colleges, known as _Arbeiderakademier_, where mechanics who have an
ambition to acquire a better knowledge of their trades and general
culture, may attend lectures in the evenings, delivered by scientific
men, successful mechanics, and other specialists. The range of
subjects includes every branch of human activity.

In Sweden, in the _Folkskola_, Elementary or People's School,
maintained by the parish under the direction of the school board and
the close supervision of the state, instruction is compulsory as well
as gratuitous. As in Norway, between the ages of seven and fourteen
every boy and girl must attend a public school, unless the parents can
show that their child is receiving equivalent instruction elsewhere,
in a private school or at home. No exception or compromise is allowed,
and no "half-time" system or "rush" through the school to suit the
convenience of the factory or the farmer. For seven years, during
eight and a half months of the year,--allowing for summer, Christmas
and Easter holidays,--and thirty-six hours per week, every boy and
girl in the kingdom receives instruction and goes through the same
curriculum. The school board, which has the direct management of the
schools is elected to the parish, and women are eligible to it. The
state, which controls the whole system of education, from the A.B.C.
class to the college and university, maintains alike its unity and its
efficiency, and sees to the strict enforcement of the law. Parents who
try to evade it, through malevolence or neglect, may even, after due
warning, be deprived of their children, who are taken over by the
community during their school years.

In thinly populated districts the school may be "ambulatory," held now
in one part of the district and now in another, so that all may attend
in turn. In such cases the schooling is reduced to four months in the