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Number in advanced Readers | 40 per cent
" " [[ditto for: Number in]] Geography | 36 " " [[dittos for: per cent]]
" " [[ditto for: Number in]] Arithmetic | 54 " " [[dittos for: per cent]]
" " [[ditto for: Number in]] Higher-branches | 5 " " [[dittos for: per cent]]
" " [[ditto for: Number in]] Writing | 47 " " [[dittos for: per cent]]

I cannot report accurately the comparative progress over last year from the lower to the higher grades, owing to imperfect tables in the reports of the late Supt. of Upper Maryland and Delaware, but believe it has been creditable.  The whole number of scholars over sixteen years of age is only eight hundred and eighteen (818).

It is exceedingly unfortunate in view of the responsible duties of citizenship which now or soon will devolve on all these people, that more of them have not been gathered in well organized night schools.  I regard the Trustees of colored schools in this district as very derelict in duty that they have not made some provision for such schools.  The expense would have been very slight.  Warmed school houses were ready for us, and good teachers to take charge of them for small compensation.  The ignorance of the men and women of this generation is an evil thing, which needs to be corrected rapidly by the intelligent school-master and preacher, and not by designing politicians who often talk and profess to instruction only to darken and deceive.

In all the schools regularly reported the average attendance for the year has been 77 per cent.
The average attendance last year was 74 " " [[dittos for: per cent.]]
Number always present this year 48 " " [[dittos for: per cent.]]
" " [[dittos for: Number always]] punctual " " [[dittos for: this year]] 36 " " [[dittos for: per cent.]]

Twenty-seven (27) white pupils, on an average, are reported as having attended these schools during the year.  I have no doubt but that this number will be largely increased during the coming term.  Children who play together will go to school together:  mixed schools have always proved the best schools at the North.  This is the only way to furnish exactly equal privileges to any.  If in small places you have a half day's school for a small number of whites, and the other half for a small number of blacks, neither receive much benefit.  The expense of sufficient separate schools is too great.  I have yet to learn that the twenty-seven whites attending these schools have received any injury from the companionship in mind, morals or position.  A good father may well hesitate to associate his son with the immoral and base, who can be found more or less in any public school, white or colored.  If the boy is well instructed, I do not believe he will be thus associated, though in the same school.  Children choose their own companions, and are not easily attracted to open vice.  If a child is injured it will quite as 

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likely be by one of his own rank and condition.  The most select schools are often the scenes of the greatest iniquity.  Public schools, free to all, in the best buildings, under the best instructors, with the best appliances of all kinds, are the best schools for our time.

Temperance.

Judging from the reports received, not much effort has been made by teachers to organize temperance societies.  In January last, seventeen (17) were reported with five hundred and thirty-seven (537) members, and this is about the average number for the year.  But two (2) societies were reported among the public-schools in the District of Columbia.  I have issued no circular upon the subject as I probably ought to have done:  but have addressed the schools and people frequently in regard to it, and have usually requested the teachers under my own immediate direction to organize societies.  

Many teachers no doubt, have only had their attention called to the subject by the question in the blanks for monthly reports, but not being specially instructed to organize societies, and being very often over worked in other ways, they have not felt obliged to proceed in this direction, though themselves favorable to temperance, and seeing daily around them great need for temperance efforts.  I regret to report though that one society teacher has been dismissed for drunkenness.

The children generally come easily into temperance societies, where they are started.  A boy, however, in St. Mary's Co. Md., objected when asked to join, saying with all honesty, that he wanted to get an education and be a gentleman:  and that all gentlemen drank whiskey and smoked, therefore he must.  It is a fact that because a man is known to drink whiskey and get drunk, he is none the less regarded, in many places as a gentleman, and admitted into the so called first society.  

I am glad to report, however, that in some places like Port Tobacco, and Upper Marlboro, Md., where I have found the most drunkenness among the whites, recently temperance societies have been organized.

When the natives of the country who own the land see that their course of dissipation is ruinous, and organize among themselves for better things, then there will be more hope for the colored people, who are influenced so much by example.

Great objection is made by the colored people against signing a temperance pledge which includes tobacco.  I am sure that my District comes in for its full proportion of the $20,000,000. said to have been expended this year by the colored people of the South for this thing.  The poor colored people, so called, would have ample means by foregoing this luxury - if we may be allowed to dignify so vile a weed with such a name - to supply themselves with all needed churches and school-houses of the first order.  As it is, many a man without a rod of land, or a house, or horse, or hardly anything, spends a round