citizen, and must be at the command of everyone desirous to
learn, as long as he seeks it. But the seeker, born amid such conditions
as these, needs guidance. Public libraries, newspapers, magazines help
him the more he pushes forward, but without expert assistance he hardly
finds the beginning of the path.

"This is the object of the Continuation School."

It is somewhat difficult to define the limits and scope of the
continuation or Fortbildungsschulen. Conditions vary in the different
German states and especially do they vary in the various kinds of
continuation schools. Definition is made even more doubtful when we find
that the limits of certain schools overlap. It may be said that
students are regularly admitted from fourteen to sixteen years of age.
Not infrequently however, boys and men of more mature years take
advantage of the courses offered. Instruction is carried on during the
week-day evenings from six to eight o'clock and on Sunday mornings.

Prussia leads the other states in the number and character of her
supplementary schools, the system having its fullest expression in
Berlin. The fact became early apparent that preparation, whatever line
the boy was to follow, was necessary, and this thought is confirmed in
the many skilled laborers in Germany to-day. In Prussia, as elsewhere,
it was found that boys many times left the common school before they
became proficient in any line of book work. The causes were various;
poverty, indifference, sickness, overcrowding, poor enforcement of the
compulsory attendance laws,--all these conspired to make supplementary
schools necessary. In the older provinces very little attention was
given the continuation school prior to 1875, and almost as much could be
said of those provinces which were acquired in 1866. In 1844 a report
issued by the Department of Public Instruction makes mention of the
usefulness of such schools, while two years later a second report has
only slightly more to say on the subject. This lack of interest may be
attributed in large measure to the non-financial support of these
schools by the government.

Several problems had to be faced in working out the scheme. Certain
definite relations between the primary and continuation schools must be
observed; those coming into the latter with an inadequate underschool
knowledge must be looked after; provision must be made for students of
lesser as well as of more mature years; all classes of occupation m