and president of the Mechanics' Institute, of San Francisco, are ex officio members of the board of regents, the governor being president. The site of the university is at Berkeley, four miles north of Oakland, and directly facing the Golden Gate, upon the 160 acres of land donated by the College of California, which has been laid out in handsome style, with drives, avenues, walks, and ornamental trees. The board of regents appropriated $20,000 for the purchase of chemical and philosophical apparatus. Until the buildings at Berkeley is completed, the university has been inaugurated in the building belonging to the College of California and in the Brayton building close at hand, both situated near the centre of Oakland. About fifty students have entered to date, distributed among the various colleges, most of them, however, in the College of Letters. The dormitory system being forbidden by the organic act, the students find homes in the boarding-houses and private families of Oakland. At a recent meeting of the regents, it was unanimously

Resolved, That young ladies be admitted into the university on equal terms, in all respects, with young men."

THE SANTA CLARA COLLEGE

Was founded in 1851, by the Rev. John Nobile; incorporated in 1855. It is conducted by the fathers of the Society of Jesus. The number of students in attendance is about 200.

UNIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC, (METHODIST EPISCOPAL.)

Situated at Santa Clara; incorporated 1851. Number of professors and teachers, 8; whole number of students in 1868 and 1869, 164. Thirty-four young gentlemen have graduated, twenty of whom received the degree of A. B., and fourteen that of B. S. Seventeen young ladies have graduated with the degree of M. S. Eight gentlemen have received the degree of A. M. in course. Yearly expense per pupil, $320. Sessions begin about the first of January and first of August. T. H. Sinex, D. D., president.

ST. MARY'S COLLEGE.

Situated at San Francisco, on the old Mission road, about five miles from the city hall. It is a fine brick building and will accommodate about 200 students. Study rooms, class rooms, and dormitories are convenient and well ventilated. Was opened for the reception of students in 1863, and the same year their number had reached upward of 200. It is now over 200. It is in the charge of gentlemen belonging to a society called "The Christian Brothers," whose numbers devote their lives to the work of education.

PACIFIC METHODIST COLLEGE.

Situated at Vacaville, Solano County; organized in 1861; president, J. R. Thomas. The number of students 210; value of buildings, about $25,000. Institution in all respects prosperous.

ST. VINCENT'S COLLEGE.

Situated at Los Angeles; organized 1867; incorporated 1869; president, Rev. James McGill. Average number of pupils during the past year, 50.

ST. AUGUSTINE COLLEGE.

Situated at Benicia, Solano County; it is a missionary college, under the auspices of the Protestant Episcopal Church; organized, 1868. Consists of three departments of learning; a theological, literary, and grammar school departments for boys. In addition there is a young ladies' seminary with its own faculty and a distinct location. There are 86 students, six of whom are for the ministry.

LAUREL HALL BOARDING SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES.

Is located at San Mateo; organized, 1864; principal, Miss L. H. Buckmaster; number of pupils 64. The grounds include 27 acres. Building is commodious. A large gymnasium has recently been erected, in which pupils will receive physical training under careful supervision.

SAN RAFAEL COLLEGE.

In Marin County; principal, Alfred Bates, late of the University School, San Francisco; opened 1869. The course of study comprises two departments, classical and modern. The classical course includes Latin, Greek, mathematics, English and French. The modern, includes a thorough business education.

ST. IGNATIUS COLLEGE.

Located in San Francisco; opened for students 1855; incorporated 1859; president, Rev. J. Bayma; number of pupils, 410.

UNIVERSITY SCHOOL.

Situated in San Francisco. Founded about five years ago by its present principal, Mr. George Bates, a graduate of Cambridge University, England. Its object is to prepare students for a university career, as well as to give a thorough commercial education. Number of pupils about 50.

UNION COLLEGE.

At San Francisco; established 1862. Is under the direction of Dr. R. Townsend Huddart. Number of pupils 90; assistant teachers and professors 10.

SONOMA COLLEGE.

Located at Sonoma in 1858; Rev. W. N. Cunningham, A. M., president; Mrs. E. A. Cunningham, vice principal. Number of pupils 30, including both males and females. The building is of concrete, with large, airy rooms. Locality unsurpassed for healthfulness and beauty of scenery.

