stress is placed on empirical method, there is no hope that the prevailing spirit of the school will be liberal and scholarly.

A liberal art is best learned thru the science which underlies it. The mastery of a prolific principle or doctrine is a rational art by implication. The most that should be required of the methods by which a given subject is taught is that they should have a typical resemblance. They should find their unity in some principle which implicitly contains them. Methods, to be wholesome and inspiring, should reflect the personality of the teacher who employs them, just as a dress should reflect the personality of the wearer. Dull uniformity has become a school. disease, and its only cure is to be found in that broad intelligence which can interpret a general principle or doctrine. Stated in the order of their importance, the three aims of the normal school will stand as follows: scholarship, science or doctrine, method.

art.

It is a widely prevalent error that psychology, as a whole, is convertible into an art-the art of teaching. It would be almost as sane to say that astronomy is convertible into an art- that we can draw utilities from the stars. I suppose the truth is that only the more obvious and simple principles of psychology can serve as a basis for the educating Teachers who are overzealous in the interests of the new education seem to think that the road to success lies in a study of the occult and abstruse psychology now in vogue. I have in mind the principal of a little school who has placed his teachers on a course of study in the "application of psychology to education." It is not difficult to see the result of this dreadful infliction: a groping in darkness, a bewilderment of spirit, a disgust with the higher pedagogy. It is pathetic to see good intent so utterly misplaced. The psychology of the normal school should be simple, comprehensible, and descriptive of the more obvious facts of the intellectual life. Its relation to psychology, as a whole, is about the same as the relation of hygiene to the general science of physiology. In fact, there are two psychologies, a simple, plain, commonsense treatment for the use of the lay members of our profession, and an abstruse, transcendental science for the use of our discoverers and exposiThe first is a psychology in action, written from the standpoint of the mind as it is engaged in the act of learning. The other is a purely abstract science, lifeless and inert, as remote from human use as the "méchanique céleste." The psychology taught in the normal school should be the science which will give its students practical guidance in the practice of their art.'

tors.

I Since writing the above paragraph my eye has fallen on the following lines from the pen of Dr. Münsterberg: "I do not believe in it [the new psychology], and that overwhelming movement toward psychology among the elementary teachers seems to me a high tide of confusion and dilettantism, and the only thing about which I am doubtful is which of the two necessary results is the worse, the results with the superficial teachers or the results with the earnest ones. The superficial teachers torture the poor children with experiments, and deceive themselves with empty phrases about reaction times and psycho-physic laws. The earnest and sincere teachers feel very soon that all those woodcuts of pyramidal ganglion cells and pendulum

It should be remembered that our main source of professional improvement is the study and interpretation of our classical writers on education, such writers as Plato, Aristotle, Quintilian, Plutarch, Comenius, Montaigne, Rabelais, Rousseau, Kant, Pestalozzi, Richter, Rosenkranz, Ascham, Milton, Locke, Spencer, Bain, Horace Mann. These may all be found in intelligible English, and it is as reasonable to expect that teachers should be familiar with these books as that physicians, lawyers, and clergymen should be familiar with the great writers in their respective professions. So far as the higher interests of our profession are concerned, would it not be a clear and wholesome gain to devote more time to the study and interpretation of our classical literature, and, if necessary, a little less time to practice teaching and the discussion of methods?

Both on its own account, and as an offset to the scientific trend that seems to be prevailing in our education, the art of literary interpretation should be urged on all who aspire to do educational work of a noble type. Of course, the sciences which deal with matter should have a place, and an important place, in every scheme of instruction; but they should not overshadow the sciences which deal with spirit. Not only the art of reading good books, but, even more, the appreciation of good books, should hold a high place in the education of teachers. To construct and furnish natural history cabinets is a pleasing and educative occupation, but to construct and furnish a good library is an achievement of transcendent value. To read and interpret the Republic is to join company with Plato as he moves on his high intellectual plane. To enter into hearty communion with the poet is to experience an upward transformation of spirit. There is a vital relationship between literature and life, the life of the soul. The purpose of the literary art, so far as it concerns the students in our normal schools, is not criticism, but appreciation. It is a sorry business to see striplings sitting in judgment on the masters of the literary art. Their becoming and ennobling attitude is that of appreciation and enjoyment.

In one of the picturesque cities of New England I once discovered a normal school sheltered in an art gallery. Nothing could be more becoming or more wholesome. To be in daily communion with the beautiful and the graceful in art is to inherit the endowments necessary for interpreting the beautiful world which is our habitation. Such a chronoscopes do not help them a bit, and they then become disappointed, lose their confidence in their own ability, and try and try again with the ganglion cells till they are tired, and till their natural teachers' instincts are scattered and ruined. Call me conservative, call me reactionary, call me ignorant, but I adhere to my belief that the individual teacher, for his teaching methods, does not need any scientific bsychology, and that tact and sympathy and interest are more important for him than all the twenty-seven psychological laboratories of this country."

