LIST OF TABLES

  Table
    1.  Time given to reading and literature
    2.  Sets of supplementary reading books per building
    3.  Weeks given to reading of different books in
       High School of Commerce
    4.  Time given to spelling
    5.  Time given to handwriting
    6.  Time given to language, composition, and grammar
    7.  Time given to arithmetic
    8.  Time given to history
    9.  Time given to geography
   10.  Time given to drawing
   11.  Time given to manual training
   12.  Time given to science, physiology, hygiene
   13.  Time given to physical training
   14.  Time given to music

PREFATORY STATEMENT

For an understanding of some of the characteristics of this report it is necessary to mention certain of the conditions under which it was prepared.

The printed course of study for the elementary schools to be found in June, 1915, the time the facts were gathered for this report, was prepared under a former administration.  While its main outlines were still held to, it was being departed from in individual schools in many respects.  Except occasionally it was not possible to find record of such departures.  It was believed that to accept the printed manual as representing current procedure would do frequent injustice to thoughtful, constructive workers within the system.  But it must be remembered that courses of study for the city cover the work of twelve school years in a score and more of subjects, distributed through a hundred buildings.  Only a small fraction of this comprehensive program is going on during any week of the school year; and of this fraction only a relatively small amount could actually be visited by one man in the time possible to devote to the task.  In the absence of records of work done or of work projected, unduly large weight had to be given to the recommendations set down in the latest published course of study manual.

New courses of study were being planned for the elementary schools.  This in itself indicated that the manual could not longer be regarded as an authoritative expression of the ideas of the administration.  Yet with the exception of a good arithmetic course and certain excellent beginnings of a geography course, little indication could be found as to what the details of the new courses were to be.  The present report has had to be written at a time when the administration by its acts was rejecting the courses of study laid out in the old manual, and yet before the new courses were formulated.  Under the circumstances it was not a safe time for setting forth the facts, since not even the administration knew yet what the new courses were to be in their details.  It was not a safe time to be either praising or blaming course of study requirements.  The situation was too unformed for either.  In the matter of the curriculum, the city was confessedly on the eve of a large constructive program.  Its face was toward the future, and not toward the past; not even toward the present.