Pre-College English in the United States

This study deals with courses and requirements in English grammar, composition, and literature given in secondary or preparatory schools to students before their admission to colleges or universities in the United States. Such courses are evolved, and indeed are even now evolving, from an interweaving of four distinct controlling influences: first, local school ordinances, now consolidated under State Boards of Education which specify all courses given in State schools that are supported by public taxes ; second, the individual universities, which make individual requirements for admission, either by recommendation or by compulsion, according to whether the university be under State or private supervision; third, various associations and organizations of both universities and secondary schools whose purpose is the educational improvement of their separate members ; fourth, the instrument of the last named associations, the College Entrance Examination Board, whose function is to offer the same examinations at the same date, at strategic points throughout all the States, to applicants from both privately and publicly supported schools, for admission to both privately and publicly supported colleges.