SAN FRANCISCO.

(Sixteenth annual report, for the year 1869, Hon. James Denman, superintendent.) The city is divided into ten districts for school supervision. It contains forty-four schools; two high schools, one for boys and one for girls; nine grammar schools, three for each sex and three in common; three mixed schools; twenty-seven primary, and three evening schools. The total number of teachers is 326. The whole number of children in the city between six and fifteen years-the legal age to attend school-is 23,905; the whole number of pupils attending the public schools during the year, is 19,885; and the average number belonging, 14,134; giving an attendance of 83 per cent. of all pupils enrolled, and 59 per cent. of the average number belonging. The number of new pupils enrolled who have not before attended public schools is 6,246, an increase of 530 over last year.

Notwithstanding the large number of school-houses which have been erected by the board of education within the last three years, yet the department is now obliged to rent unfit buildings for the accommodation of 3,235 children, at a yearly rental of $15,000. Many of the rooms are in low basements of churches, and are so dark, cold, and damp as to be entirely unfit for prison cells. There is, therefore, an immediate necessity of erecting additional school buildings in nearly every part of the city. Superior accom

459,853 70

.17%

modations could be provided, at far less expense in interest on the capital expended, than is now paid for inferior rented buildings.

Of the 5,468 children in the city who are not attending any school, it is safe to estimate that at least 2,500 have at some time attended school, and received a fair business education. But even deducting this number from those not attending school, there are still 2,968 who are leading idle or dissolute lives. So great has become the crowd of young lads prowling around the streets, that it is a question of the highest importance to the future welfare of society: What shall be done to check this frightful tide of depravity which is sweeping over the city, wrecking so many noble youth, and blasting the fond hopes of so many anxious parents? It is an evil which calls loudly for some potent and instant remedy. Truant laws similar to those in Boston and other eastern cities should be passed and rigidly enforced.

From the last truant officers' report it is found "that 197 truants have been induced to return to their school, and seven who proved incorrigible have been sent to the industrial school for reformation." The knowledge that a proper officer is continually searching the city for absentees from school, already exerts a salutary influence in deterring truancy. But the most efficient officers can accomplish but little toward effecting a permanent reform unless wise laws are enacted, providing for the punishment of truancy and vagrancy as crimes.

Greater improvement has been made in the evening schools during the last year than ever before. There has been a large increase in attendance, and renewed interest; with most examplary order and decorum and hard study in the school room, where may be seen large classes of young men, and even old persons, trying for the first time to learn to read and write.

During the year a commercial evening class was organized for the purpose of giving a thorough business and commercial education to a large class of young men who are engaged during the day, or are unable to pay the tuition charged at commercial colleges.

The attempt to establish a day school for the Chinese proved a failure. The board of education therefore opened an evening school for this class, which has been successful. The whole number of pupils enrolled was 277; average daily attendance, 201 The school is doing good. It is estimated that the Chinese pay about one-twentieth of the taxes in San Francisco.

The whole number of pupils enrolled in the colored school during the year was 91, with an average daily attendance of 25%.

THE CO-EDUCATION OF THE SEXES.

The second biennial report for the years 1866-'67, Hon. John Swett, superintendent, expresses the belief that the presence of boys and girls in the same school, far from being injurious to either sex, exerts a mutually beneficial influence; a belief "based upon many years' experience in public school teaching, on an extended observation of schools, and on the opinion of the most enlightened and progressive educators.

"The school-houses in all the cities and larger towns have separate yards and playgrounds, on opposite sides of the building. The boys and girls enter the school-room by separate doors. In the school-room they meet at hours of intermission as well as of study, only under the eye of the teacher. The only opportunity of meeting when not under the observation of the teacher, is on the way to and from school. If the mere sight of a boy is dangerous to innocence, then our girls should be sent off to convents, where they may grow up in blissful ignorance of the existence of boys. If a pretty face and an occasional salutation of "good morning" be sufficient to turn the heads of our boys, then protect them by all means from such witchery.

