re 
Ic 
12 
r= 
‘g 
re 
= 
:d 
mn 
,0 
1n 
ye. 
ae 
Qe 
od 
aS 
Qt 
le 
S- 
sh 
8. 
ae 
Ap 
St 
Ws 
© 
Hf 
ne 
1, 
n- 
AI 
a- 
18- 
ag 
ry 
sts 
uy 
hy 
ar 
m, 
say 
STATE OR MUNICIPAL SUPERVISION OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS. 185 
hat these private schools are under the supervision of parents, trustees, 
and the public. I know of a prominent private fitting school whose 
ntire graduating class of some twenty-five members recently failed to 
secure a sufficient number of credits to admit it to one of our lower-grade 
colleges. This stunning disappointment was the first information parents 
or public had of the inferior instruction being given. The half-dozen 
larger academies of the country, receiving pupils from every State in the 
Union, know the deplorable standards that are tolerated all too generally 
in our private day- and boarding-schools. Unquestionably, some of these 
ansupervised schools are superior to the very best of our public schools; 
and yet I heard a member of the committee appointed by Harvard Univer- 
sity to examine one of our most famous academies, say that if the report 
»f his committee were to be published, it would make a great stir in the 
school world. 
it is passing strange that though you will not commit the care of your 
body to an unlicensed physician, the care of your property to an un- 
iicensed attorney, or the care of your soul to an unlicensed clergyman, 
yet you send yourson and daughter, not merely for five or six hours a day, 
but for months and years, to a schoolmaster whose best qualification may 
oe only that he has mastered the art of advertising. With the exception 
>f Great Britain, I believe we are the only enlightened nation that com- 
mits such folly. Elsewhere the teacher-—man or woman—must pass a 
jrescribed examination, and thereafter his or her school must submit to 
some form of supervision and control. 
For a moment let us dwell upon a statement which may be made with- 
out fear of successful contradiction. It is this: Supervised education 
has always and everywhere proved good education ; education without such 
supervision has always proved inferior. I shall not detain you with the 
aistoric proofs of this proposition ; but many of you will recall the first 
movements by the Jesuits for better schools—a body of teachers whose 
slaring faults in some particulars are readily admitted, and yet no less an 
authority than Robert Herbert Quick says : “No other school system has 
heen built up by the united efforts of so many astute intellects ; no other 
1as met with so great success, or attained such widespread influence. No 
oody of men since the revival of learning has played so prominent a part 
‘n education. Their skill and capacity ave attested by such high author- 
ties as Bacon and Descartes. For more than one hundred years, nearly 
all the prominent men throughout Christendom—both among laity and 
“lergy—received the Jesuit training, and for life regarded their old mas- 
“ars with Teverence and affection.” Now, the central excellence of this 
Jesuit training was in the word “system.” The famous commission of 
1584 formed a closely articulated and minutely supervised system of edu- 
cation, extending over the period of our own secondary courses. It could 
also be shown that the patronage and supervision of education under the