THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 367 



influence again has been local and circumscribed. It has not 

 sufficed to raise the general level of the teacher's calling. It is 

 not, indeed, through individual and local advances that the na- 

 tion's problem is to be solved. 



There is, in fact, but one way in which the evils that are in- 

 herent in the transient and unprofessional character of the gen- 

 eral teaching population can be remedied, and that is the crea- 

 tion of conditions that will make teaching throughout the length 

 and breadth of the land, a permanent occupation, a real career. 

 Larger appropriations for teachers' salaries are needed, and in 

 view of the alarming shortage in the supply of teachers and 

 the decreasing attendance upon the normal schools, such appro- 

 priations should certainly be made at once if a situation worse 

 than that which exists to-day is to be avoided. But higher sal- 

 aries alone will not solve the problem. What is needed at basis 

 is a different conception of the teacher's work, and what is 

 needed first of all is an adequate appreciation of the importance 

 of a thoroughgoing preparation for its responsibilities. 



It cannot be a source of pride to our people that the United 

 States gives less attention to the training of teachers than does 

 any other great nation. It cannot be a matter of pride to our 

 people that, of all our professional institutions, those who have 

 been intrusted with the preparation of teachers for the public 

 schools are the most penuriously supported and the least attrac- 

 tive to ambitious youth. 



Nor can these normal schools with their inadequate support 

 supply more than a fraction of the teachers annually needed for 

 the public schools. Their total output each year is scarcely 

 enough for the needs of the urban communities, leaving the 

 rural and village schools almost entirely dependent upon un- 

 trained recruits. In a typical state a state that is perhaps mid- 

 way between the most progressive and the most backward edu- 

 cationally 80 per cent, of the rural-school teachers this year 

 are boys and girls fresh from the eighth grade of the common 

 schools and even under these inadequate standards this state 

 reports a shortage in teachers, so keen is the demand for their 

 services in other occupations. 



For the national government generously to cooperate with the 

 states, first in meeting the emergency which is drawing so many 



