The division next to the primary school is the grammar school. The term
is not much used in the West, but is common in the eastern states. It
goes back to the time of the revival of learning—a little earlier perhaps
than the conditions out of which the primary school originated, and,
even when contemporaneous, having a different ideal. It had to do with
the study of language in the higher sense; because, at the time of the
Renaissance, Latin and Greek connected people with the culture of the
past, with the Roman and Greek world. The classic languages were the
only means of escape from the limitations of the Middle Ages. Thus there
sprang up the prototype of the grammar school, more liberal than the
university (so largely professional in character), for the purpose of
putting into the hands of the people the key to the old learning, that
men might see a world with a larger horizon. The object was primarily
culture, secondarily discipline. It represented much more than the
present grammar school. It was the liberal element in the college,
which, extending downward, grew into the academy and the high school.
Thus the secondary school is still in part just a lower college (having
an even higher curriculum than the college of a few centuries ago) or a
preparatory department to a college, and in part a rounding up of the
utilities of the elementary school.
There appear then two products of the nineteenth century, the technical
and normal schools. The schools of technology, engineering, etc., are, of
course, mainly the development of nineteenth-century business conditions,
as the primary school was the development of business conditions of the
sixteenth century. The normal school arose because of the necessity for
training teachers, with the idea partly of professional drill and partly
that of culture.
Without going more into detail, we have some eight different parts of
the school system as represented on the chart, all of which arose
historically at different times, having different ideals in view, and
consequently different methods. I do not wish to suggest that all of the
isolation, all of the separation, that has existed in the past between
the different parts of the school system still persists. One must,
however, recognize that they have never yet been welded into one complete
whole. The great problem in education on the administrative side is how
to unite these different parts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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