school, but that their scholarship and culture might everywhere be recognized as the full equivalent for the scholarship and culture of one holding a bachelor's degree from a state university.

PRESIDENT J. N. WILKINSON, State Normal School, Emporia, Kan.-It seems to me that this is a very auspicious occasion. We are getting ourselves together on this subject. A normal president, a training teacher, and the head of one of the other departments have thus far been heard from. The president evidently finds the training department the best field for the correlation of all departments.

There are heads of departments who forget that their work is to be adapted to training for teaching. The teachers of academic subjects are likely to desire above everything else the gaining of recognition for their students in the colleges and the universities. Such teachers spend their time seeking and training prodigies who are not likely to teach, and forget that the normal school exists for the purpose of increasing the teaching strength of all its students.

There will always be trouble between the training department and the other departments, but it may be a friction that not only produces light, but produces the very heat we need to weld all the parts into a working whole.

MISS MAY H. PRENTICE, instructor in the City Normal School, Cleveland, O.-This has been a most interesting discussion. At least one speaker, I am glad to note, has spoken emphatically of the value of the critic-teacher in council with the heads of departments. Criticism from below brings as much gain as that from above. Primary pupils, student-teachers, critic-teachers, heads of departments, grow best when allowed to express themselves and not required to try to express someone else

Harmony between the practice and theory departments is essential, but it should be the truth presented that secures allegiance, and not the rank of him who presents it.

The plan so well advocated by President Felmley, of actual teaching in the practice schools by heads of departments, will do much to secure this harmony. The head of a department need fear no unkind nor oversevere criticism on the part of the critic-teacher it he meets her on the plane of equality. She knows the difficulties of the task too well for that. If he can demonstrate the value of his theories in actual work, there has been great gain to all; and if he proves them to have been poorly based, there has nevertheless been great gain; and if he is sincere and has courage, the gain to himself has been greatest of all.

men.

PRESIDENT JOHN R. KIRK, Kirksville, Mo., said: We should receive criticism without flinching. Dr. Butler's objections to so much methodology are well founded. I have lived largely in and near normal schools, and have visited them in all parts of the country. They deal too extensively in devices, prescriptions, and recipes-too much in models. The training school is not the chief center of interest; it is only one of the centers of interest. Mr. Felmley's theses involve too much mechanism. They destroy freedom. Mr. Hollis indulges in caveling. There need be no quarrel with the college The normal schools are content with too low a standard of scholarship. 1 prefer a normal-school professor whose scholarship, breadth, and personality equal that of the university professor, so that the normal-school graduate may feel and know that he has knowledge and inspiration from the highest possible sources. The mechanism of Mr. Felmley's plan is driving the stalwart young men out of our schools. Many of the state normal schools by an approach to this plan have become almost exclusively girls' schools. The girls, by our customs, submit more patiently to conventionalities, while the young men prefer, and will have, the sort of instruction that allows greater freedom and does not destroy the power and habit of initiative.

DEFECTS IN THE NORMAL SCHOOLS THAT ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OPPOSITION AND CRITICism urgeD AGAINST THEM IN MANY PARTS OF THE UNITED STATES

HOMER H. SEERLEY, PRESIDENT IOWA STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, CEDAR FALLS, IA.

Normal schools as organized and maintained in the United States are a part of the public school system of the several states, and are therefore subject to the peculiar laws and the special demands of their state environments. They are also so recent in their founding and so incomplete in their development that they are more or less in the experimental stage, and hence there are almost as many kinds of normal schools as there are individual institutions. It has been but sixty-three years since the first state normal school began its work, and the time has not yet been sufficient to enable this great modern movement to adjust itself to the educational system as a whole and to its special field in particular, so as to define the exact province of such a school except in general terms. These sixtythree years of educational history have been notable for the criticism and opposition that the normal schools have continually suffered.

Possibly no other educational movement in modern times has been met with more positive ridicule or more organized contempt, and hence positive progress has been much delayed and complete development of type has been greatly retarded. It has in fact been more a question what the normal schools have been allowed to do, rather than a question what they ought to do or could do. This opposition has come (1) from the influential ranks of the leaders in higher education, because the promoters of higher education have always considered it as the best and almost the sole agency for bettering the public elementary and high school. In advocating their ideas they have frankly and decidedly repudiated the normal schools, because they offered short and simple courses of study as a preparation for an educational career, and thus were in apparent opposition to the traditions and the theories of the historic system of higher education. They also discouraged the normal-school graduate from taking additional college and university education, by refusing to consider his normal-school education and training as having any equivalent value whatever when it came to be applied to the courses offered by these higher schools. In addition, the graduates of normal schools, as representatives of their new system of thought and training, found themselves treated as innovators, reformers, and smatterers by an unfriendly supervision which adhered strictly and firmly to the older and more accepted system represented by the college and the university. Hence there was great difficulty to get a chance to exemplify the training of the normal school in a practi

cal way, as the opportunity to get a fair test and a proper hearing was extremely difficult to secure. This opposition has also come (2) from practical men of affairs, who judge public policies and plans by immediate results, and who ridiculed the pretensions and the efforts of the normal schools as specially extravagant, impractical, and illusionary. They decided also that the doctrines and theories of education as taught and exemplified by the normal schools were more or less a farce or a fiction, possessing in reality no intrinsic merit, and giving finally no promise at all of permanent and worthy results. As a consequence of these controversies and contentions, the normal schools have been compelled to strictly differentiate their field of labor from the college and the university, and also from the elementary and high school, in order to be able to successfully defend themselves from the charge of being simply duplicates, and poor ones at that, or as inferior substitutes for other education already provided by the states. They have, therefore, been more or less classed among the inferior and the unnecessary as educational efforts, and have been treated by many influential educational and political leaders as unworthy and impractical. Such untoward conditions have naturally made the preliminaries slow to formulate, and have likewise made the development and the progress uncertain, doubtful, and hazardous. But despite all these things and the consequent poor chance to exert a salutary influence for the betterment of public education, yet in the past half century. no other educational movement of any kind has wielded such an effective influence, nor has any other attained more permanent or satisfactory results.

