OF EDUCATION 21 



schools a possibility. They may be considered pion- 

 eers in the great educational reform which is slowly 

 taking place. Our own state should lose no time in 

 establishing one good normal school. The fact that 

 this has not yet been done shows that our people 

 need to be aroused if not enlightened on the demands 

 of education. But state normal schools can never 

 furnish the thousands of rural districts all over our 

 land with their graduates. These schools will be 

 taught generally by young persons who will enter 

 the profession for only a few years. Moreover, the 

 course of training at the state normal schools is in- 

 sufficient to confer anything like a clear understand- 

 ing of educational science upon scholars who have 

 been trained in the ordinary way till the age of eigh- 

 teen or twenty years, before entering upon the 

 normal course. 



The third great step in the development of normal 

 schools is the founding of an order of institutions 

 which shall train the child, in accordance with na- 

 ture's laws, from the day he enters school till he 

 graduates. In villages of less than ten thousand in- 

 habitants our schools, everywhere, are in a deplorable 

 condition, and will remain so until their whole plan is 

 changed. The design of the village normal school is 

 to furnish such places with the means of a thorough 

 and rational culture instead of the jargon of the pres- 



