188 THE UNIVERSITY 



school; second, professional examinations undergone before ex- 

 amining boards appointed by the Minister of Education." But the 

 programme of these tests embraces nothing of a professional nature. 

 Doubtless the questions selected for discussion are taken from the 

 high-school courses, but there is nothing to indicate that they will be 

 treated as in a high-school recitation and that there will be any 

 change in the established traditions. Meanwhile everything of a 

 professional nature that can be positively counted upon is the pro- 

 vision that candidates must have passed a period of apprenticeship in 

 the high school " under the conditions laid down by the regulations." 

 These regulations, and this entire organization, are still in the future, 

 and it remains to be seen whether the apprenticeship will have 

 practically any positive sanction. In the matter of modern lan- 

 guages professors in the Paris high schools have been requested to 

 deliver some lectures before their apprentices on pedagogical sub- 

 jects. The inspectors general of modern languages and physics 

 have likewise explained in similar lectures to the teachers already 

 engaged in actual work the new methods which they desire to have 

 employed. Finally, some few universities for some years past have 

 begun to attach a little more importance to the apprenticeship of 

 their students on a scholarship in the high schools and have tried to 

 organize a system of cooperation on the part of the high school and 

 university. 



Interesting as such attempts may be, they are, after all, unsub- 

 stantial in character, vague and shadowy in outline. Half-hearted 

 plans that may amount to nothing, they look forward to clearly 

 defined, adequate courses of study to render them successful. They 

 take no positive ground either for or against systematic prepara- 

 tion for teaching. I may then be allowed in this connection to show 

 briefly what seems to be possible and desirable in the way of realiza- 

 tion in our own country of that reform which has already been ac- 

 complished elsewhere. If we are backward, at least we may profit 

 by the experience of others and construct anew. The underlying 

 principle I shall not attempt to discuss. To those who still believe 

 that our future professors have nothing to learn of the theory or 

 practice of teaching, that they will discover everything by their 

 own genius and without injury to the pupils intrusted to their train- 

 ing, that one can always impart successful^ to whomsoever he 

 pleases the knowledge that he himself has acquired - - to such mis- 

 informed and belated opponents of pedagogy there is nothing further 

 to be said after all that has been said. 



If the State competitive examination (agregation*) and the master 

 of arts degree (licence') should be evidence of fitness to fill a position 

 in our secondary schools, they naturally demand tests, both equally 

 necessary, in the theory and practice of teaching. Without theory 



