course a special training to fit their needs. There is little uniformity in the courses offered in the various high schools throughout the United States, the local conditions influencing their curriculums a great deal.