624 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



As to how and in what kind of schools this double equipment 

 can best be given ah! that is another question, beyond the limits 

 of this paper to discuss, and, like all questions that deal with 

 expedients, hard to settle differing minds will always prefer dif- 

 fering expedients for the same end. 



Will the professional training be included in the college cur- 

 riculum ? Has any college yet provided for it ? I mean, not sim- 

 ply by a course of lectures on Herbartian Philosophy, but also 

 by a close and vital study of all the conditions of public-school 

 work. It is a healthy sign of the times that the colleges are 

 addressing themselves to pedagogical questions. The combined 

 efforts of all the institutions of learning will be none too effect- 

 ive for the work of public education. But all real aid to public 

 schools must be given in the spirit of those who would build up 

 rather than pull down, who can distinguish in the work of others 

 a right ideal in the midst of the crowding obstacles that prevent 

 the full realization of that ideal, and who do not hold themselves 

 aloof from personal labor as mutual helpers and learners with 

 other earnest and open-minded thinkers who are already carrying 

 the burdens of the work. 



Can the normal schools give this double preparation for high- 

 school work, providing the requisite scholarship as well as the 

 practical and professional training ? If it be true that they have 

 not heretofore done so, perhaps the importance of the work they 

 have been doing for the elementary schools offers a partial expla- 

 nation. But it would be a matter of public interest if education- 

 ists should really inquire and find out how nearly the best normal 

 schools in their four years' courses reach the standard of the col- 

 leges in scholastic attainments, and also how much difficulty there 

 would be in superadding to these courses whatever they may now 

 lack of such attainments. It would certainly seem to be feasible 

 for a State system of public instruction to prepare at least some 

 of the teachers needed for all grades of its own work. To dele- 

 gate the work for the higher grades entirely to private institu- 

 tions which have no practical relations with the lower-grade 

 work, would be to establish a break in the public-school system 

 that it would be hard to justify. 



But here again the experience of that high-school teacher 

 raises a question. It would almost seem that in the minds of the 

 managers of the agencies such a breach is known to exist ; that 

 while the lower schools belong to the masses of the people, the 

 high school is supposed to be intended primarily as a feeder for 

 the colleges, so that to introduce any other than a collegiate ele- 

 ment into its teaching force suggests a " poaching upon the col- 

 lege preserves." There is more than a suspicion abroad that the 

 high schools do stand in just this position of uncertainty, whether 



