270 A STUDY OF FORTY NORMAL SCHOOLS 



supply (typhoid fever) ; so the idea is growing that depart- 

 ments of education also should be held legally responsible for 

 injury to any child's health by the slow poisoning of unsanitary 

 schools. A large part of the unhealthfulness comes from ig- 

 norant and careless management, due to improperly prepared 

 teachers, and principals, and to janitors not prepared at all. 2 It 

 would seem also that earnest young women and men who have 

 accumulated a little money with which to pay for a professional 

 training should have legal redress for the waste of it through 

 governmental misrepresentation and inefficiency either in city 

 or state normal schools. 



Licenses to teach in elementary schools mean widely different 

 qualifications according to the institution in which the candi- 

 date prepared, whose pace is set by the examinations given. 

 Schools for training teachers have the same humanitarian need 

 to be standardized as have medical schools. Leaders in medi- 

 cine have worked for this for many years, and are recently 

 re-enforced by the Carnegie Foundation whose study of medical 

 schools reports similar exaggerations and similar inadequacies. 



Some of the fine possibilities in professional instruction we 

 are to hear this afternoon from those who are really doing 

 things; at least I have urged each to give us his own work, not 

 opinions of what ought to be done of which we have already 

 so many. Their success opens up paths along which we may 

 hopefully push in our work for healthy and wise parents as the 

 chief factor in preventing infant mortality. 



I beg to express the very great appreciation of the Associa- 

 tion for their kindness in coming, some of them from long dis- 

 tances; taking time from crowded days to help us with their 

 experience. We thank each one heartily. 



2 See "Janitor Service," Putnam, Proceedings National Education Association, 

 1910 and 1911. 