1" Printing ink," says Richter, "now is like sympathetic ink, it becomes as quickly invisible as visible; wherefore it is good to repeat old thoughts in the newest books, because the old works in which they stand are not read."

culture may not be needed for teaching the multiplication table or lists of names and dates in history, but it is needful for producing that spiritual transformation which is the secret of education proper. There is a good reason for furnishing a normal school with maps and globes and with apparatus, physical and chemical, but there is even a better reason for furnishing it with engravings, paintings, and statuary.

We must transport into the school of the future many of the good things to be found in the school of the present. In the way of science, it is hazardous to declare that certain things cannot be; yet there are some things so good that it is hard to see how they can be mended. These reflections occur to me as I recall incidents connected with visits to several of the larger normal schools of the South. It was at Rock Hill that I observed what seemed to me then an ideal system of school hygiene. The buildings, tho large, were scrupulously neat and clean; the ventilation of schoolrooms and dormitories was thoro and effective; there was a gymnasium with baths attached; a bowling alley and a laundry; by means of a covered walk the dormitories were connected with an infirmary; at the head of this infirmary was a trained nurse; there was a well-appointed kitchen in which the skillful cook prepared food for the sick; and over all there was a resident physician.

Incidentally I have spoken of liberal scholarship as one of the foremost aims of normal-school instruction, and since we are dealing somewhat in ideals, I beg leave to present the lineaments of the ideal scholar as I find them set forth in a very ancient book:

A lover, not of a part of wisdom, but of the whole; who has a taste for every sort of knowledge, and is curious to learn and is never satisfied; who has magnificence of mind and is the spectator of all time and all existence; who is harmoniously constituted; of a well-proportioned and gracious mind; whose own nature will move spontaneously toward the true being of every thing; who has a good memory and is quick to learn; noble, gracious, the friend of truth, justice, courage, temperance.1

I may now fitly close this list of suggestions by quoting another ancient ideal which twenty-three centuries have not overtaken :

There remains the minister of the education of youth. . . . . He who is elected, and he who is the elector, should consider that, of all the great offices of state, this is the greatest; for the first shoot of any plant rightly tending to the perfection of its own nature has the greatest effect on its maturity; and this is not only true of plants, but of animals wild and tame, and also of men. Man, as we say, is a tame or civilized animal; nevertheless, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then, of all animals, he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill educated, he is the most savage of earthly creatures. Wherefore the legislator ought not to allow the education of children to become a secondary or accidental matter. In the first place, he who would be rightly provident about them should begin by taking care that he is elected who, of all the citizens, is in every respect the best; him they shall do their best to appoint as guardian and superintendent. To this end all the magistrates, with the exception of the council and the prytanes, shall go to the temple of Apollo, and elect by ballot him of the guardians of the law whom they severally think will be the best 1 Republic, passim, 475-87.

superintendent of education. And he who has the greatest number of votes, after he has undergone a scrutiny at the hands of all the magistrates who have been his electors, with the exception of the guardians of the law, shall hold office for five years; and in the sixth year let another be chosen in like manner to fill his office.'

DISCUSSION

FRANK L. JONES, state superintendent of public instruction of Indiana.—I am sure that we find ourselves so much in accord with the fundamental statements of the paper that it is hardly necessary to restate them even for the sake of emphasis. That "the teacher should be an artist rather than an artisan;" that "mere specialists are a menace to a school in which teachers are to be educated for high and efficient service;" that "the normal should prepare young men and women for diffusing capitalized knowledge, not for creating a new knowledge;" that there should be no hindrances to educational progress due to the haziness in which it is often shrouded, as seen particularly in the indefiniteness of its purposes and the generalities of its statement; that the education should be liberal, tho somewhat limited; that "the psychology of the normal school should be simple, comprehensive, and descriptive of the more obvious facts of life;" and, above all, “that it should be democratic," are so obvious that they might safely be stated as educational principles. There remains one point, however, the first one raised by the reader of the paper, which should be enlarged upon in the discussion it is this: "The governing law of a school is a clear conception of what its pupils should be." In this statement of the law it is wise to lay emphasis upon the word pupils. It would certainly be false doctrine to assume that the law of the school is a clear conception of what the pupil should be the former enables us to evolve the ideal group; the latter, the individual. The classification of the school, its administration, its recitations, its exercises, and its study are based almost wholly upon the notion that the group is fundamental, each pupil relating himself to the whole, and estimating his standing in it by his variance from the general standards of it.

