344 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
beyond which these pupils cannot afford to go. In each school the ideal 
method and plan is marred by the practical conditions of life. In each 
school two, if not three, classes of pupils are to be cared for. The pri- 
mary school, only, prepares all alike ; the secondary school completes the 
education of the poorer, and gives the children of the wealthy only the 
first step in their preparation for the higher education which they are 
50 be given later. Its work may even be that of a trade school as well. 
The college, similarly, may be required to educate the youth, in one case 
for a professional school, in another for the world, in another for the 
work of ‘the university in the highest fields of research, in science. in 
literature, in art. 
The professional school, of whatever kind, obviously can do its best 
work when it makes professional instruction its whole purpose and work. 
“This one thing I do,” is the motto, in education as in business ; both 
secause it is by concentration that most is accomplished, and because it 
presupposes the best preparation that the student can give time and 
means to secure. That law school, that school of medicine or of engi- 
aeering which. gives its whole time to professional work, and employs 
specialists for the whole list of studies thus given, will be able, as a matter 
of course, to do the most and best work in the time allowed it. It will, 
other things equal, have the best prepared and most mature students, and 
be thus able to cover most ground with its special curriculum. This is 
one notable feature of progress during the generation in our representa- 
five scientific and professional schools. All are moving their requirements 
apward and eliminating the elementary and non-professional work, and 
offering a larger and larger proportion of the purely professional and 
characteristic branches. With the engineering schools, this progress is 
accelerated and compelled by the need of higher and higher mathematical 
preparation ; and, with each step in this direction, the student gains in 
his whole range, the additional time demanded for the increased mathe- 
matical preparation being also certain to insure more attentiun to the 
anguages and the literatures, as well as to the scientific studies of the 
preparatory schools, which, in turn, are by this pressure continually 
raised to a higher grade. The demand of the school of engineering for 
higher algebra brings in students familiar with French ; the call for solid 
geometry insures the offering of chemistry or of physics ; and the require- 
ment of trigonometry brings in students who have studied, very likely, 
two modern languages. 
But a large class of students desiring to enter the professional engineer- 
Ing or other schools cannot give time and mouey to a course of eight years 
duration, dating from the termination of their elementary studies at, say, 
eighteen, taking first a liberal education and then a professional training. 
These will seek the school which offers the more essential professional 
studies, and so much of general education as can be crowded with them