deep at the refreshing fountains of the past. She may use an ethnological beginning and sequence and commence with the tree-dwellers, or a semichronological one and begin with the Hebrews, or a geographical one and begin with the Mississippi Valley heroes. Which of these or other similar plans she shall adopt is not so vital as that she shall begin in some way, and shall recognize in her work the fundamental characteristics that should differentiate the teaching of elementary history from that of more advanced grades.

In geography she should know thoroughly the physical and political geography of her own locality, and should know how to use these as foundation material upon which to build the child's conception of those portions of the earth which are beyond the reach of his senses. She should know how to use the stereoscope, the picture, the story of travel, and the general library. She should know how to develop from details the general truths of geography treating the earth as the home of man. She should know how to make advantageous use of types as rallying-points for the pupil's knowledge. If she will faithfully prepare herself upon such material as this we shall not be particular if she has meanwhile forgotten some of the names that dot the map of Asia or of Africa.

Connected with her knowledge of geography should be her knowledge of natural science. It is in this field more perhaps than in any other that the methods of the high school and the college are most at variance with what the teacher has to do. What she most needs is a first-hand, commonplace, openeyed knowledge of the animate and inanimate nature that surrounds her school on every hand. The microscope, scientific nomenclature, intensive study of minute parts and strange species have their place, but it is not in the elementary schools, at least so long as the children there are as blind as they now are to the artistic and economic values discoverable with the naked eye and describable in common speech, which are their constant companions.

Let us have a higher minimum requirement for the elementary teacher in these subjects that properly presented enrich the child's life for all time, and lower if need be the requirement in certain portions of some of the more ancient and honorable studies whose gray hairs are the sole reason for their presence being tolerated in the elementary schools.

You will readily discover that I have failed to enumerate specifically the exact and definite minimum qualifications of the elementary teacher. The reason I have failed is because I do not believe it can be done. The only points of view from which succinct and categorical answers can be given are those of financial equity and administrative necessity, and those I have furnished. The remainder of the paper is based upon two principal thoughts. First, that superintendents and boards of education should have clear ideals of what characteristics distinguish the good elementary teacher. Some of these I have briefly set forth, but not all. Any one of you could enumerate as many more. The second thought is that once having those ideals established the

minimum qualifications in your particular schools will be determined by your treasury. You will raise your minimum as high as you can and keep your schools supplied. You will get all you can for your money or you are not American.

If these things be true, we who believe that the best legacy left by one generation to the next is the children; that every year the school becomes a more important factor in the development of childhood; that now and for many years to come the great majority of our citizens will know no other schooling than that which they receive in the elementary schools; that each year the naturally endowed and properly prepared elementary teacher becomes a more potent factor in education-we who believe these things must wage a triple campaign: One for a better appreciation on the part of school officers and school patrons of the peculiar qualifications that make the efficient elementary teacher; another for more and better training-schools where those naturally fit may readily procure that particular type of professional preparation which best fits for elementary teaching; and a third for adequate financial resources that shall enable the state to attract to her elementary schools where all her future citizens are trained more of the strong and forceful, many of whom now find more fruitful returns in other honorable fields.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE TRAINING AND CERTIFICATION OF SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS

HENRY SUZZALLO, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION, LELAND STANFORD JR. UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA

It is one of the lamentable things in the control of our public education that one large division of the system has had no widespread provision for insuring well-trained and properly certificated teachers. I refer to American secondary education. In almost every state in the Union, an ordinary elementary-school certificate will permit an individual, so far as the law goes, to teach in the secondary schools. Two marked exceptions, at least, California and Indiana, have evolved a high-school certificate and shown what can be done in the special standardizing of teaching in the public high school.

For this condition the public-school superintendent is to a considerable extent to blame. Usually a man promoted from the elementary-school service, he has followed his own interest and the larger problem in his care, and given his attention to the work of supervising elementary education. The high school of his city or district has, meanwhile, been left to the care of the highschool principal, or to what is a still more specialized control, to the university professors. In this way the one educational officer who should represent the people's total interest in all the schools, has been reduced in influence where the secondary school is concerned-reduced because he has, in a sense, given up his opportunities.

From some such conditions has arisen that peculiar and important controversy as to whether the high school shall "prepare for college" or "prepare for life." That it does, in practice, prepare largely or primarily for college is due to that neglect of the public-school superintendent who has allowed university-entrance examination, and university inspector, and the universitytrained principal to dominate the secondary school. That the problem is now one of some importance in theoretic discussion is a sign that the superintendent and other representatives of the people have become critical with regard to the situation. Without underestimating the splendid, though one-sided, influence of the university on the high school, the supervision that needs most to be done now is that of the school superintendent, the official representative of all the interests that the people have vested in the school system. Among the many lines of work with which he can concern himself is that of the adequate training and certification of secondary-school instructors. That work he has successfully done for the elementary school, and it needs to be done for the secondary school.

"What shall be the minimum standard for training and certification of secondary teachers ?" There, the problem is stated. This minimum is the one uniform standard toward which all localities should strive. It is a kind of final minimum toward which all states should progress, rather than the least requirement which varying conditions may dictate as expedient or possible now. However impossible such attainment may be to you now, in your own particular place, you need to have a goal of requirement with which to bring your local evolution into line with true and general movements of progress.

