Jtjne 10, 1887.] 



SCIENCE. 



565 



high-school course is finished. Very few pupils 

 can grasp the laws of roifid until they are more 

 than twenty years of age. Without psychology, 

 any comprehension of the science of education is 

 impossible. Without this science, imitation of 

 methods is the only resort. One in ten or twenty 

 by inherited and acquired power may have the 

 strength to understand principles : such graduates 

 go on with their studies, and make efficient teach- 

 ers. 



The need of the hour is the establishment of 

 purely professional training-schools, — schools that 

 would take rank with the best law and medical 

 schools. The normal schools themselves suffer 

 greatly for lack of strong, broadly educated, pro- 

 fessionally trained heads. A principal of a New 

 England academy, without a spark of professional 

 training, goes into a great western territory to 

 take charge of a normal school, and help lay the 

 foundations of the educational system in a new 

 state. In another profession he would be called a 

 quack : in ours it is almost a necessity, because 

 trained efficient teachers, capable of taking the 

 lead in education, are exceedingly scarce. Few 

 superintendents and principals have had any 

 training for their work. A graduate of Harvard 

 or Yale is just as well fitted to enter the pulpit, 

 the law, or to heal the body, as he is to take the 

 head of a school. In some large cities — Boston, 

 for instance, which has one of the best training- 

 schools in the country — many women teachers 

 know far more of the science of education than 

 their principals. 



There id a crying need of safe leaders in educa- 

 tion. There never was in our history compara- 

 tively a tithe of the earnestness, enthusiasm, and 

 general awakening in the cause of education, as 

 there is at present. This vast energy is spending, 

 and will continue to spend itself in the superficial 

 study of methods, devices, and general details of 

 management and organization, unless there are 

 means offered for a far deeper and broader study 

 of the Jaws of human growth and the principles 

 of teaching which spring from them. 



The present normal schools, struggle as they 

 may and do, cannot well grow into the needed 

 purely professional schools. The rural districts 

 look upon them as convenient, cheap, and good 

 high schools ; and rural legislators will continue 

 to hold them to that line of work : the normal 

 element must necessarily be secondary. 



Let New York or Pennsylvania, for instance, 

 found one professional training-school. Find a 

 head first, — a very difficult task. Give the prin- 

 cipal two or three excellent assistants. Take a 

 whole village or small city for a practice depart- 

 ment. Admit upon a rigorous examination only 



graduates of colleges, normal schools, and high 

 schools, of full four years' courses ; admit, too, 

 teachers who have made themselves efficient by 

 three years of successful teaching, Blake the 

 school the central point and place of meeting of 

 the county superintendents. Allow them to spend 

 all the time they can command in study at the 

 school. The course is indicated by the term ' pro- 

 fessional training-school.' History of education, 

 psychology, pedagogics, and methods should make 

 up the curriculum. 



Any teacher or superintendent, of whatever 

 age or standing, could go to such a school with no 

 sense of degradation, just as De Garmo and Seeley 

 went to Stoy's famous Lehr Seminar at Halle. If 

 Stanford could be induced to found, with his pro- 

 posed university in California, a school like the 

 one outlined above, he would confer upon his fel- 

 low-men a priceless boon. Rich men are con- 

 stantly giving immense sums to sectarian schools, 

 technical schools, academies, and colleges. Oh 

 that some rich man would die for a professional 

 training-school for teachers ! 



Francis W. Parker. 



I, There are many who see no necessity for such 

 training, A knowledge of the subjects to be 

 taught is thought all-sufficient. But the time 

 when the ignorance and vice of the teachers made 

 them an article of public vendue,' or when they 

 follovied teaching because they were fit for noth- 

 ing else, is a thing of the past. A great school 

 system has been built uj) ; the masses of the j)eople 

 are more enlightened, and they demand qualified 

 workmen, though they may not, and in many in- 

 stances do not, understand the need of profes- 

 sional schools in which to train these workmen. 

 Nor is this demand for competent teachers unrea- 

 sonable. Better qualifications for any business or 

 profession are required now than were required 

 fifty years ago. We have training-schools for 

 nurses, for cooks, for clerks, for the trades, for 

 farmers, as well as those for the learned profes- 

 sions. The medical student, even after his 

 graduation, feels that his preparation for the prac- 

 tice of medicine has not been completed, and that 

 the people are not yet willing to trust him. No- 

 body doubts that he has learned the facts neces- 

 sary to be known ; but he has yet to learn to use 

 these facts, to do which he places himself under 

 the special training of a competent teacher, — 

 enters into partnership with a successful practi- 

 tioner. The lawyer and the clergyman of ten pur- 

 sue the same course. People do not question the 

 wisdom of such policy. They commend it, be- 



1 See Report of commissioner of education for 1875, p, xx. 



