TENNESSEE: "Unfortunately there is not opportunity for students to get such practice."

TEXAS: The State University and normal schools have made no provision for practice teaching nor for adequate observation. "In some cities by means of a system of supernumerary teachers they can." Austin: "We do not employ teachers who have not had practice." Dallas: "We do not employ inexperienced teachers for high-school work." VIRGINIA: "No." "In our grammar schools" only. "Practice at our normal schools." WEST VIRGINIA: The Huntington Normal School admits students of the training department who expect to do high-school work to the classes of the regular academic department, which more than covers the high-school courses, and practice teaching under the superintendent of the training department.

SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT

At the request of the chairman of the committee, the following is offered in response to the two nquiries.

1. What professional preparation is desirable for southern secondaryschool teachers? and,

2. What professional preparation is possible under existing conditions for southern secondary-school teachers?

The high school of the South possesses problems which are not marked by any geographical pecul arity. These problems are national and not local. If any peculiarity obtains it is due primarily to its historical descent from the old-time southern classical academy. This historic connection will, in large measure, explain the presence of the classical or literary flavor which obtains and also the custom of college graduates becoming secondary teachers. The industrial or technical high school in the South is the exception.

It is also a mistake to assume or maintain that the secondary school in the South materially differs from that in other sections of the United States. The factors of waste in the population and the economic conditions for developing native resources and sustaining human industries do not, aside from imiting the material resources of high schools, determine the question of the southern high school for the whites. It is chiefly the high school for the negro which has its questions determined by those conditions as related to the negro.

One fact which indicates that southern high schools cannot be regarded as sui generis is the employment in them of teachers prepared by northern institutions. The pursuit of studies in the latter by native southern teachers points in the same direction. The demand for professional secondary training is therefore the same in the South as in the North; or, to be more accurate, is growing to be the same. The above report on existing conditions indicates the widespread recognition of this demand.

There are a few features in secondary training made desirable, if not necessary, by reason of their intimate relation to successful secondary teaching. The best high schools of the day are, and all high schools of the future will be, departmental. This is required for efficiency, and indicates the degree of scholarship needful for high-school work. But secondary teaching tends to become too exclusively departmental so as to prevent the teachers getting a

sufficient knowledge of the pupil as an individual who has passed up thru definite school processes. High-school teachers forget the childhood of the pupil which has been passed in the grades. No less do they lack a sense of the unity in the work of the high school as a whole. Correlation of all the secondary-school factors is necessary, and this can be made real only thru adequate professional training.

Under existing conditions there are three means, suggested by actual experience in the administration of high schools, available for equipping teachers more effectively for the high school:

1. City systems could require that college graduates aspiring to high-school positions should become elementary teachers, for a time at least. This would make the schools responsible for "professionalizing" their own teachers.

2. Normal schools could add to the work they are already doing a department designed to prepare secondary teachers. This is possible in all the states, except Arkansas and Mississippi, where state normal schools do not exist.

3. Colleges and universities could add a year's course of study, which, presupposing the Bachelor's degree, would provide special preparation for the secondary teacher. This work would be an intensive study of what I call the pedagogy of the high school. This would include the history of the high school (particularly in the United States), the psychology of adolescence, methods of recitation in the high school, review of elementary-school processes, review of secondary subjects for specialization in the light of the foregoing and in the interest of effective correlation of departments and subjects, and the ethics of adolescence as related to the development of the institutional tendencies peculiar to the high-school student and American ife in general. This work would not treat the high school as an isolated part of the public-school system. This work could also presuppose much of the work now done in education as a part of the provisions for the Bachelor's degree. This postgraduate work could then lead to the Master's degree in education, and thus become somewhat of a profess'onal degree for teaching, corresponding to similar degrees in engineering, law, etc. This is possible in view of the fact that numerous leading high schools have already established for themselves the custom of giving preference to applicants who possess the Master's degree, even on the basis of the usual academic work.

4. Practice teaching in a model high school is probably not demanded as a part of this professional training. Where possible, visitation, observation, and, perhaps, some teaching in the school where one is to be employed, could better replace the model practice. At least the widespread custom of probationing new secondary teachers strongly indicates the necessity of each school fashioning its own teachers finally in accordance with its own best spirit and traditions.

Into the question of professional requirements after the secondary teacher gets into service it is not meet for these suggestions to enter. Most of the foregoing suggested requirements are now practically recognized in many

localities, and it is possible under existing conditions to standardize them thruout the South and the nation at large.

XIV (special)

CAPACITY AND LIMITATIONS OF THE NORMAL SCHOOL IN THE PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION

OF HIGH-SCHOOL TEACHERS

JOHN W. COOK, PRESIDENT NORTHERN ILLINOIS STATE NORMAL SCHOOL The battle for the professional preparation of teachers for the elementary schools is substantially won. The educational people are of one mind with regard to it and the general public approves the action of its representatives in making appropriations from the state treasuries for the establishment and maintenance of normal schools. While these institutions are not limited, ordinarily, by their charters to the preparation of elementary teachers, at least not in this country, the extreme demand for teachers of that class has furnished such a practical limitation in the great majority of cases. Here and there, however, a normal school has been influenced by college traditions and has developed so strongly on the academic side that many of its graduates have become teachers in secondary schools.