In stating minimum requirements for the secondary teachers I would say that they should fall into two divisions. On the one hand, there are academic requirements, standards of scholarship, which must be maintained. Knowledge of the subject-matter to be taught is a fundamental demand. On the other hand, there are professional requirements. The secondary-school instructor is not a mere man of culture with a command of the liberal arts; nor is he just a student with scholarly habits. He is a social worker performing one great function for society as its agent. His main material is a group of human beings, and his command of subject-matter is merely one of his instruments. The knowledge of the experience of the men and women of his own profession, predecessors or contemporaries, is a guidance in the care of his main responsibility that he should not be without.

How much academic training should the high-school teacher have? Certainly more than the students taught. Our best practice would seem to suggest a clear principle. The best normal schools for the training of elementary teachers require high-school graduation as a basis for professional work. The largest colleges ask that their teachers have had graduate work in the university proper, and usually the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, which represents three years of advanced academic work. If the teachers in the lower and the higher schools must pursue academic work beyond the institution in which

they expect to teach, why should not the teachers of the secondary schools bet expected to do the same? College graduation should be the final minimum standard for academic training. This conclusion is concurred in by the report of the Committee on College Entrance Requirements, presented to the National Educational Association in 1889.

What and how much shall the professional training be? Or perhaps, to meet the conservative on his own ground, "Should there be any professional training at all?" I know what many sincere but inexperienced or insensitive men would say, both in the university and in the high school. There have been many bold enough to hazard the statement that there is nothing in professional training. Probably the best answer to these would be to lead them into a kindergarten where the gap in maturity between themselves and those taught is widest, and the misadjustment of the organized knowledge of adults greatest, and ask them to teach. Without teaching technique most of them would be hopeless. With a few, perchance, those methods of handling human beings, an unconscious part of their personalities would get along fairly well, but even then not for long. They would then become conscious of the thing we call professional method because the misadjustment is so obvious. The lesser misadjustments arising in the teaching of university and secondary students, persons nearer their own maturity, had not been so evident to them.

If misadjustments are very bad we notice them and do something about them. It is precisely for this reason that teaching method as an institution of high importance was born of the primary school and kindergarten, and extended its force upward into the higher school only by slow degrees. In general is is true that method (teaching method, not methods of research or investigation) move upward from the lower schools. Subject-matter, except that introduced primarily to better teaching method, has, generally speaking, come down from the top. You will find the greatest body of scholars at the top. But the best teachers in the world, the best adapters of knowledge to immaturity to be found in the world, are to be found in the primary school. What I have said applies mostly to teaching method, but the argument is equally good for administrative, disciplinary and other methods of the secondary school. The secondary teacher, if one knows the history of educational experience at all, needs some professional training.

If some professional training is needed, what shall it be? Educational training is not the easiest one in the world to estimate or determine. When we educate we do so for the whole of life. In places, the findings of exact science will guide us, but only here and there. Between the fragments of knowledge granted by pure science, is the field of general educational experience, as yet but vaguely interpreted. Again and again in education we must generalize from the history of our total experiences. The "history of education" we must have. It should deal with the history of secondary education in particular, more especially since the Renaissance. But it must not be too It must show the connections between life and the school at every

narrow.

point, and between the middle schools and those above and below them. There is nothing so effective in breaking up the inflexibility, in the opinions of teachers, as to the finality of present traditions, as the history of education. It is the best instrument for the enlargement of openmindedness in the secondary teacher, who is in too many cases, with his humanistic or scientific bias, one of the most traditional of creatures in the acquisition of his educational valuations.

As a second professional subject, I plead for a neglected aspect. What the secondary-school teacher needs is an educational sociology. As the highschool teacher turns his eyes away from the university for his sanctions, his eyes must turn society-ward. The school is pre-eminently a social institution, and the teacher primarily a social worker. Only secondarily is the school psychological and pedagogical in its functions. We have in our past history been giving teachers tools to use and methods of applying them, but there has been given little real consciousness of social ends. If more high-school teachers were a trifle more social in their point of view, they would have no difficulty in seeing the difference between "preparing for college" and "preparing for life." The domestic arts as ministering to family life, and the political sciences as contributing to political life might then have for them a conceivably higher value than Latin and Greek. The social nature of the school itself as a grouping of human beings would be better understood. The "frat" and the "athletic" fevers might be understood as spontaneous bursts of social impulse, that could have been expressed in infinitely better forms if the high-school authorities had possessed some better notion of the social nature of a school. The evils of "frats" could have been gotten rid of by a little judicious and diplomatic substitution pleasing to all, rather than by the doubtful methods of legislatures and courts. A study of such facts of social life, as are directly pertinent to the school, is a basis that every teacher should have. As a third subject, I mention an educational physiology, or a school hygiene, as you choose to call it. Its value is too obvious to require any explicit statements as to its worth.

As a fourth subject, one which lies back of all conscious teaching method, I suggest an educational psychology. Most of our progress in school proceedure in recent years has been a direct reflection of the increase in our knowledge of human nature due to the findings of psychology. The psychology of adolescence is particularly important for the high school.

As a fifth subject we have that organization of our best educational experience and our best scientific knowledge into a body of controlling principles, which we may term the principles of education. It is the correct application and reapplication of these which will make the detailed conduct of the school right. It is this body of general truths derived thru generalizations upon both our gross and refined experiences which will guide the teacher in new situations, saving him from the tyranny of mere device.

As a final theoretic subject, there should be courses in the special methods