re the material equipment is
insufficient, there is more emphasis upon character-building, more of
permanence and in general higher qualifications in the teaching force
than under Government.

VIRTUES AND DEFECTS OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM

There has been nearly $90,000,000 appropriated by Congress since 1876
for Indian education. The appropriation for 1915 was over $4,500,000.
Yet even more is needed. The Indian Bureau estimates 77,000 Indian
children of school age; of these about 27,000 are provided for in
Government schools, 4,000 in mission and 25,000 in public schools,
leaving about 20,000 entirely neglected, besides an estimated 7,000 sick
and defective children, who need hospital schools or some form of
special care.

The present system includes day and boarding schools on the
reservations, as well as the large industrial schools off the
reservations. In 1913 there were reported two hundred and twenty-three
day schools and seventy-six reservation boarding-schools. The training
in the former is elementary; and the most advanced goes little beyond
the eighth grammar grade in the public school, though at Carlisle and a
few others there are short normal and business courses. In 1882 a
superintendent was appointed to inspect and correlate these widely
scattered institutions, and a few years later a corps of supervisors was
put in the field. Since 1891 there have been institutes and summer
schools conducted for the benefit of the teachers.

It is the rule in all boarding-schools that one half the time of each
pupil be given to industrial work, which includes most of the labor
involved in running the kitchen, dining-room, laundry, sewing-room, and
school farm or garden, as well as systematic training in housekeeping,
agriculture, and the mechanical trades. The age of graduation is usually
from seventeen to twenty-five or even more. This retardation is to be
attributed partly to the half-day system; partly to frequent transfers
from one school to another, and consequent loss of grade; and in the
poorer schools to inefficiency of teachers and lack of ambition on the
part of pupils. It must be remembered, moreover, that the subjects and
methods of study, in language, mathematics, and abstract ideas of all
kinds, were entirely foreign to the untutored Indian mind. It is
difficult to study in a foreign language even when the subject of study
is familiar; the Indian student is expected to master subjects
absolutely unknown