training, domestic science, art, and other special subjects should be college graduates with a thoro knowledge of the general principles of pedagogy and the most advanced and most valuable methods of teaching their specialties.1

The report points out that the normal schools are not equipped for preparing teachers for the high schools. In consequence all of the elementary work at the State Normal School has been abolished, the requirements for admission made equal to those maintained in eastern colleges, and a four-years' course of study in the liberal arts and in pedagogics has been established.

Tho there are many splendid teachers in our best high schools and a few in the smaller schools, yet the fact remains that our boys and girls in the most critical period of their lives are in control of immature, inexperienced youngsters. Some of these youths have large native ability, and special potential teaching qualities, and ultimately become good teachers. Some have good academic training also and after expensive experimenting upon the children become first-class teachers. Their enthusiasm, vigor, cheerfulness, and general culture are all qualities that we ought to retain, but the fact remains that our optimism regarding secondary-school teaching must come from viewing the select few rather than from conditions as a whole.

The greatest defect in our American schools is the lack of uniformity of requirements for teaching. Under our ultra-democratic notions some properly fitted teachers enter the work, but they are obliged to come into competition with a majority who are unprepared. Frequently because of ignorance on the part of boards and often because of nepotism the incompetent cheap teachers drive the worthier ones out of the market or force them down to the lower level of salaries. The inadequate compensation is the great deterrent which keeps thousands of the most promising from ever entering into the undesirable competition.

We are greatly in need of legislation in all states which will permit only the absolutely well-trained to enter the ranks. The cry frequently raised against such legislation that the schools would be without teachers is sheer nonsense. When our colleges and universities can find such abundant supplies of doctors of philosophy for every subordinate instructorship there need be no difficulty in securing all the adequately prepared teachers necessary, if living salaries are offered. Legislation eliminating the unfit would raise the salaries. In all those states having laws requiring teachers to possess high-grade certificates the salaries are demonstrably above the average paid in those states without such protective legislation.

Although the statutory provisions are very insufficient in requiring adequate preparation for teaching in the high schools, yet many cities have made. regulations which require all to be college graduates. In Ft. Dodge, Iowa, for example, all are required to be college graduates and to have had two years' experience. There are hundreds of cities large and small where either

An. Rep. Ed. Dept., p. 274.

definite legislation to this effect has been enacted or else the practice has become local common law.

The North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schoo's has had a very marked effect in raising standards of teaching in the high schools. No school can become accredited unless all the teachers are college graduates or the equivalent One high-school inspector wrote me :

We have about fifty high schools on the north central list and many more are trying for admission. This requirement has been most wholesome in its effect on our schools, and has done more than any other one provision in our recent educational history. Of course there has been a gradual increase in the number of college graduates occupying high-school positions, but it has simply been the law of evolution, a sort of triumph of the fittest. The normal school . . . . has in the past filled a good many positions, and many of the school authorities have been unable to distinguish between them and graduates of other institutions. The influence of the North Central Association, the increased effici ́ency of our denominational colleges and the gradual increase of salaries have all contrived to drive them (the normal-school graduates) out of the field of the best schools except in a few isolated cases.

III. STANDARDS IN GERMANY

The training required of the German secondary-school teacher is much more ideal than that demanded of teachers in the same kind of schoolwork in the United States. In Germany advanced, critical, academic, and professional scholarship are absolute prerequisites to teaching in the secondary schools. No deviations are allowed. No mere pull with the board will suffice, for the matter does not rest with the local board, but with the state authorities.

In Germany all secondary-school teachers are university trained, as they ought to be everywhere. The candidates for a position in the secondary schools must have had at least three years of university study before being admitted to the examination for the state certificate, which all must possess. This means a high grade of academic scholarship since university entrance is conditioned upon graduation from the secondary schools, which is fully equivalent to the completion of the sophomore year in our very best colleges. Therefore every teacher in the German secondary schools has done work equivalent to that required for our masters' degree. As a matter of fact, the majority of German secondary-school teachers have studied more than three years in a university. The majority are possessors of the doctorate degree which cannot be secured with less than three years of university work and usually requires. four or five. Each teacher is required to present a major line of work and a minor. The examination in the minor must reveal complete comprehension and mastery of the subject far beyond any limits to which it is taught in the secondary school. Even with this preparation they are not permitted to give instruction in that branch in the advanced classes of the school. In the major subject not only thoro mastery is required but there must be evidence of critical and exhaustive research to the extent of becoming not only a master but an authority. A thesis in the major must reveal independence of method, acquaintance with the history and literature of the subject. The thesis and

the examination are intended to test the candidates' knowledge of its philosophic aspects. In a genera' way we may say that the academic training of the German secondary-school teacher is quite on a par w th the attainments of instructors in our best colleges, and the majority are comparable with wellseasoned professors. Promotions are so slow there that the majority are about thirty years of age before securing permanent positions.

Knowledge of subject-matter, however, is happily deemed insufficient for any German teacher. All teachers in the secondary schools are required to include psychology, philosophy, and theoretical pedagogy in the state examination. In addition, they must take a two-years' course of professional training. This can be begun only after passing the state exam nation.

