REPORT. Department OF THE INTERIor, Bureau of EDUCATION, SIR: I have the honor to present my fourteenth annual report. It is impossible to review the experience of the last fourteen years without being impressed with the increase in the amount of information collected by the Office, in the sources of information that have been brought under contribution, and the improved character of the information supplied. This improvement is noticeable in respect to accuracy, completeness, and arrangement, and it is a legitimate question how far it is attributable to the scheme adopted by me, with the coöperation of educators, for collecting, classifying, sifting, and reproducing in systematic order the information sought. The form is indeed not perfect, and there has been hope of revising it, but the time and opportunity for the labor which this would require have not yet come. The past year has furnished abundant evidence of the gratifying growth of the Office in efficiency and usefulness in spite of the fact of its inadequate appropriations. Much additional labor has arisen from the increased number of school officers and teachers visiting here to consult the pedagogical library and museum. The number of volumes in the library has increased to 16,500 and the number of pamphlets to 42,100. The library meets a want universally acknowledged among intelligent educators, containing as it does sources of information nowhere else accessible in the United States. It has been a cause of personal gratification that I have been able to build up this library, so unique and valuable and so necessary to the progress of education, with the appropriation of only $1,000 a year for books; but at this point in this faithful economic service in behalf of the intelligence and virtue of the country, upon which it is claimed by all statesmen that our institutions rest for their perpetuity, I am met by the remarkable fact that $500 of this sum are cut off in the appropriations of Congress for the ensuing year. It should be observed, moreover, that no specific provision has ever been made by Congress for a librarian for this valuable collection. It has been necessary, therefore, to draw upon the clerical force of the Office for the cataloguing and caring for the books. The card catalogue, so necessary in the work of answering inquiries for information, has been delayed by the necessity of employing the assistants in other departments of office labor. I regret that it has been impossible to answer the many demands for the printing of this catalogue. Considerable additions have been made to the pedagogical museum, although only the small sum of $2,000 is appropriated for this purpose. The resources of the museum are entirely unequal to the demands made upon it. It is already clear that a carefully devised system of loans should be instituted. In answer to urgent requests a small exhibit of educational appliances and conditions was furnished gratis to the Louisville Exposition. Most emphatic evidence has been afforded that many school officers and teachers gained from this exhibit valuable ideas of improved methods of instruction. In all countries where education is progressive the exhibition of appliances has been found a most effective means of promoting their adoption and improvement. Our schools generally suffer from the lack of these material alde, and it is important that this Office should be supported in the endeavor to create among school authorities an intelligent appreciation of their use and value. The clerical force of the Office has been inadequate to the cataloguing of this collection. The work on the report of 1881 was completed during the first part of the fiscal year of 1883, and by a most strenuous effort the report of 1882-83 was substantially finished before the close of the same year. This concentration of the force of the Office upon the preparation of the report curtailed the efforts of the Office in other directions so much that the communications sent out show a falling off of nearly 9,000. In this and many other ways it is made most clear that it is utterly impossible to do the work required by law without an increase in the clerical force. The documents sent out numbered 258,340. These covered a variety of important topics and to a considerable extent were placed in the hands of teachers and attendants upon normal institutes. Communications addressed to the Office, personal visits of teachers and school officers, the Commissioner's travels, and the requests for criticism and suggestion sent to every one receiving documents have promoted the closest sympathy between the Office and those actively engaged in advancing the intelligence of the people and dealing with questions of instruction, whether public or private. It is a fact worthy of note that there has been no considerable improvement in methods or progress of education in any quarter of the country during the year with respect to which the aid of the Office has not been invoked. The efforts of the Office to collect all available data bearing upon education, in which the teachers and school officers of the country have so widely coöperated, are manifestly beginning to result in safer generalizations touching the various phases of instruction. Clearer views and more intelligent counsels are observable with respect to the most critical problems that have been under consideration. The forces that control education are better organized than formerly, the discussions in the meetings of teachers are characterized by greater breadth, the teachers in different parts of the country are brought into closer sympathy, and greater demonstrations of educational forces are rendered possible. The following publications have been issued since those named in the last report: Circulars: Circular No. 4, 1883. Circular No. 1, 1884. Circular No. 2, 1884. Circular No. 3, 1884. pendix on national aid Circular No. 4, 1884. Recent school law decisions. Meeting of the International Prison Congress at Rome. Proceedings of the Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association at its meeting February 12-14, 1884. Bulletins : Planting trees in school grounds. The Bufalini prize. Education in Italy and Greece. Report of the director of the American School for Classical Studies at Athens. Miscellaneous: Answers to inquiries about the United States Bureau of Education. Preliminary circular respecting the exhibition of education at the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition. Description of articles sent to Southern Exposition at Louisville, Ky. The following, previously published, have been reissued: Circular No. 3, 1879. Circular No. 2, 1882. Circular No. 4, 1882. School discipline. Value of common school education to common labor. Recent school law decisions. Answers to inquiries about the United States Bureau of Education.' (Twice.) Instruction in morals and civil government. Natural science in secondary schools. These circulars of information are intended always for some particular class of workers in the field of education, the last persons in the world to be affected by abstract theories of their vocation or directions that have not stood the test of practice. On the other hand, these persons are desirous of knowing what is done in other schools similar to their own and by teachers and officers who have the best opportunities for development. Their desire is met by circulars which bring together in convenient form and classified order the best thought and the best practices that have been developed in the particular branch of the service considered. The correspondence of the Office abundantly proves that these publications have helped greatly to raise the standard of education throughout the country. AMERICAN OFFICIAL CORRESPONDENTS OF THE OFFICE WHO FURNISH STATISTICS. The following summary gives the number of correspondents of the Office at the head of systems and institutions of education in our country who furnish the official information contained in these reports: Statement of educational systems and institutions in correspondence with the Bureau of Education in the years named. The only direct return made by the Office to this very large number of voluntary contributors to its statistical information is the annual report and other publications of the Office. It is impossible to estimate the amount of gratuitous labor bestowed in aid of the office work; for not only are the reports and statements from which this annual report is prepared made in the main without compensation, but there are constantly going out from the Office to the same contributors here and there over the country a large number of special inquiries. This free and full communication of information is a constant stimulus to good effort in the Office. The endeavor to close the last report with the fiscal year was so heartily seconded by so many officers of education that I was encouraged to undertake to bring this report up to the end of the fiscal year also, that is, to June 30, 1884, and I hope for the future that it may be possible to end these reports with the fiscal instead of the calendar year. In certain particulars in which the last report could not be brought up to June 30, 1883, but ended with June, 1882, the figures for 1883 are inserted in this re port with those for 1884, great care being taken to make clear in each case just what dates are intended. Statistical summary of institutions, instructors, and students, as collected by the United States Bureau of Education, from 1874 to 1884 (1883 omitted). a 127 cities, each containing 10,000 inhabitants or more, were included in 1874; their aggregate population was 6,037,905. b 177 cities, each containing 7,500 inhabitants or more, reported in 1875; their aggregate population was 8,804,654. c192 cities, of 7,500 inhabitants or more, reported in 1876; their aggregate population was 9,128,955. d 195 cities, of 7,500 inhabitants or more, reported in 1877; their aggregate population was 9,099,025. Schools. Teachers. Pupils. |