798 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



meet tlie demands of the public schools. On this account the 

 teacher is reasonably certain of finding and holding a place in 

 his profession if he enters it properly prepared ; and the govern- 

 ments of these countries can say that no teacher shall engage in 

 the practice of his profession until he shall have had the normal 

 school or training-seminary preparation, which is provided free, 

 under the provision that the beneficiary shall devote himself dur- 

 ing his life, or a certain portion of it, to the work of teaching in 

 the public institutions of the country. In our own country teach- 

 ing is not yet regarded as a profession to any great extent ; and 

 a majority of those engaged in it do not continue in it for a 

 long time, perhaps not more than two or three years. The 

 greater number of teachers are women whose tenure of office in 

 the schools is tentative, depending upon the time when they shall 

 find more attractive life work ; while most of the men who enlist 

 under the banner of the schoolmaster do so only as preliminary 

 to engaging in other and more remunerative professions when for- 

 tune favors. This uncertainty in things makes a thorough and 

 systematic training of teachers in anything like completeness im- 

 possible in our own country at the present time. However, so thor- 

 oughly is it recognized by those familiar with the question that 

 teaching is an art to be improved upon by special study, even by 

 those possessing the most favorable endowments, that provisions 

 are made for some professional training of every candidate for a 

 place as master in the schools. This is done through teachers' in- 

 stitutes in all the States, summer schools, teachers' training 

 classes in the high schools, normal schools, and departments and 

 chairs of pedagogy in the universities ; and by means of these 

 agencies almost every teacher receives more or less professional 

 instruction which enables her to grasp the problem she is to 

 undertake in the management of a school in a more skilled and 

 scientific manner. But, while not disparaging the work done by 

 any and all of these agencies, it must still be said that it is to our 

 normal schools that we must look for anything like that prepa- 

 ration and training which must be demanded of our teachers 

 before our schools shall be able to realize adequately those ends 

 for which they are established and maintained. 



Something has been written against the normal-school idea by 

 those who feel that the art of teaching successfully must spring 

 up spontaneously out of the teacher's nature, since if it comes in 

 any other way, through study and apprenticeship, it will be 

 stilted, forced, and unnatural ; and it is further urged that teach- 

 ers who are thus made are more harmful than none at all. It has 

 been held in some quarters that the normal school puts into the 

 hands of its students a system of artificial makeshifts that 

 prevent the outworking of individuality, and reduce all teach- 



