philosophy of education; school administration, including organization, supervision, and management, observation of actual schoolwork under direction and criticism, and practice teaching. The latter should be obtained when possible under conditions similar to those of actual practice and is essential in the training of a teacher, tho less vital in the training of a secondary than in the training of an elementary teacher. I desire to call attention to Part I of the Fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Scientific Study of Education which is devoted to "the education and training of secondary teachers," edited by Professor Manfred J. Holmes, secretary of the National Society, Normal, Illinois. This is a valuable monograph and should be in the hands of everyone interested in the training of high-school teachers. It treats the more important topics concerned in the education of secondary teachers in an able and interesting manner. 7. It seems to me that the time has come when we should demand of the new high-school teacher not only a college degree but also a professional diploma which will indicate that he has made a serious study of the important problems upon which he is about to enter. This would in time prevent twothirds of the present failures in high-school teaching and bar from high-school instructors much of the "cultured aimlessness" that is now in the shape of individuals drifting thru our colleges without a purpose or a thought of the meaning and seriousness of life. When fewer teachers enter the schoolroom without professional training the normal schools and college departments of education will receive less criticism for the failures they do not cause and have had no opportunity to prevent. 8. Two thoughts should be made specially prominent in the academic requirements of the high-school teacher. First, he should have a broad general education, hence a Bachelor of Arts' rather than a Bachelor of Science' degree, unless the latter is made to cover an equally broad culture foundation. Second, he should be a specialist in the subjects he expects to teach, not a specialist in the narrow sense of having his knowledge confined to a single subject, but a specialist in the broader sense of being strong in one line while familiar with and keenly appreciative of many others. In this academic training the University of Nebraska has long held that the student who is to receive the university teachers' certificate must show a much higher grade of scholarship (averaging above 80 per cent. on a scale of 100) and keener appreciation than he who is simply permitted to pass for a degree. On these points Dr. A. F. Nightingale, in the monograph above referred to, says: I would make language, then, ancient, modern, foreign, native, the basic study for all who would become successful teachers. Upon these foundations laid deep and strong, I would build a superstructure, scientific in character, mathematical in correctness, historical in breadth; and upon this building poetical in its symmetry, beautiful in its proportions, richly plain and plainly perfect in all its inner furnishings, there should rise some magnificent turret, original in design and typical of a special genius, which should tell to all around its exact location and for what it is specifically adapted. Given the above training in a suitable environment the student with apti end in view is the object or the subject-matter, in the other the growing mind of the child. Hence to know education from the learner's standpoint is not to know it from the teacher's standpoint. 4. When we come to determine the nature and amount of professional training for the high-school teacher there is less unanimity of thought. There is quite general agreement that there should be at least twelve hours in the department of education, and I am but voicing the prevailing practice when I quote again from my work on the professional training of secondary teachers as follows: The average amount of purely professional study required of the student for the university-teachers' certificates is usually from fifteen to eighteen hours-more often the latter. This may or may not include a course in psychology offered in the department of philosophy and a special-methods course offered by the department in which the student has his major (academic) subject. The professional work is more often spread over the last two years of the college course. By some it is thought preferable to have it deferred until the last year in college or taken as graduate work and made a matter of concentration and intensive study. The time will come when this professional study will be required in addition to the Bachelor's degree, but I do not believe we are ready for that now. I think it is better to have the professional training spread over the last two years of the college course. Naturally the professional study of the teacher should follow rather than precede or be taken with his academic training. The reasons for this have been given elsewhere. It is difficult for the student to approach a subject both in the attitude of the learner and the attitude of the teacher at one and the same time. 5. The various courses offered in departments of education which come under the category of professional knowledge may be grouped under the following heads: historical, theoretical, psychological, practical. Under historical may be included the history of education, school systems, educational classics, educational reformers; under theoretical may be included the theory, science, and philosophy of education; under psychological, genetic, and applied psychology, child-study, and adolescence; under practical, school organization, management and supervision, observation and practice teaching, methods of instruction, and the art of teaching. There is, of course, in this grouping considerable overlapping depending on the teacher and the nature of the instruction. The work of the student should be distributed over these four groups in order that the profession of teaching may appeal to him in its true significance. 6. From a study of the problem it is evident that the subjects which are thought to be of the most importance in the professional training of secondary teachers are as follows: history of education, with a probable course in educational systems-foreign and domestic; educational psychology, including child-study and adolescence; theory of education, including the science and See The Professional Training of Secondary Teachers in the United States, published by the Macmillan Company, New York, pp. 189 ff. philosophy of education; school administration, including organization, supervision, and management, observation of actual schoolwork under direction and criticism, and practice teaching. The latter should be obtained when possible under conditions similar to those of actual practice and is essential in the training of a teacher, tho less vital in the training of a secondary than in the training of an elementary teacher. I desire to call attention to Part I of the Fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Scientific Study of Education which is devoted to "the education and training of secondary teachers," edited by Professor Manfred J. Holmes, secretary of the National Society, Normal, Illinois. This is a valuable monograph and should be in the hands of everyone interested in the training of high-school teachers. It treats the more important topics concerned in the education of secondary teachers in an able and interesting manner. 7. It seems to me that the time has come when we should demand of the new high-school teacher not only a college degree but also a professional diploma which will indicate that he has made a serious study of the important problems upon which he is about to enter. This would in time prevent twothirds of the present failures in high-school teaching and bar from high-school instructors much of the "cultured aimlessness" that is now in the shape of individuals drifting thru our colleges without a purpose or a thought of the meaning and seriousness of life. When fewer teachers enter the schoolroom without professional training the normal schools and college departments of education will receive less criticism for the failures they do not cause and have had no opportunity to prevent. 