versity, 32 preparatory schools, and 6720 elementary schools. "Henceforth," read the Imperial decree, "education shall be so diffused that there shall be no ignorant family in the land, and no family with an ignorant member." The plan, of course, was premature. Even today Japan boasts scarcely more than half the number of elementary institutions which the 1872 edict demanded. Nor has the Government as yet set up eight universities, although private citizens and scholastic boards have founded colleges in larger numbers. By the wise counsel of Dr. David Murray, American advisor to the Mombusho from 1875 to 1897, the system was recast, and a new Imperial Rescript, issued in 1890, remains today the basis of the education of Japan. Loyalty, filial piety, harmony, modesty and moderation are made the educational objectives by this Rescript which has become a fetish venerated by the school-men. On holidays the scholars of all schools are even yet convened to hear the Rescript read, and stand bowed in reverence while their principals intone Imperial injunctions that they must "guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne coeval with Heaven and with Earth." The document is couched in phrases which permit an indefinite elasticity of interpretation, and thus is spared the fate of seeming antiquated and outworn. Under the administrative system set up to enforce this Rescript, education is mainly State-controlled. All children from 6 to 14 years of age are regarded as of school age, and those who exercise parental jurisdiction over them are required to send them to school. But the period of compulsory education differs somewhat from the school-age period, since, at 12, the child may be released from school provided he has been graduated from the elementary course. Nor need children attend school, if judged unfit for study by reason of mental or physical deficiency, or if, by reason of extreme poverty, the family can not afford to send the child to school. Prefectural poorfunds, augmented by a donation from the Imperial Treasury, are available for the last-named class in some instances, but cannot offer a sufficient subsidy for every child. These exemptions from the universal obligation to be educated throws some explanation upon the amazingly high percentages of school-age children actually attending sessions. Since 1917, the Mombusho, has issued yearly statements that over 99% of all the school-age boys and over 98% of all the school-age girls were being educated, and that illiteracy was virtually nil. No deductions are, however, made for 12 to 14 year old children who have gone to work on finishing the sixth year of the elementary course; the numbers of such children being carried on the rolls of schools as "actually attending" sessions. And the statistics are still further padded by neglect to register as "school-age children" any illegitimate or defective offspring, or children of such unions as would here be classed as common law. It is a question, furthermore, if children of the so-called Suiheisha group, quasi-outcasts, are always registered. By Imperial decree no class distinctions are offiicially recognized betwen the Suiheisha and the other portions of the populace, but by common practice this decree is universally ignored wherever possible. Save for the colonies where education is administered by the governors-general of the dependency, all matters relative to education, art, science and religion are entrusted to the Ministry of Education. Certain special technical schools, such as the nautical, fishery, naval, post and telegraph, and the Peers' School, whose noble graduates enjoy the privilege of entering without examination into the Imperial University, are also outside the authority of the Minister, but comparatively few students are enrolled in these special institutions. The fundamental principles underlying education are thus kept uniform throughout the Empire. Decisions as to methods of administration, entrance requirements, equipment, tuition (where charged) and choice of text-books are centered in the Mombusho, and no deviation is permitted. Even in the private schools, not recognized as on a parity with the official institutions, a tight control is held over the content of the character-building studies of the elementary courses, for the text-books used in morals, history and geography and the readers in Japanese are all compiled by Mombusho authority and are obligatory in all schools. Even the mission stations, insistent on the importance of a Western type of culture, must teach the hoary myths that pass for history in Japan. A loop-hole is afforded for an independent system, but at a fearful cost to students who may take advantage of the opportunity. Official recognition is withheld from schools which do not scrupulously follow Mombusho ideals, and, under Japanese conditions, graduation from a recognized school is almost the only gateway to success. Ostensibly a term implying parity with certain norms, the recognition has been made to carry certain social implications and also carries with it the definite advantages of postponing military services, of curtailing the conscription period, and of the right to enter, without examination, into clerkships in the civil service. Applicants for entrance into junior colleges, normal schools and universities with "unrecognized" diplomas are sometimes severely handicapped by the necessity for taking extra tests to prove their scholastic aptitude, and, even after passing may be grouped together at the foot of the lists among those to be admitted if vacancies exist. The right to grant, or to withhold official recognition, therefore, readily becomes a potent weapon in the hand of the Education Ministers. Regulations now provide that the cost of giving higher education is a burden of the National Treasury, that the prefectures pay for secondary schools, and that the cities, towns and villages defray the most of elementary institutions. Two derivatives are found, that higher education is almost wholly for the boys, and that the rural people, staggering already under heavy burdens from a system of landlord exploitation, are unable to maintain sufficient elementary schools. The Government, accordingly, has, in recent years, consistently aided rural schools by heavy subsidies amounting recently to $40, 000,000 or more. The prefectures are also aiding to support the lower schools, so that perhaps a quarter of the total cost of elementary education has been shifted from the shoulders. of the towns and villages. The grading of the schools is intricate because the Mombusho attempts a system in which higher education varies in its length according to the needs of pupils. In outline, the progress runs from elementary school to middle school for boys and high school for the girls. The boys may substitute a technical, or continuation, school instead of middle schools, and girls may concentrate on a domestic science course. From middle school, the lad may go to junior college and the university, or to a normal school. The girls are more constricted, for the paucity of women's universities affords them little more than normal school, art or music as a further study. The courses offered, and the facilities provided may be studied in the tables drawn from the Mombusho reports of 1926. (To be continued in the next number of EDUCATION.) A Tribute I owe a debt which I can never pay; Upon an altar worthy, and most dear. To those, then, who at sight of any tear Of mine, have sought to turn away its cause; Who, was I weak, have sought to make me strong, Who have relieved my want, grieved for my pain, HELEN CARY CHADWICK. The Junior High School in Washington W. M. KERN, SUPERINTENDENT OF CITY SCHOOLS, T WALLA WALLA, WASHINGTON. HE junior high school movement must be considered the outstanding change in the educational program during the present century. It owes its origin to two sources: (1) Dissatisfaction with the waste and inefficiency that characterizes the traditional course of study and its administration in the grammar grades and first year of high school, and (2) the fact that, in older European nations that have met and solved, with a large degree of success, certain of the educational problems that confront us, the pupil who has completed the secondary school is, in point of scholarship, approximately two years in advance of his American peer of equal age. Criticisms of the traditional educational program may be summarized as follows: (1) Very many pupils who have completed the grammar grades and even the high school are unable to write and speak good English. (2) The schools are non-selective and fail to differentiate between pupils of low and high mental qualities. (3) They are wasteful as evidenced by the fact that too many pupils leave school during this period, and that the beginning of secondary education is postponed until too late in the pupil's life. (4) That too little consideration is given to the broadening social horizon of pupils in the upper grades. (5) Pronounced defects in articulation between the grammar grades and high school. (6) That altogether too large a proportion of pupils have not learned to enjoy good books and, in consequence, are not persistent readers. |