Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: RELATION OF THE UNIVERSITY TO THE COURSES OF STUDY IN ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS. There seems to be a growing tendency in this state to accuse those who are responsible for the present school system with having perfected a system at the expense of the school children, instead of having created a system which would assist the vast majority of boys and girls to secure the best possible preparation for their life's work, which they could reasonably expect to secure in their present circumstances. An examination of the school system of the state, which takes into consideration the relative value of many of the studies taught in the elementary and secondary schools, would seem to indicate that this accusation rests on a pretty secure foundation. The qualifications for admission to the universities of the United States vary, and are determined by the authorities of each university. Formerly the faculties of the universities, in laying down the qualifications for admission, were governed, to a greater or less extent, by the qualifications of highschool graduates; but in recent years, the largely endowed universities of the East and the state universities of the West are more and more inclined to set a standard of admission and to compel the high schools to conform to this standard. As a rule, those who have authority over the high schools lay out the high school courses with this object in view —in fact, the California state law requires them to do so. The grammar schools in turn are compelled to prescribe, or at least they do prescribe, a course of work which seems to have admission to the high school for its ultimate object. The discussion on this subject, with slight modification, 'was first issued by the author in November, 1897, under the head of " A Pedagogical Quest...