The marked advantages that have come to the elementary schools thru the professional training of their teachers has awakened a warm interest along similar lines among the high-school people. This is the most logical of consequences, and the practical question that is now up for discussion with them is with respect to the instrumentalities that should be employed in the technical preparation of teachers for their schools. Certain of the normal-school principals believe that their institutions are admirably equipped for such service and submit a statement of what they have been doing in that direction for some time in proof of the wisdom of their contention. Others hold that the needs of the two classes of teachers are so divergent that it is unwise for the normal schools to attempt to cover both fields. In attempting to discuss this question I have the possible disadvantage of being connected with a school which has no particular ambition in the way of preparing secondary teachers. In our study of the question it will be well to set the demands of the two classes of school as near each other as possible and thus to determine by such a juxtaposition the degree of variation and its bearing upon the problem.

I. GENERAL SCHOLARSHIP

Instruction is one of the necessary functions of the teacher. It may be defined as the canceling of the inequality in knowledge that exists between the teacher and the pupil. The inequality, therefore, is presupposed. Nothing more certainly and more quickly undermines the respect which the pupil should feel for his teacher than the suspicion that he is not a respectable authority in the subjects in which he attempts instruction. As Rosenkranz aptly remarks: "His authority over his pupil consists only in his knowledge and

ability. If he has not these, no external support, no trick of false appearances which he may put on, will serve to create it for him." He richly merits the contempt which his presumption and dishonesty will inevitably provoke. A wide gap in knowledge between the teacher and the pupil is demanded, not alone in the interests of accurate and inspiring instruction, but, as well, by all of the ethical relations of the school.

The immediate demands for knowledge in the two classes of schools under discussion are widely variant. The curriculum of the elementary school is, of necessity, narrow and superficial when compared with that of the high school. The first four years are mainly confined to the acquisition of a fair degree of mastery over the tools of culture. In the last half of the course there is an ascent into the elements of the knowledges, but, usually, the grammar school leaves off where the high school begins.

It goes without saying that, other things being equal, the broader and more thoro the scholarship the better the teacher, regardless of the grade in which he is employed. The imagination fondly dwells upon what would be possible if in every school there were a liberally educated teacher. That is an inspiring ideal to nourish as we press on to better things, but its realization is entirely out of the question at present and will be for an indefinite time to come. Where the highest welfare of human beings is concerned it is a rude shock to our fine idealism to have such material considerations as a mere lack of pecuniary resources determine matters of such supreme and far-reaching moment. They will push themselves into prominence, however, and will determine in large measure the course of events, whether agreeable to our ideas or otherwise.

With regard to the matter of general scholarship it may be said that graduation from a high school having a good four-year course implies an academic preparation which answers the needs of the elementary school very well. It furnishes, also, a good basis for the normal school to build upon in the professional training of teachers for that grade. If such a condition were the rule there would be a radical improvement in the educational status of the Middle West. The superintendent of public instruction of the State of Illinois, in his latest report, 1903-04, furnishes the interesting information that there were teaching in 1904, in seventy-two counties of the state, 4,428 persons whose training had been acquired wholly in the elementary schools. Such conditions seem deplorable enough, yet their case would be paralleled by teachers in secondary schools who have had only high-school training.

If the contention for a good high-school course as an academic preparation for the elementary teacher be justified, a college or university course, or its equivalent, would seem to be demanded by the same logic as a foundation for the high-school teacher. This is not unreasonable and is rapidly becoming the rule. Because of the relatively small number of high schools the scholarship problem for their teachers is not a very grave one; at least it is far less difficult than the corresponding problem for the elementary schools. Indeed,

the reasonableness of this higher discipline demand is so apparent that an argument in its defen e seems quite unnecessary. The work of the pupil should be seen in sufficient perspective to bring out its meaning or it is likely to fall into a hopeless formalism. There are certain phases of school work that are purely mechanical and that may be conducted after a fashion by any of the pupils of a given class. The Jesuit schools employed the idea advantageously as they were conditioned, but Bell and Lancaster worked it to death. Such crude attempts at educating children had some defense a century ago but they should long since have become obsolete. Unhappily they are still present, and very much in evidence, too, as is proved by the statements quoted. It ought not to be difficult to save the secondary schools a similar fate. Happily the studies are of such a character as to make it comparatively easy to detect the incompetents in scholarship, for they are quite sure to meet with early disaster in their attempts to teach what they do not know.

II. SPECIAL SCHOLARSHIP

The advantages arising from an intensive study of subjects, in the interests of departmental instruction, are so apparent that many of the elementary schools have adopted that method of teaching. In consequence, children of ten or twelve, or even of tenderer years, march from room to room like young collegians, to receive the instruction of teachers who are specializing, whether they are specialists or not. They are thus anticipating the experiences of the high school and college. It is quite possible that our sympathies for the orphaned neophytes may be misplaced, but there can be no doubt of the wisdom of applying the method in the high school. I am not disposed to object to its application in the upper grades to a limited extent, but the amount of specializing in the elementary schools will not be great for some time to come. We have come to expect the teachers of manual training, of music, of domestic economy, and possibly of drawing, to be specialists. For the ordinary branches, however, one teacher of real ability has many advantages over a group of specializers. The children need continuity of control and a warm and intimate relation to one person. There may be something in the remark of a little girl who had been a pupil in a normal training-school and was transferred to a city school under a single teacher. She was "tired to death by seeing the same teacher in the same dress all day long." But she must be classed among the exceptions. The subjects of instruction are within the reach of fair scholarship. The lessons are neither long nor difficult. Where specialization is demanded it is of a simple sort and yet ample in its extent and thoroness for all of the needs of the elementary school.

With the secondary school the case is quite different. It has become in reality what it has sometimes been called, the people's college. With its modern equipment of library and laboratories and shop and kitchen and sewing-rooms and business department and all of the rest, and with its extended course of literary work beside, it has outrun the old-fashioned college of fifty