8. Two thoughts should be made specially prominent in the academic requirements of the high-school teacher. First, he should have a broad general education, hence a Bachelor of Arts' rather than a Bachelor of Science' degree, unless the latter is made to cover an equally broad culture foundation. Second, he should be a specialist in the subjects he expects to teach, not a specialist in the narrow sense of having his knowledge confined to a single subject, but a specialist in the broader sense of being strong in one line while familiar with and keenly appreciative of many others. In this academic training the University of Nebraska has long held that the student who is to receive the university teachers' certificate must show a much higher grade of scholarship (averaging above 80 per cent. on a scale of 100) and keener appreciation than he who is simply permitted to pass for a degree. On these points Dr. A. F. Nightingale, in the monograph above referred to, says: I would make language, then, ancient, modern, foreign, native, the basic study for all who would become successful teachers. Upon these foundations laid deep and strong, I would build a superstructure, scientific in character, mathematical in correctness, historical in breadth; and upon this building poetical in its symmetry, beautiful in its proportions, richly plain and plainly perfect in all its inner furnishings, there should rise some magnificent turret, original in design and typical of a special genius, which should tell to all around its exact location and for what it is specifically adapted. Given the above training in a suitable environment the student with apti tude for teaching will make an excellent teacher and all others should be directed into other channels where they are more likely to succeed or to do less harm in misdirecting others. X GEORGE H. MARTIN, SECRETARY OF MASSACHUSETTS STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION 1. The absence of means for training teachers for public high schools is the most glaring anomaly in the American system of education. The reason for it is easier to find than the remedy. When the movement to provide for the training of teachers began in the first half of the last century there were but one or two public high schools. Boys learned their Latin and Greek and mathematics preparatory to college in endowed academies. The reformers of the time had only the common or district schools in mind when they established normal schools. The objective point in all their arguments was the improvement of the "common" or "free" or "district" schools. The dedicatory addresses at the opening of the early normal schools were alike in declaring that an auspicious day had dawned for the common schools. Thus they became associated in the public mind with elementary education alone. There was a tacit assumption that special training was needed only for the comparatively illiterate young persons who aspired no higher than to be teachers in the common schools. Thus a stigma of educational plebeanism attached to the normal schools from the start, and professional training itself came to be regarded as a means of making up natural deficiencies or as a short cut to a low-grade career. To be sure, all the arguments used by the advocates of normal schools and all the analogies from the other professions which they presented applied as well to the teaching in academies and colleges; but this seems to have been wholly overlooked so intent was everyone upon reforming the common schools. While the normal schools were developing their work, the public high schools were taking the place of the academies and drawing their teachers from the same sources, that is, from the colleges. The teachers in these schools shared with their college instructors their contempt for normal schools and, what was far more serious, contempt for professional training. Not many years ago a professor in Yale College was asked, "What importance do the members of the Yale faculty attach to the science of education ?" "None, whatever!" was his prompt reply. And at about the same time the foremost college president asserted publicly that all the principles of education worth knowing could be learned by any intelligent man in twenty-four hours. It is not surprising, therefore, to find teaching in the secondary schools which violates every axiom of sound pedagogy. Some twenty years ago in a report on the high schools of Massachusetts made to the board of education by one of its agents, the writer after giving some amusing specimens of class teaching said, "My observation leads me to conclude that untrained teachers are much alike whether they have been graduated from a college or only from a district school." I think no unprejudiced observer can escape the conclusion that the falling out from the high schools during the first two years is due more largely to the preponderance of these young college women than to any other single cause. In the higher grades of the grammar schools from which these students have come to the high schools, they have been under the influence of strong men and women most of whom have learned the science of teaching either in normal schools or in the school of experience or more often in both. Going from skilled to unskilled teachers, the students fail to adjust themselves to the new environment and then comes mutual misunderstanding. The friction is attributed to every cause but the right one-to weak and coddling methods in the grammar schools, to superficial teaching, to defects in the high-school course of study, to social interests, to the craving to be out in the world. Were these causes real, their existence would only emphasize the need of better teaching in the early high-school years. 2. Turning to inquire what these young collegians need to fit them to teach, no one who has seen any considerable number of them at work but knows that what they need most and right away is knowledge of elementary psychology and of the simplest principles of pedagogy. This is what all persons need who are preparing to teach, and in this respect there is no difference between teachers in elementary schools and teachers in high schools. To acquire in the most simple and direct way knowledge of the mutual actions and reactions of the mind-any mind-and its environment, knowledge of the relations of the mind and body, knowledge of the way the mind acts in acquiring knowledge and shaping conduct under its own impulses and under natural conditions, and how its actions may be modified under the impulses of a teacher and under the artificial conditions of a school-to acquire this knowledge is the beginning of the special education of all teachers. College graduates, because of their longer training, should have greater power of concentrated and sustained thought and should be able to acquire this knowledge quicker than persons in the ordinary normal schools, but the essential thing is that it should not be clouded by metaphysics nor obscured by the complexities of scientific method. With only so much knowledge as this, the young teacher beginning in a secondary school would be saved from many mistakes. What is more important for him he would know that to be a good scholar is not all that is required to become a good teacher-a bit of knowledge that not one secondary schoolteacher in a hundred had ever heard of, or read of, or dreamed of when he began to teach. 3. Because the process of development becomes more complex with increasing years, because multiplied and varied experiences, subjective and objective, need to be organized and utilized, the secondary-school teacher |