The Volume 1 Commissioner of Education's introduction discusses school and college enrollment and presents state common-school statistics on enrollment, average daily attendance, teachers and salaries, revenues and expenditures, and expenditures in Southern states by race. Report chapters address education in Great Britain and Ireland, Australasia, Belgium, Central Europe, Sweden, France, Italy, and Japan. Pupil classification and grading in St. Louis, Elizabeth (N.J.), Seattle, Denver, and Cambridge (Mass.) are described, along with a chapter dedicated to an overview of the St. Louis public school system. Common-school development in the Western states from 1830 to 1864 is covered. A chapter on the Royal Normal College for the Blind in London includes statistics on U.S. schools for the blind. Children's minor mental abnormalities related to school methods is discussed. The chapter on miscellaneous education topics includes school military drills, uniform financial reporting, professional schools, Lookout Mountain Educational Institution, need of action in ameliorating condition of the colored race, President McKinley's address at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, defense of Pennsylvania's free-school system, Bulgarian education, Kingsville (Ohio) school consolidation, the University of Illinois's new admission requirements, the Brookline Education Society, school seating improvements toward better student health and learning, speeches, Cuban schools, Mexican material progress, the U.S. national university project, religious instruction's relation to education, commercial education, and teaching civic duty. Additional chapters discuss art and literature study, the Western Literary Institute and College of Professional Teachers, the U.S. Naval Academy, arithmetic textbook history, Italian education and its reform, education and training for railway industry work, the British university extension system, and French education. A chapter devoted to school gardens offers an historical review of them and covers management, instruction in the garden, and school gardens' educational and economic value. A preliminary bibliography of Confederate textbooks is included, with notes on language tailored to the Confederacy. Lists of U.S. education periodicals, chief state school officers, college presidents, and normal school principals are included. Further chapters cover applied geography, and Swedish gymnastics. The last chapter is Booker T. Washington's address on "The Future of the Colored Race." [For volume 2, see ED622103.]