room, for the pupils' attitude toward work, and for the growth and development of all the pupils under his charge. He may not steel himself to endure an illtrained, disorderly class for one recitation period, while he looks forward to the hour when he shall have a class and has learned habits of good behavior and systematic work from some other teacher. This is where the teacher too often fails who serves his apprenticeship in the high school, for here the road to success is long and hard, unless unusual natural ability combined with a large measure of good luck forces the truth home to him. In the grades the conditions will compel him, in the phrase of Carlyle, to make truce with necessity, which the sage of Chelsea points out to be the foundation of all success.

The poor high-school teacher as a rule lacks that professional training which puts him at home with his pupils. Nor can he easily gain this part of his training in the high school, where the pupils are at the adolescent stage. They are awkward and diffident, mentally as well as physically. A few years earlier, in the grades, these pupils would have made themselves at home with the teacher; now it is the teacher who must take the initiative and take it easily and naturally. Nowhere in the child's life is the need so great for the trained eye and the steady hand as at the high-school age. The teacher who tries to gain these in the high school is like the pilot who should take his first lessons at the wheel in steering a boat through the rapids. The high school is a poor place to gain the first experience in teaching. The conditions are too complex.

Objections may perhaps be made to this method of professional preparation on the ground that the teacher who is to do high-school work cannot afford, on account of the poor pay, after having invested in a college education, to accept a position in the grades. The answer is that this is the final step in the teacher's training. This work in the grades ought to be far more valuable to the teacher than to the school. If the superintendent is willing to give the man or woman fresh from college a chance to teach in the grades, the man or woman ought to be glad to get the place; and ought to strive conscientiously to do as much good and as little harm as possible to the pupils intrusted to him. The young doctor with four years of college and two or three years of medical school behind him is glad to get a place as interne in a hospital and work a year or two for his board in order to get the practical side of his profession. The young lawyer, having earned his B.A. and his LL.B., is glad to work at small pay for a successful law firm, and plead his first cases in a justice court, in order to learn the routine of office and court work. The clergyman just out of the seminary is fortunate if he can get an appointment as assistant in a good charge and learn here the rudiments of his profession. The most promising of the men who graduate from the technical schools are eager to begin at the bottom in the factory or in the railroad shops and learn the business from the beginning; they understand that it is a valuable and often a necessary step toward the manager's office or the private car to have worn overalls and carried a dinner bucket. So the schoolmaster with all his degrees and his special study may well serve his apprenticeship in the grade school

room at a very small salary, realizing that for the first two years he is much more of a learner than a teacher. He needs to approach his work from a direction altogether different to that from which he has approached it before. He has studied historical facts and scientific theories; now he must get down beside the boys and girls and look at things with their eyes, see the world as they see it. Only so can he use his facts and theories to good purpose as a teacher. The course in education at the university is of great value to the experienced teacher; it is commonly worth little to the college graduate without experience in the schoolroom.

12. To put it briefly: Let the college student who is to teach in high school specialize somewhat in the lines of his chosen calling during his last two years in college. Let him study the history of education, particularly of secondary education, educational psychology, pedagogy, methods of teaching his special subject, and the relation of his subject to the whole work of the high school; let him learn what Stanley Hall can tell him of the adolescent period. Then let him get a place in the grades and learn how to teach boys and girls, how to understand them, and how to work with them. After two years of this work the teacher ought to be ready for work in the high school. He will then bring to his task a fund of school lore not to be found in books or in courses of education; he will even have accumulated a store of sense. This, from the standpoint of a high-school principal, is the proper professional preparation for the high-school teacher.

II

STRATTON D. BROOKS, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, BOSTON,
MASSACHUSETTS

1. A somewhat extended observation of teachers causes me to believe that one of the important elements leading to ineffective teaching in the secondary schools of the country is that the teachers fail to get the pupil's point of view. They do not see the subject taught as the pupil sees it. A large majority of them give greater attention to the logical development of the subject than to the development of the logical powers of the pupil. This is due to the fact that the training of these teachers has been largely, if not wholly, academic, and that their professional training, if any, has been incidental and superficial. Academic training, as here used, means the study of the subject for the sake of mastering it as a subject in its logical and epistemological relations, while professional training, as here used, means the study of the subject with reference to its adaptability to use as an instrument for developing and training the mind of the pupil. Such professional training will include the supplementary study of all allied or additional subjects that will aid in this purpose. To the extent that academic study of any subject prepares a teacher to use that subject as an instrument of child development it is professional in its result.

2. Since without an academic knowledge of his subject the teacher cannot teach that subject, it follows that the academic pursuit of knowledge must be a fundamental part and parcel of professional training. The amount of special study in any single line will vary with the nature of the subject. Four years of work in Latin beyond that of high-school grade is not too much to require for a teacher of Latin, nor would four years of work in sciences as a whole be considered too great a requirement for a teacher of science. For a teacher of chemistry, however, suitable preparation on the academic side may require less than four years of work in chemistry alone, though the total time given to scientific study by such a teacher should not fall below four years of college work. In general, the greater the academic accomplishment of the secondaryschool teacher, the better his teaching will be; provided this academic study is so tempered and modified by professional study as to enable him to select from his greater store of knowledge those items of most use in the development. of his pupils. The evils of over-specialization are not those of excessive academic preparation but those of insufficient professional preparation. The minimum requirement for a high-school teacher should be graduation from a college course in which special study has been given to the subjects that the candidate expects to teach.

