PROFESSIONAL TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 783 
inspiring force; that the function of the school is to rouse 
and stimulate every one of his scholars; and if it fail in this 
work, it is no true preparation for life—it is a mere sham, 
and had better be dispensed with altogether. 
From what has been said, it will at ence be seen that the 
adequate teaching of the elements, the three Rs upon which 
Ruskin says we set a purely conventional value, is really of 
vital importance. It is from a vague consciousness of this 
that we do attempt to give training to some teachers in the 
elementary schools, and we provide a fairly adequate equip- 
ment for our Kindergarten teachers. But such training 1s 
by no means compulsory, and many teachers of young 
children enter upon their work with no special preparation 
for it. 
Muicaster, a great educational theorist and a successful 
practical teacher, urged,in 1581, that, ‘‘ The first groundwork 
should be laid by the best workman,”’ and adds, in magnificent 
scorn of those who would consign young children to inferior 
teachers on the plea that any one can teach the elements, 
“Tt is not that small skill that he hath, that can do the 
thing well, but your skill is small to think any small skill can do 
anything well.” We do, it is true, occasionally give training 
to our Kindergarten teachers, and to teachers in elementary 
schools, not from a real appreciation of the need for good 
workers in the early stages, but because it has been found 
impossible for the untrained teacher to secure sufficient 
order and attention from large numbers of active and 
intelligent little beings to give them any sort of instruction. 
The trained Kindergarten teacher has learnt to be inter- 
ested in the child to be taught, as well as in the subjects. 
She knows how to adapt her teaching to the child’s powers, 
and under her the little one learns to look upon work as a 
joy, and to put his whole energy into the performance 
of it. The child passes from the Kindergarten into the 
school; here is a transformation. Work, hitherto a delight, 
because it has*been adapted to his taste and his capacity, 
becomes suddenly a toil and a burden. The teacher, unless 
- she be trained for her work, does not know what to make of 
the eager, active, little creature placed under her charge. 
The child is bewildered in the new world of school, with its 
moral and intellectual ideas so different from those of the 
little world he has left. | 
In the Kindergarten, co-operation was the magic principle 
which drew the children together to sympathise and réjoice 
in work; in the school, competition introduces the child 
prematurely to the struggle for existence, and leads him to 
look upon his fellows rather as rivals than fellow-workers. 
