PRELIMINARY.
Two well-defined stages have marked the progress of national education in Argentina since 1916. The first began with the reorganization of primary instruction by act of the Federal Congress early in that year, which came about largely through the initiative and efforts of the minister of public instruction. It had long been felt that the legal system in force since 1882 was unsatisfactory, especially on the point of articulation of secondary education with the higher elementary on the one hand and with the universities on the other. Argentine educational thinkers asserted that secondary education prepared neither for practical life nor for entrance to the technical schools and the universities, inasmuch as it had remained unchanged for more than a generation, in the face of the social, economic, scientific, and ethnical changes through which the country had passed.
Together with this dissatisfaction with a special division went the conviction that governmental reform should strike deeper, and instead of busying itself with plans of reform of courses and schedules, should settle the fundamental question of what should be the nature and aims of the national secondary school. This could be done only by so modifying the prevailing system as to make it fit the needs of the school population according to their age, social conditions, and probable future. Proof that it had not so adapted itself was thought to be found in the fact that of the pupils annually completing the 4a elementary grade only 45 per cent continued into the colegios nacionales, as contrasted with 55 per cent who went into the 5a grade and commercial schools, while on a moderate estimate 60 per cent left with insufficient equipment for their needs as useful members of society. Furthermore, the secondary school, as organized, offered no opportunity to boys and girls of 13 and 14 years to choose the advanced courses and vocational training for which they felt an aptitude, and so to secure adequate preparation for the university studies or for advanced technical, industrial, and commercial schools.
For this lack of correlation between educational divisions it was proposed to substitute a logical and unbroken sequence. What came to be commonly accepted among education authorities as best serving this purpose was a common intermediate school of three years of an essentially practical character, carrying on general elementary instruction by means of book lessons and developing by special experiments and practical methods individual aptitudes by which to determine future training. As the basis for such a school primary education had, of course, to be modified, and after months of discussion a scheme for general modification of the entire educational fabric was outlined (1916). According to this, the primary school proper was to cover four years; the uniform middle school of the first grade one year; and the differentiated middle school of the second grade two years. Upon these were to be based the colegios nacionales, the normal schools, the industrial schools, the various higher special schools, and the national universities. Though marking a meritorious attempt to articulate the several divisions, the project did not work out satisfactorily in actual operation, and as a constituent part of the national system it was repealed after about a year of operation.