areful consideration of those most
interested in maintaining the efficiency of the school system.

IV Some Honest Facts

Let us face the facts honestly. If you include country schools, and they
must be included in any discussion of American Education, the school
mortality,--i. e., the children who drop out of school between the first
and eighth years--is appalling. We may quarrel over percentages, but the
dropping out is there.

The United States Commissioner of Education writes,--[13] "Of
twenty-five million children of school age (5 to 18), less than twenty
million are enrolled in schools of all kinds and grades, public and
private; and the average daily attendance does not exceed fourteen
million, for an average school term of less than 8 months of 20 days
each. The average daily attendance of those enrolled in the public
schools is only 113 days in the year, less than 5-3/4 months. The
average attendance of the entire school population is only 80-1/2 days,
or 4 months of 20 days each. Assuming that this rate of attendance shall
continue through the 13 school years (5 to 18), the average amount of
schooling received by each child of the school population will be 1,046
days, or a little more than 5 years of 10 school months. This bureau
has no reliable statistics on the subject, but it is quite probable that
less than half the children of the country finish successfully more than
the first 6 grades; only about one-fourth of the children ever enter
high school; and less than 8 in every 100 do the full 4 years of high
school work. Fewer than 5 in 100 receive any education above the high
school."

Taking this dropping out into consideration, it is probable that the
majority of children who enter American schools receive no more
education than will enable them to read clumsily, to write badly, to
spell wretchedly, and to do the simplest mathematical problems
(addition, subtraction, etc.) with difficulty. In any real sense of the
word, they are neither educated nor cultured.

Judge Draper, Superintendent of Public Instruction in New York State,
writes,--[14] "We cannot exculpate the schools. They are as wasteful of
child life as are the homes. From the bottom to the top of the American
educational system we take little account of the time of the child....
We have eight or nine elementary grades for work which would be done in
six if we were working mainly for productivity and power. We have shaped
our secondary sch