"The charge of positive immorality, both in thought and act, is frequently brought against the public schools by their open enemies, and not unfrequently by moral reformers who profess to be friendly. There are some who have no faith in the purity of youth in either sex; they believe in total depravity to the letter. They look upon all associations of boys and girls, or of men and women, as merely animal instinct of the baser kind. I do not propose to argue with these Pecksniflian morality-men, who turn up their eyes in holy horror at the depravity of human nature in general, and of public schools in particular. Impure-minded boys and girls are to be found in schools, as well as impure-minded men and women in society; but they are exceptions to the general rule.

*

"That the tendency of educating boys and girls together is to excite improper and impure thoughts, I deny. That the standard of morality and propriety is lower than in schools where the sexes are separated, I also deny. The presence of girls in a school-room throws a strong restraining and refining influence over boys. They are more attentive to personal appearance and neatness of dress; they are more refined in manner and careful in speech; they have higher feelings of honor and manliness; they stand in wholesome dread of the public opinion of the girls, which frowns lown meanness, and profanity, and vulgarity. Boys have quite as high feelings of

honor as men. The restraining influence of girls over boys is the same as that of

women over men.

*

4

"I believe that girls educated with boys will grow up into womanhood with stronger, purer, nobler, better-developed characters than if trained in seclusion. They will be better capable of acting and thinking for themselves. Nowhere can they form better ideas of true manhood than in the public schools, where ambitious and manly boys are their associates, where mind is made the standard of position, and where true merit commands respect and admiration. Girls are stimulated to greater mental efforts by the presence of able and ambitious boys. The surest way to produce romantically-diseased imaginations and to sully the purity of the female character, is to shut out girls from the society of boys, and to exclude young ladies from the society of young men. It is a fact which young ladies themselves admit, that in schools for young ladies exclusively, there is more talk about the other sex than in institutions where both sexes are educated together.

"Education consists in the development of character, more than in the study of text books. I believe in throwing around boys every refining, restraining, and humanizing influence; in educating them to regard the female character as something pure and holy; in training them to reverence womanhood. I believe in teaching girls to respect manliness and manhood. How can this be done better than in a well-regulated school, where the boys and girls mutually educate each other?

"The co-education of the sexes is a characteristic feature of our American commonschool system, in contradistinction to the European system of national schools. Everywhere in the United States, except in a few of the largest cities, the boys and girls are educated together in the public schools. What is the result? Are we ready to admit that in France, where the boys and girls are carefully educated apart, the standard of morality is higher than with us? Are wives and daughters purer and truer? Is woman more respected than with us?

"I was born and bred in that bleak little corner of the Union where common schools were first established, where they have since been nurtured and sustained, and where men and women are taught to think for themselves. My pleasantest memories of school-days are associated with the bright-eyed little girls who came to school in summer mornings, bringing May flowers and lilacs and peonies and pinks in their hands. I loved some of those pretty girls with all the fullness of boyish feeling. Nobody ever told any of the boys of our school it was a sin to love them. No impure thought ever sullied our affection for them, for nobody had ever poisoned our minds with the notion that boys and girls are innately vicious. Barefoot farmers' boys were we, all of us, with tanned faces and hands used to toil; and farmers girls, red-cheeked, barefoot too, and dressed in homespun, taught us our first lessons of faith in the purity and nobleness of womanhood. They were our best teachers. They made the old school-house pleasant with the sunlight of their faces, and merry with their ringing laughter. They softened our rough natures. We chose the girls we liked best at spelling matches, and never were the worse for it. We hauled the girls on sleds in the winter-time, and slid on the ice together, and none of us ever thought of evil.” * * On this point, Mr. Stowe, a celebrated Glasgow teacher, uses the following language: "The youth of both sexes of our Scottish peasantry have been educated together; and, as a whole, the Scotch are the most moral people on the earth. Education in England is given separately, and we have never heard from practical men that any benefit has arisen from the arrangement. The separation of the sexes has been found to be injurious. It is stated on the best authority, that of those girls educated in schools of convents, apart from boys, the greater majority go wrong within a month after being let loose in society and meeting the other sex. They cannot, it is said, resist the slightest compliment or flattery The separation is intended to keep them strictly moral, but this unnatural seclusion actually generates the very principle desired to be avoided. We may repeat that it is impossible to raise the girls as high intellectually without boys as with them, and it is impossible to raise boys, morally, as high without girls. The girls morally elevate the boys, and the boys intellectually elevate the girls. But more than this, girls are morally elevated by the presence of boys, and boys are also intellectually elevated by the presence of girls. Girls brought up with boys are more positively moral, and boys brought up in school with the girls are more positively intellectual, by the softening influence of the female character."

