July 29, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



137 



girls. The general environment seems un- 

 favorable to the development of domestic 

 tastes. 



From the point of view that I have ven- 

 tured to advocate, women teachers must be, 

 for most purposes, relatively inefficient; 

 and as teaching is an occupation in which 

 more than any other imaginative power, 

 individuality, insight and originality are 

 wanted, it is important that men rather 

 than women should exercise the predom- 

 inant influence. If it be the province of 

 education to mold the race, there is no other 

 question of greater importance claiming 

 our attention at the present time — espe- 

 cially as the difficulty of obtaining male 

 teachers is increasing day by day. In both 

 countries it is imperative that we should 

 discover means of attracting men with 

 practical instincts and of superior mental 

 gifts into the teaching profession. 



The Training of Teachers. — The elemen- 

 tary schools, at least in the larger cities, 

 enjoy an advantage over ours in that, I be- 

 lieve, their teachers usually all pass through 

 a period of high school training prior to 

 entering the normal or training school; 

 their outlook is consequently, on the aver- 

 age, somewhat broader. The methods 

 adopted in training teachers appear to be 

 no less academic than ours. 



The premier training establishment at 

 the present time is the Columbia Teachers 

 College, New YorJi— a palatial establish- 

 ment. The teaching given in this college 

 is in part academic, in part professional, 

 the predominant class of student being 

 those who are training to become super- 

 visors, i. e., advisory or teaching inspectors. 



I had hoped to find that in this college 

 the academic 'training had a certain bias 

 imparted to it, just as at our Cambridge a 

 certain professional bias is given to much 

 of the academic training of those who 

 graduate in the engineering tripos. But I 



was disappointed. And I was also greatly 

 disappointed by what I heard when attend- 

 ing some of the pedagogic classes; there 

 was a high-flown air of unreality about the 

 instruction; too much precept, too little 

 practise ; no really severe practise ! The 

 whole building seemed to me to be out of 

 character with the work to be done ; far too 

 ornate ; and the students — mostly women — 

 looked far too respectable and tidy to 

 please me. If they had been men I should 

 have said that they needed to take their 

 coats off and not to be above making their 

 hands dirty. It does not seem likely that 

 teachers so trained will be able to give the 

 simple, practical, common-sense instruction 

 that boys and girls stand so much in need 

 of at the present day. The whole appeared 

 to me to be a good illustration of the tend- 

 ency that I seem to see in America to be 

 guided by sentiment and emotion, and to 

 work on academic rather than on practical 

 lines. I do not think that the Americans 

 can long claim to rank as a practical nation 

 if such methods are allowed to prevail. 



We have sinned and are sinning grievous- 

 ly here in the same way, but there are clear 

 indications that we have recognized our 

 mistake, and that we may shortly enter 

 upon a new era in which common sense 

 will prevail. I saw no such signs in 

 America. 



College and University Instruction. — 

 Even if it were necessary it would be diffi- 

 cult to arrive at any consistent definition 

 of the American college; but as a rule it 

 may be said to aim at giving a liberal edu- 

 cation rather than professional training. 

 Where colleges or schools for both purposes 

 exist, side by side, they together constitute 

 the university. It is noteworthy that, with 

 a few exceptions, the term university has 

 only recently met with general application ; 

 Yale College, for example, obtained the 