The ideal normal school, therefore, must surely take first account of the possibilities of the entire group of teachers and place its emphasis upon a standard of efficiency which will enable that group as such to maintain itself upon as high professional basis as all of the attending conditions will admit of. It would be a waste of time to elaborate a system designed to make each teacher a master, or indeed to make each teacher a graduate from a course of study covering three or four years of academic and professional work subsequent to his completion of either the common- or high-school courses. The promulgation of such a system as this thru the statutes of a state would make necessary the withdrawal of 85 per cent. of its teaching corps, and would leave the schools in a condition of chaos.

A study of the qualifications and training of teachers in the ten states, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa (from 600 to 13,000 reported in each state), shows the following:

1. The number of college or university graduates in the profession of teaching varies from the highest, 6.4 per cent. in one state, to the lowest, 1.1 per cent. in another.

2. The number of normal-school graduates, including all grades of these schools and all courses from one to four years, varies from the highest, 53.1 per cent. in one state, to the lowest, 2.8 per cent. in another. The large number of normal-school graduates in the first is due to a low standard of entrance requirements and a short course of study.

3. The number of teachers who have had no training above the high school varies from the highest, 68 per cent. in one state, to the lowest, 30.1 per cent. in another. I Laws, 765, 766.

4. The number of teachers who have had no training above the common branches in the common schools varies from the highest, 45 per cent. in one state, to the lowest, 13.3 per cent. in another.

5. The number of teachers who are teaching this year without previous experience varies from the highest, 23.9 per cent. in one state, to the lowest, 5.5 per cent. in another. 6. In a total of 20,662 teachers studied in ten states, including all of the teachers in each county reporting, 12.4 per cent. are teaching without previous experience, 23.7 per cent. are teaching without qualifications above a common-school training in the common branches, 40.8 are teaching without qualifications above a high-school education, and 7.3 per cent. have had less than one year in normal schools.

A condition which admits of the return of more than one-half of the graduates of our public schools, without further training, to become teachers of their former associates on the playground and in the class-room, possessing no insight beyond the educational standards required of their pupils for graduation, makes much progress impossible, and places before the normal school a practical problem.

In view of this low standard of teaching ability and experience it is at once apparent that two very different views of the essentials of an ideal normal school may be had, each meritorious in certain large aspects. The one looks toward the maintenance of a high standard of entrance requirements, four or more years of careful study in residence, standard courses in the theory and practice of teaching, and one or more years of trainingschool experience under the supervision of critic-teachers; the other looks toward a short course, tho thoro and efficient, following at once the common- and high-school courses, with a view of striking contact with the great body of teachers, tho for a brief period. Who can say which of these views, consciously followed thru a period of years, would strengthen more the teaching group? If the first be followed, we keep before the teacher an ideal difficult of attainment, great individual expense, and the expenditure of much time in study. Under present standards of promotion and compensation this arrangement presents difficulties to the average teacher impossible for him to overcome; he sees the immense labor, the large outlay of money, the very inadequate compensation at the other end of the course, and as a consequence decides to obtain a license at once, and by fairly acceptable teaching, local, political, or social influences, or otherwise, keep himself in the schools, tho wholly unequipped, just as long as possible, rather than face the normal course and professional training on so large a scale. The larger course has its chief virtues in its ability to set high standards, to educate leaders, and to equip supervisors and superintendents. The sprinkling of this leaven thruout a commonwealth exerts a powerful influence for good and disseminates lofty ideals and standards, but fails in large measure to elevate sufficiently the whole teaching group, as is attested by the fact that only 8.1 per cent. of the teaching corps of eight states can lay claim to normal graduation, even reckoning all grades of those schools.

It may seem educational heresy to advocate lower standards in normal courses, but only in such, it seems to me, can we remove the barriers to an early uplift of the teaching group. The ideal normal school should first of all seek to come into contact with as many of the state's teachers as possible. To do this, would it not be wise to maintain courses of study and practice that will not present impossible barriers to the majority of the group? Let us equip our normal schools with brief tho vigorous courses of study and practice. Issue graduate diplomas at the end of two years of resident study; limit the courses to the common branches — literature, music, general history, the theory and practice of teaching, and composition — and the teaching by the graduates from such a course to the common schools; make the diploma a state license valid to teach in only the common schools for a period of years, conditioning its renewal as a license after that period upon a high degree of success in teaching and a fair degree of progress; in this brief course give to each student-teacher ample opportunity to do practice-teaching or to observe the daily work of a skilled teacher, not indeed to mimic, but to catch inspiration