780 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 



cliaDges in educatioual policy, unless accompanied by changes in the methods ot 

 making teachers, may be largely ineffective. A professional training fitted for a 

 mechanical view of the teacher's work and mechanical methods of appraising its 

 worth are vicious so soon aa the official yardstick is transformed into pious 

 counsels addressed to the intelligent freeman. The teacher has now been freed, 

 but in many cases he does not know how to use his freedom. 



In the new circumstances is it not necessary to think out afresh the training- 

 college system P There have been momentous changes already. These are 

 designed to raise the average status of the rank-and-filer. Training colleges are 

 projected which shall offer places enough for every man and woman who can 

 reach the third-class standard of the King's Scholarship examination. This is a 

 lamentably low standard, but of course the teachers will be all the better for the 

 training-college opportunity. AVe may note, however, that the stimulus to effort 

 is gone, and of course the third-class will form a larger proportion of the King's 

 Scholarship list than ever. After two years in the training college the certificate 

 examination follows. All classification has been done away with in this case ; and 

 inasmuch as the average attainment of candidates will be lower, the old meaning 

 of the words ' trained and certificated teacher ' will be altered. 



It may yet be true that the average primary teacher will be better educated 

 and better trained than in the past, and so far the changes are commendably con- 

 ceived ; but on the whole they seem destined to bring about a dead-level of 

 mediocrity. They do not seem calculated to discover the best minds, although it 

 is to them we must look for progress. We may admit that the training colleges 

 have as their first duty to provide the rank-and-file of the profession. To turn out 

 an efficient class-teacher in the short space of time available is in itself a consider- 

 able task. The schools want men who can carry out the plans of others with 

 some intelligence ; men who can control and stimulate fairlj^ large classes ; men 

 who can work loyally towards an end laid down for the whole school by its head. 



The training colleges have only two years in which to work, and three-fourths 

 of this time have to be given to the general education of the students. Surely, 

 then, their training work should centre in the pi'actising schools, and the problem 

 of stimulating a group of forty children to continued and purposeful actively should 

 be the chief object of attack. The larger questions of general school organisation 

 might be left to a later stage. The students have to gain their footing in the class- 

 room first, and they have little enough time for that. The fact that it is life that 

 educates should be expressed in the organisation of a practising school where formal 

 exercises are replaced by activities which mean something to the children. Give 

 the student in training the right point of view ; let him see it worked out in 

 the school to which he is attached, and in which he is to work until he 

 understands it. Concentrated thought and practice will do much more for him 

 than the present attempt to deal with the whole problem of school organisation, 

 practice, and direction can do. Training at present tends to become too booky and 

 unintelligent. Its effects are rapidly whittled away under the pressure of practical 

 work. Thought should be centred upon the problem of the fruitful organisation 

 of the lives of children during the hours spent in school. Actual experience 

 teaches in a moment what a hundred lessons will not convey. Lectures should 

 aim at opening the students' eyes rather than at e.v cathedra pronouncements. In 

 training teachers, the point of view is the essential thing to establish. 



But so far we have been concerned only with the rank-and-file. What of 

 those whose responsibilities are wider — the men in whose hands the direction of 

 the school, as a whole, is to fall ? Their selection should depend on some less 

 mechanical principle than that of seniority. The man who has been longest a 

 class teacher may be the worst possible person to take up the larger work. The 

 headmaster ought, of course, to have proved his capacity in the class-room ; but 

 a man may be excellent in carrying out other folks' plans, yet quite incapable of 

 devising them himself. The point of view which regards each school as an 

 organism having an individuality, a special character derived from and adjusted 

 to the environment in which it is placed, makes demands on headmasters which 

 mere class-room experience cannot give. 