The normal schools in America have enjoyed much popular favor among the common people, and the growth of the demand for special training of teachers has been so decided as a force in civilization that nearly all the prominent and growing colleges and universities have found it necessary to keep pace with the times by establishing departments for the special study of the educational problems and methods in elementary schools, in order that they may successfully take part in the progress that was observed on every hand. Such an acceptance was a positive and a complimentary indorsement of the principles and the aims of normal schools in general, and was undertaken as a means of self-protection and for selfinterest by these great higher institutions of learning, more than because they were much in sympathy or greatly pleased with the conception of a teacher's professional education. The expansion in the number and in the prominence of the normal schools has been very rapid as a matter of fact, and it has meant new power and new distinction for their promoters, while the constant attempt to limit their province, restrict their service, and hinder their representatives in the field has been ineffectual as their development has been continuous and permanent. Their work has been complimented and accepted by the people at large, while the efficiency of their graduates has changed the whole face of the public service in public

schools from amateurism to professionalism. The contributions of the normal schools to modern psychology, pedagogy, and philosophy have not been small or worthless. What they have done has been definite, farreaching, and practical in results, having great effect upon all grades of schools, from the first grade of the elementary school to the last year in the university. While the direct influences have been specially marked, the indirect influences have been greater still, as the scholars and investigators in the universities have been more and more ready as time passed to accept, absorb, and utilize any new and promising developments found in these schools, organize the facts into a logical body of truth, and put them forth to meet and serve the exigencies of modern thought and progress. So much for the work accomplished by the normal schools during the past half century, a time of small beginnings and permanent organization. It is a proud and notable record indeed, such as history can never overlook nor underestimate, as it continually represents progress, reform, and accomplishment. The thoughtful person might even easily conclude that this mission has been sufficient and this service has been so great that the present can well afford to be satisfied and let well enough alone for the future, as it seems doubtful whether further consideration could develop anything that would be stronger, more serviceable, or more practical. But those who are aggressively at the front in this great work of training teachers for public schools cannot thus be satisfied with present attainments, as they must still recognize that there are defects to be corrected and better plans to be formulated. The criticism and the opposition that these schools yet receive are not products of fancy nor prejudice. Some of them must be accepted as well taken and needing reform and construction. The destinies of teacher, education, and training are in the hands of a class of men and women who are specially noted for genuine willingness to investigate the truth, and they are also ever ready to meet the objections and make progress. With such a laudable purpose as here stated, the chief defects that are thought by the writer to be most prominent and largest in the public policies of normal schools as organized, maintained, and managed in this country are stated, in the belief that they are such defects that time and effort and common-sense can easily overcome them, and that they are at this time the principal hindrances to a better progress in and a better service by these already great and prominent public educational institutions.

1. Normal schools have not made and do not now make enough of scholarship and intellectual culture to satisfy the growing demand of the strongest, the best, and the most promising students who personally look forward to education as a career. The fact is that the preparation obtainable at normal schools is in many respects not sufficient for as large a field of usefulness and service as the executive ability and personality of these persons make possible. The narrowing of the preparation must

have the effect of dooming their graduates to smaller and more petty fields of labor than is either desirable or necessary. The normal schools must therefore meet the demand and offer such inducements for scholarship and culture as the most promising and keenest intellects need in order to guarantee to them a career where talent and strength can be used entirely, and where the higher and better possibilities of a vocation are assured, or else they fail to comply with the real requirements of this progressive age.

2. The normal schools have made and still make too much of theory, dogma, and philosophy, and too little of the real, the practical, and the essential. There is no doubt but the criticism of the common man, which says that much of the so-called pedagogy promulgated and taught as the theory and philosophy of education is the merest bosh and nonsense from his practical standpoint of serviceableness, value, or benefit, is not entirely defensible. It is substance, reality, and efficiency that are needed and insisted upon in this great age of progress. It is common-sense and judgment that must be applied to all the problems of life in education, not abstruse thinking or disconnected philosophy or useless theories. The only kind of pedagogy that the American people regard as actually worth the having in these days of results and great accomplishments is a kind that is business in its nature, producing readiness in action and decided efficiency in the work of education. For such results and for such types of activities the real normal school must be an exponent. It cannot refuse its true mission.

3. The normal schools are usually conducted on the "one-man idea,” instead of the "faculty idea." These schools are too generally organized on a theory of unity, in which the head of the school is assumed to be so well grounded in wisdom, so perfect in judgment, so large in capability and resource, and so competent to direct that all associates are subordinated to an extravagant extent, requiring them, not to think themselves, but to faithfully carry out the ideas and the notions regarding education that are possessed and enforced by the central authority. There is of course a so-called faculty of teachers, but they are not treated as if they might possess valuable ideas or experience that are worthy of being accepted or put to use. They must not constructively contribute to the upbuilding and management of these schools, as their sole province is that of satellites who shine thru the inspiration and the guidance of the superior. The faculty meeting in such relation is not a place for conference, but a place to receive direction and instruction, a place where the unifying process is amplified and magnified until all difference of opinion and practice is obliterated. Success as a teacher in a normal school, then, begins to mean a peculiarly special ability to work out a president's conception and decision of the true way to successfully teach and train teachers. This system prevents a school from becoming a great public