IV. STANDARDS SUGGESTED FOR AMERICAN SCHOOLS

1. As minimum requirements it seems fair to ask that all teachers who enter high-school work should have had at least the equivalent of a college education. To accept less is to place the schools in charge of immature, unscholarly boys and girls and undeserving place-hunters. The high schools. are the people's colleges and should ever remain centers of liberal culture. That they can never be when in charge of teachers who have never learned to love scholarship. I am of the firm belief that only in exceptional instances should teachers be permitted to teach in our high schools who have not actually studied in a standard higher institution. Those who preferred to acquire certificates thru examination only should be required to pass most search ng exam nations. What if an occasional deserv ng individual were thus debarred ? In most states the right to practice medicine is w thheld from all except those who have studied in a reputable medical college. No mere private study and cramming for the examinations will suffice. The right to enter the examination, as in Germany, is conditioned by previous study for a term of years i a reputable institution. The theory is-and perfectly sound-that no one can ga'n adequate knowledge of modern methods of medicine without coming directly in contact with properly equipped laboratories and skil'ed teachers. Thru private study of books the diligent might accomplish much, but the risks to society are too great to admit of trifling. Hence the necessity of measures which will protect society. Many states have similar protective legislation in the profession of law.

Are the needs not as great in teaching? The results of mistakes are not always so immediately apparent to the public in education as in medicine, but to the specialist in education they cannot be hidden. Why intrust the most precious possessions of the human race to the ruthless hands of ignorant beginners and confirmed quacks and charlatans? Every poor teacher helps to spoil scores of children every year, while the quack doctor of medicine occasionally harms an individual. The malpractice of the inexpert teacher is tenfold more harmful to society than that of the quack doctor. The teacher guilty of malpractice dwarfs, and distorts, poisons the mind and body of the

budding, developing child, while the quack doctor merely fails to cure bodily disease. The quack teacher sows the seeds of disease, the quack doctor simply fails to cure.

2. From the professional side the minimum requirements should be at least one full year of daily work in education subsequent to a half-year of work in psychology. It would be still better, and not excessive, to demand that one-sixth of the college course shou'd be given to educational and philosophical subjects. This should be so distributed as to give about one-half year daily to general psychology, a full year daily to the principles of education and child-study, and the remainder of the time to the history of education, methods, school systems, etc. If one-fourth of the 120 units of the college course could be professional, the following arrangement would be desirable: psychology, 6 semester hours; principles of education, 6; child-study, 2; methods, 4; history of education, 4; secondary education, 4; observation and practice, 4.

The Germans are wise in requiring actual residential study in a university as a prerequisite to teaching in the secondary schools. (Normal-school study is required of all who teach in the elementary schools.) It 's practica ly impossible for one to gain modern ideas of scholarship without institutional training. Even if possible, other methods are too uncertain and expensive. Private study may give one certain book facts but nothing can be substituted for the laboratory methods of the modern institution. The teacher who is to teach classes by modern laboratory methods must first have been thru the laboratory work himself. The teacher who is to teach literary and historical subjects must know what libraries contain and how to utilize them. This can only be secured thru contact with them. It is preposterous to think that men may be intrusted to equip laboratories and libraries when they know nothing. of them. Yet such things are permitted and encouraged by our inadequate protective legislation.

The Honorable J. Sterling Morton eloquently emphasized the importance of professional training for teachers when he said:

We demand for Nebraska educated educators. We demand professionally trained teachers, men and women of irreproachable character and well-tested abilities. We demand from our legislature laws raising the standard of the profession and exalting the office of the teacher. As the doctor of medicine or the practitioner of law is only admitted within the pale of his calling upon the production of his parchment or certificate, so the applicant for the position of instructor in our primary and other schools should be required by law to first produce his diploma, his authority to teach, from the normal schools.

We call no uneducated quack or charlatan to perform surgery upon the bodies of our children lest they may be deformed, crippled, or maimed physically all their lives. Let us take equal care that we intrust the development of the mental faculties to skilled instructors of magnanimous character, that the mentalities of our children may not be mutilated, deformed and crippled to halt and limp through all the centuries of their never-ending lives. The deformed body will die, and be forever put out of sight under the ground, but a mind made monstrous by bad teaching dies not, but stalks forever among the ages, an immortal mockery of the divine image.

XIII (special).

THE PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION OF SECONDARY TEACHERS IN THE FIFTEEN SOUTHERN STATES1

EDWARD FRANKLIN BUCHNER, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA

This report attempts to sketch the conditions relating to the preparation of secondary teachers prevailing n the southern states of the United States. It is based upon information gathered by a circular letter of inquiry distributed in April, 1906. School officials, ncluding state superintendents of education, presidents of state universities, principals of (state) normal schools, and superintendents of public schools in the larger and more representative c't'es stated such requirements as were in actual force and described such customs as were practiced in the matter of the preparation of teachers for high schools. The states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia, and the city of Washington, D. C., were about equally represented among the replies sent in. Extensive information, furnished by the United States Commissioner of Education, based upon returns to his office two and more years ago, has also been used in the preparation of this report.

The interest in this inquiry concerning the requirements and customs pertaining to the preparation of secondary teachers centered around the four points mentioned in the letters of inquiry.

1. What scholastic preparation and what pedagogical training are required of high-school teachers in your state or city?

2. What courses of academic instruction, especially for high-school teachers, are given in your institution?

3. What courses of pedagogical instruction for high-school teachers are given in your institution?

4. Can high-school teachers in your state, city, or institution get actual practice previous to regular employment?

These four quest'ons can well serve us as guides in telling the story of the preparation of high-school teachers in the South as practiced today. The exact statements in the replies are used as far as possible in the hope of making the report more historic than it would be if it presented only a general summary of present tendencies.

THE REQUIREMENT OF SCHOLARSHIP AND TRAINING

ALABAMA: In this, as in most other southern states, the high school is a non-legal institution. It is not named in the educational laws of the state. The first-grade teacher's certificate specifies by law, among other subjects, three high-school subjects: algebra,

Legislative enactments relative to high schools made in some states during the interval between the preparation and the publication of this report render some of its statements purely historical The immediate design of the work of the committee would be seriously modified if the attempt were made to incorporate these laws into this survey of existing conditions.