that sense of responsibility, self-respect, and independence which is the outcome of work recognized by children as useful.

A new responsibility is thrust upon the school. It must compensate for the loss of the farm training or both individual and state will suffer. It must meet the issue by physical and manual training, for it can no longer content itself with giving only a "bookish and wordy education."

I once attended a large gathering of school superintendents when the interesting question came up as to how many were born in the country and had had the opportunity in their boyhood to attend to the various duties connected with farm life. It was found that a surprisingly small per cent of these men were born in the cities. Statistics could easily be obtained, I think, to prove that most educational leaders as well as leaders in large business enterprises are men whose early training has been gained largely through healthy, physical work rather than by cramming book knowledge at the school bench for the sake of passing an examination or getting a degree.

The high school curriculum is overcrowded with studies that demand so much mental and nervous energy from the students that many of them become total physical and nervous wrecks. Several times during the past year, I have been visited by parents having girls in the high school asking if I would take their daughters into the wood-working classes because the physician advised physical work.

We know that the proper development of a child is like that of a plant-slow and orderly. If we are hurrying this orderly growth we are producing poor results. Herein lies the great danger in technical education; processes are often hurried in order to get a speedy and showy result. The goal to be reached is purely material gain rather than the thorough development of the child's faculties. Labor saving contrivances and machinery are introduced rather for the sake of production than to utilize the student's physical and mental powers.

The typical manual training schools of America as they are organized at present may be very valuable, but they do not fulfil the need of the people either educationally or industrially. Why? Because only a small percentage of the children of

high school age come under their influence. If we maintain the idea that manual training of some kind, at the most favorable period of child life is an absolute essential for a complete development of our children, then it is evident that every child should be given an opportunity.

Allow me, right here, to make a practical suggestion. Let the present manual training high schools be converted into vocational schools for children over seventeen years of age, and establish a manual training laboratory in every high school building as an organic part of the school curriculum.

It is interesting to read the several reports from manual training schools giving statistics as to the various kinds of work the graduates enter upon and what important business enterprises they represent. Presumably these reports represent the direct influence of the manual training schools, but we must admit that other schools and influences may have added something to the strength and power of the individual.

The kindergarten, for example, may have as much right to feel that it has laid the foundation for the future railroad presiIdent and the successful business man as the technical schools and colleges. Consequently no one knows what school or what training has had the greater influence for best citizenship. Much has been said about the influence of well-lighted and well-ventilated schoolrooms; about having them attractive and orderly. Still we all agree that the influence of tactful and sympathetic teachers in all branches of training is by far one of the greatest educational influences,-teachers whose chief interests. and thoughts center about the welfare of the pupil; who, like the Great Teacher, please not themselves but do all in their power to help in uplifting humanity.

It has been said that we Americans have progressed faster in wealth than in wisdom. In spite of the speed and competition in industrial supremacy which is also apt to enter into educational business, we must still believe that the greatest hope for our prosperity as a nation, as well as for that of other countries, is to take proper care of the growing generation and give them the best schools, with the best and most sympathetic teachers. the country can produce.

4

Aspects of the Professional Work in State

Normal Schools

WILLIAM C. RUEDIGER, TEACHERS' COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

T

Alabama
Arizona

California

HE following study was undertaken to ascertain what is constituting the professional training of teachers as this training is given in the state normal schools of the United States. The data were obtained from eighty recent (1905) normal school catalogues, and are tabulated in the accompanying table. The catalogues came from the following states and territories :

Complete data could not be obtained from every catalogue. The number of schools from which data concerning the different subjects were obtained is indicated in the first column on the right hand side of the table. It varies from thirty-five in "methods and reviews" to sixty-eight in "psychology."

The most conspicuous feature of the table is the great variation in the time given to each subject. Almost nothing approximating a standard amount seems to have evolved for any one of the subjects. Psychology varies from eight to sixty weeks, with an average of 22.5 and a median of 20.7, and the

time given to the other subjects varies nearly as much. The strongest single tendency is to devote a half year, or from eighteen to twenty weeks, to a subject. The next largest mode falls at the one-third year, or twelve to thirteen weeks, and the modes at the one-fourth, two-thirds, and the full year are nearly equal.

The practice teaching I have divided into two classes. In about seventy-one per cent of the schools the student is required to spend but one period a day in the training school while doing his practice teaching, and in twenty-nine per cent he is required to spend from one-half to a full day there. The median time given in the two cases varies from 36.1-20.9, but the aggregate amount is nearly the same, being but slightly greater in the second.

No doubt all will agree that the diversity in the professional work of our normal schools is too great. The professional basis of teaching is the same in the North as in the South, in the East as in the West. But on what should comprise a typical course of study scarcely any two persons would agree. This is a matter of gradual evolution and of scientific study and measurement. Although there are no definite standards mani

fest in the table, the better schools are tending to approximate closely to the following schedule :—

It is pretty well agreed that the course for a high school graduate for the regular course which prepares for grade teaching should be two years in length, and that twenty hours a week of work requiring preparation should be carried. Counting five hours as a week-unit in a subject, the student would have to his credit at graduation three hundred and twenty weeks. About half of this, one hundred and sixty weeks, it seems fair should be devoted to professional work. About twenty per cent of the schools now reach or exceed this amount of time, but the average for the country over is less. Taking the data from twenty-eight schools, it varies from sixty to one hundred eighty-seven weeks, with an average of one hundred and twenty-eight and a median of one hundred and thirty.

The academic work must no doubt continue to hold a place in the normal school. The high school graduate is not yet ready to devote himself exclusively to professional training, if, indeed, such training should ever be given exclusively in any line. His intellectual horizon needs to be further enlarged. This work should be adapted to the needs of the locality in which the school is situated. It should include nature study, manual training, domestic science and art, music and art, and courses in history, sociology, literature, mathematics, languages, and the sciences. Probably over half of the work should be elective; in fact, with the advice of the principal or some other person of experience, it might all be made so to advantage. The professional work is elected when the student chooses to prepare for teaching and cannot be made further elective, except perhaps in a few details.