EDUCATION 471 EDUCATION several teachers are employed and the pupils are graded in classes through which they advance on examination. In some cases a separate high school is maintained. Graduates from the high school are admitted to the State univer- sities and to some of the private or Church universities on certificate of graduation. In the State universities the education is nearly if not quite free for the students who reside in the State. See Colleges; also Agri- cultural Education; Coeducation; Colleges for Women; Common Schools; Medical Education; School; Secondary Schools; Normal School; Technical Education; Universities, Amertcan; University Extension; Education. England. — Before the Reformation there were, with the exception of the universities, very few institutions for the advancement of learning which could be called public. The monasteries had been for centuries the only seminaries in which the sons of gentlemen were able to obtain instruction. Here and there grammar schools had been founded as choristers' schools, or were otherwise connected with ecclesiastical establish- ments. The revival of learning, and the increased mental activity at the Refor- mation produced a widely spread demand for the means of instruction. Uniform purpose is manifest in the testaments, deeds of gift, statutes and ordinances by which the character and subsequent ca- reer of English schools were intended by their founders to be fashioned. It is to encourage the pursuit of a liberal edu- cation, founded on the ancient languages of Greece and Rome, then the only stud- ies which had been so far formulated and systematized as to possess a discip- lined character. The period of the Civil War was unfavorable to educational en- terprise. The Act of Uniformity and the secession of the Non-conformist clergy brought home to men's minds the conviction that all attempts to incorpo- rate Puritanism into the organic life of the English Church, which followed soon after, must be abandoned as hopeless; and the Toleration Act compelled Eng- lish churchmen to recognize for the first time the unwelcome truth that dis- sent had to be reckoned with as a fact. Whereas in the 16th century men founded grammar schools, in the 18th they founded charity schools instead. These institutions rapidly multiplied dur- ing the whole of the 18th century and in the beginning of the 19th. The first sign of interest in public instruction evinced by Parliament was the appointment in 1816 of a select committee of the House of Commons on the education of the lower classes of the metropolis. In 1832 Lord Althorp procured the assent of the House to a vote of £20,000 for the erec- tion of school buildings in England. The main provision for secondary edu- cation had for centuries been supplied by endowed grammar schools. Each of these was, however, controlled exclusive- ly by its own body of trustees; and was regarded as a purely local and separate institution. The elaborate inquiry into endowed charities begun in 1818 and con- cluded in 1837, resulted in the accumu- lation of a mass of facts; but it did not attempt to furnish any information re- specting the educational character and public usefulness of those schools. In 1862 Lord Clarendon's Commission in- vestigated the state of the nine great public schools, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, Westminister, Shrewsbury, Charterhouse St. Paul's and the Mer- chant Tailors. Sir Lyon Playfair in 1879, and Sir John Lubbock in 1880, drafted and introduced without result, measures which provided for the registra- tion of teachers and for the establish- ment of an educational council. Mean- while public elementary education in Great Britain had been made free. The devotion of part of the probate duties to the remission of fees gave Scotland free education in 1890; England secured the same privilege under the provisions of the budget of 1891. In 1885 a separation was made of the administrative func- tions of the Scotch and the English Edu- cation Department; the former has since had its own committee of council and its own secretary. The Local Government Act for Scotland for 1889 allotted the sum of $1,005,000 per annum, derived from the probate duties, to the reduction of school fees in state-aided schools throughout the rest of Scotland. The result in time will be to make elementary education in Scotland free. Ireland. — Up to 1831, when Lord Derby established the national system, parliamentary grants for education had been made through the agency of private societies. In that year a Board of Com- missioners was established, with very large powers of administration, includ- ing the power to aid in the erection of schools, to appoint inspectors and other officers, to award gratuities to teachers, to establish a model and training school, and to edit and publish suitable school books. The powers thus intrusted to the Irish commissioners were greatly in ex- cess of those ever exercised by the com- mittee of council in England or in Scot- land. From the first it was determined that the rights of the Catholic popula- tion should be duly regarded; when, in 1861, the whole system was consolidated
