THE PROFESSIONAL TRAINING OF TEACHERS. 805 



The practice department of the normal school usually illus- 

 trates a thoroughly graded and classified school from the kin- 

 dergarten to the high school, and is designed to embody three 

 phases of actual teaching : In the first place, as has been said, 

 pupil teachers are expected to witness model teaching that exem- 

 plifies the very best psychological principles in order that they 

 may have the very best ideals set before them. Second, every 

 pupil teacher is required to teach for a certain length of time 

 in this practice department under skilled criticism. The critic 

 teacher, who is usually an experienced and competent person, is 

 careful to point out the defects which the student displays in his 

 practice work, and to give him explicit directions how to over- 

 come them, always aiding him in every way possible to apply 

 readily and efficiently the principles he has gained in his theo- 

 retical work. In the third place, there is usually a spirit of in- 

 vestigation found in these practice schools, seeking constantly to 

 improve upon the methods of teaching which may be in vogue 

 at any time ; and, as a general thing, freedom is permitted the 

 apprentice to work out original methods, provided these seem to 

 be in harmony with the fundamental principles of teaching. It 

 is not too much to say that it is the aim always to inculcate 

 among pupil teachers that broad, wholesome spirit that will look 

 upon the teaching profession as a high and honorable one, where 

 more worthy motives should prevail than those of mercenary gain 

 or social preferment. 



IV. THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. In order that a teacher 

 shall thoroughly understand and appreciate what is being done 

 pedagogically in these times it is necessary that he be led to see 

 how the present state of things has been brought about, in order 

 that he may put himself in line with the ascending tide in educa- 

 tional practice. The history of education, as a record of the de- 

 velopment of educational ideas and practices, showing the tran- 

 sition from a period of unpedagogical and unpsychological pro- 

 cedure to one with more humane and intelligent methods, is as 

 stimulative and beneficial a study as a teacher can undertake. 

 The aim generally kept in mind is to trace the process of develop- 

 ing pedagogical ideas with the end in view to see that there is and 

 has been a constant evolution along several distinct lines of edu- 

 cational practice, and that we are at present in a stage of that 

 evolution process which seems in no wise to be near completion. 

 The apprentice is led to appreciate that there has been in educa- 

 tional history much the same awakening to the consciousness 

 that there is a teaching science, determined by invariable laws of 

 mind growth and development, as is experienced by the ordinary 

 teacher who has come to look at her work from a psychological 

 rather than an academic standpoint. An effort is made to have 