3. In addition to as complete and accurate scholarship as can possibly be obtained, the training of the secondary-school teacher should include many items that will give to this academic knowledge its greatest efficiency as an educational instrument. These elements may be properly termed professional. Some of the more important ones are as follows:

4. A teacher should have a knowledge of the fundamental aim and purpose of education. This involves a knowledge of our present civilization and the obligations of the citizens of it. Even a partial understanding of the present ideals of education can be arrived at only by considering the process by which they have come into existence. It is necessary that the teacher understand the more important epochs in the development of civilization and the means adopted in each to educate the citizens therefor. Without this knowledge the teacher must accept the statements of others as to what constitutes the aim of education, and will be unable to select from the different claimants those having the largest basis in human experience. The teacher's professional course must therefore include a study of a large portion of the history of the world with special emphasis upon the part of education therein and with some consideration to the history of secondary schools.

5. The teacher must be thoroly familiar with the child, not only to the extent of understanding the laws of his development, but what is more important to the extent of appreciating the child's point of view, and being able to look upon the world as the child looks upon it. Study alone cannot give this last. The sympathetic attitude is not based solely upon knowledge, but is rather ingrained in the character. The teacher who is most analytical, who most clearly separates and picks apart the mental machinery of childhood, is

likely to be the least sympathetic and so most often fails in the schoolroom. It is true, however, that given the sympathetic attitude, this sympathy gains in point and purpose from a complete understanding of the needs of the child. The increase in teaching power that the study of psychology and the consideration of the facts of adolescence will give to the teacher attuned to the appreciative attitude is immeasurable. Psychology, with emphasis on adolescence, must therefore be included in the teacher's professional course.

6. The final goal and the point of departure being known, the major lines of educational procedure are thereby determined. The teacher who has decided what he will consider the fundamental aim of education, and who appreciates the condition and methods of development of the child, has a standard for judging the truth or falsity of educational principles that is not possessed by one whose ideas of either of these subjects are hazy and indefinite. The professional study of a teacher should therefore include the full consideration of the principles of education as determined by the nature of the child and the purpose of education.

7. After such a study, intelligent consideration may be given to the adaptation of the subject-matter of instruction to the needs of the pupil so that by selection and modification this subject-matter may be presented in the way that will most rapidly advance the child toward the desired end. The general principles of method will therefore find a place in the teacher's professional study.

course of

8. The academic study of the teacher will give him a knowledge of the subject-matter of instruction, but his attitude toward it will be that of the adult mind, and his conception of it that which will make it useful for other purposes than educational ones. To this academic knowledge of the subject the teacher should add a professional study of it by means of which he will determine what aid it will give to the general purposes of education; what portions of it are possible of acquisition by the child; in what order these should be presented so that the child's development will be most helped; by what methods it may be made to conform to the child's point of view; to what extent it must be accommodated to the general principles of methods; and what special devices and applications the experience of years has shown. desirable and effective. Of quite as much value as all this, his professional study should show him what not to do and enable him to avoid the repetition of experiments long since shown to be detrimental. The professional course should include, therefore, a study of the special methods of instruction in the subjects to which the teacher expects to give the major portion of his attention, together with the history of the teaching of that subject.

9. If all the preceding could be accurately determined and carried into effect we would have the ideal. Unfortunately the ideal is unattainable, and the teacher who fails to accommodate his ideals to the necessities of his work will have his failure charged up to his being a mere theorist. We are not alone in this world and not only must all the preceding be determined in its applica

tion to many pupils rather than to one, but it must be applied by a teacher working with other teachers and instructing many children at the same time. All that he does is but one additional element in the large number of influences at work upon the children, and any theoretical determination of what ought to be produced must give way to the clear conception of what is really produced. The modifications and adaptations that numbers render necessary must have consideration, and no teacher is educationally equipped who has not given careful thought to the necessities of system and organization, so that in so far as possible their advantages may be preserved and their disadvantages avoided. Quite as much for teachers as for supervising officials a study of school organization and management is a necessary part of the professional

course.

10. To give attention to the moral, mental, and social progress of the child will be of small value if we do not at the same time make sure that he is surrounded by conditions that render possible a healthy and vigorous physical development. The enforcement of compulsory education carries with it the maintaining of proper hygienic conditions. The daily routine of schoolwork will include careful attention to school hygiene and instruction in this subject should be included in the professional course.

II. With such professional equipment the teacher is prepared to start his work with a clear understanding of his problem and can derive the highest benefit from his experience. But to start with such an equipment is not enough—it must be kept. The teacher who falls behind the times is a clog upon civilization at the point of greatest hindrance. Education is a live, vigorous, growing subject, and the teacher must know the lines of that growth. For this he must depend largely upon his reading, but it must be reading with discrimination. Every age has brought forward some theory of education that has been followed by large numbers for a considerable time before its fallaciousness became apparent. Every month the educational journals of the present time set forth some man's idea, promulgate some new theory, propose some new device. Some of these are good and will in time become the commonplaces of education; some have elements of good, some are wholly and completely bad, and tho attractively presented, are based upon a false philosophy and must be ultimately discarded. To read educational literature understandingly, so that the true may be sorted from the false, demands a logical and philosophical training. The teacher not trained in this becomes a mere follower, quite unable to tell whether his leader is an educator or an impostor. The course in professional training must, therefore, include sound training in logic, philosophy, and ethics.

12. The order in which the elements of professional training have been named is not intended as indicating the order of acquisition. The training in logic and philosophy that will be a protection against false theories of education after graduation will also be of great service to the pupil as an undergraduate, and its elements at least should come early in the course. It is