On the other side of the question, Superintendent Fitzgerald, in his third biennial report for the years 1868-69, says:

"The experiment of separating the sexes in the large grammar schools of San Francisco, has been tried and attended with gratifying success. That it has pleased the parents has been shown by the large attendance, and teachers directly interested speak of the arrangement in terms of praise. That rough boys of twelve or fifteen years are often unfit associates for lady-like girls-and still more unfit for those who are otherwise will be readily understood; and pupils of that age are certainly apt to be interested in each other, to the great detriment of their studies. In these practical days it is vain to plead sentiment, and modern school trustees are not to be moved by

any appeals based on recollections of bright eyes and brown hair; so the advocates of co-education are forced to the more tangible argument that, while the presence of boys in the school-room may not greatly benefit the girls, the presence of girls had a decidedly beneficial effect upon boys. Whether the disadvantages of co-education have been counterbalanced by the advantages has been shown by the successful working of the Denman, Lincoln and other schools in San Francisco. But when we consider, not young ladies and gentlemen, but little children from six to ten years of age, the case seems entirely different. All the arguments of co-educationists are peculiarly applicable in this connection, while those of their adversaries lose all their force. The experience of teachers has taught them to prefer mixed classes of boys and girls in all but the higher grades.”

TEACHING AS A PROFESSION.

In the first biennial report of the superintendent of public instruction for the school years 1864 and 1865, Hon. John Sweet, superintendent, remarks:

"The time is rapidly approaching when teaching must be recognized as a profession; when a diploma from a normal school, or a certificate of examination by a legally authorized association of teachers, or a State board of examination, shall be a license to teach school until revoked by those who issued it. Educational conventions in every part of our country express a general desire for a distinct and definite recognition of the occupation of teaching by forms equivalent to those now existing in law, medicine, and theology. It is true there are many who make teaching a temporary occupation, a stepping-stone to other pursuits, and there is no objection to this, when they are duly qualified for the noblest of human duties; but there is a large class, becoming larger every year, who desire to make it the occupation of a life-an occupation which calls for a range of acquirements and a height of qualification fully equal to that of the liberal professions."

CAUSES OF NON-ATTENDANCE.

"Indifference of parents; poverty of parents; inconvenience of location of schoolhouses; unattractiveness of school-houses; inefficiency of school-teachers. These being the canses, the remedies must be adapted to meet them. The indifference of parents must be overcome by the diffusion of enlightened views concerning the importance of education; honest poverty must be assisted, and vicions poverty reclaimed, if possible; inconvenient locations of schools must be changed; unattractive school-houses must be made attractive; inefficient teachers, who are unable to make their schools attractive by interesting the pupils, and exciting a thirst for learning, must give place to others. The co-operation of all parties interested is necessary for the removal of this evil. More, however, depends upon the teachers than upon all others. A good teacher possesses the power to make his school attractive to the child, and when the child is attracted to the school-room its persuasions will be irresistible with the parent. The percentage of attendance of a school is generally a fair index of the capacity of the teacher."

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WOMEN TEACHERS.

"The functions of the teacher's office are specially suited to women. They are the natural educators of the young. The disparity between their salaries and those of male teachers cannot fail to have arrested the attention of every thinking person. The mere statement of the fact that for the same labor they receive less pay is a singular commentary on the boasted chivalry and gallantry of our countrymen. Woman is adapted to the school-room. Much of the work to be done there no others can do as well. I hope, therefore, that this disposition to give the preference to competent female teachers will continue. What reason can be urged against placing women in charge of our grammar schools? The few experiments that have been made in this direction have been eminently satisfactory. I feel it to be a duty to place myself on the record in favor of giving the fullest scope for the exercise of female talent, the gratification of honorable female aspiration for professional distinction, and the same pay for the same work when done by women as when done by men."