186 THE UNIVERSITY 



with a due regard to the teaching of science. Lastly, some place 

 should be found on the programme for the art of teaching as devel- 

 oped abroad. I would suggest for each period of three years the 

 study of some country in which this art has reached a high stand- 

 ard of excellence. 



With these guaranties the primary inspectors, already a choice 

 body of men, would really be adequate to the discharge of their 

 duties, capable of directing the most intelligent and the best-trained 

 of their subordinates, able to arouse and sustain in others something 

 of their own zeal and interest in teaching. If it should seem wise 

 finally to demand some additional title from such of their number as 

 might be placed at the head of the normal schools, evidence of further 

 professional study of a more independent and personal kind should 

 be required. In token of such study the university might grant 

 a sort of doctor's degree. 



II. Secondary Education 



It will not take long to describe what has been, and is even to-day 

 in France the professional preparation of our teachers in secondary 

 public education. There has been none; there is hardly any now. 

 Our professors supply this deficiency in part by a knowledge, talent, 

 and superiority which raise them above their task. But they are 

 for the most part indifferent, if not hostile, to pedagogy, as though it 

 were a kind of professional apprenticeship. And yet they are pro- 

 vided with degrees or professional titles, while many of them have 

 passed through the higher 1 normal school. But there is no true 

 professional training required either of the professor or of the in- 

 structor. The normal school founded in 1808 for the future teachers 

 of secondary education soon abandoned, if indeed it ever fulfilled, 

 its pedagogic role. Its destiny and crowning distinction consisted in 

 the fact that during the whole of the nineteenth century it was to be 

 the real school for higher education. It took the place of the univer- 

 sities which failed in the performance of their duty. But it became 

 increasingly disloyal to the purposes for which it was established. 

 Although occasional unsuccessful attempts were made to remind it 

 of its duty, these efforts were put forth for the most part during 

 the progress of some political reaction with a view to discrediting the 

 institution, all of which was by no means calculated to restore any 

 of its lost prestige to pedagogy. So that the higher normal school 

 became a sort of rallying-point for the opposition to all normal 

 school instruction. " It is useless to learn to teach," said one of its 

 directors; and one of its most distinguished teachers recently ridi- 



1 This title (higher) was given to the school in 1849, when an unsuccessful 

 attempt was made to establish normal schools for secondary education through- 

 out France. 



