Course of instruction.—California State Normal School, San José, Cal.-Continued. PROFESSIONAL.. Word analysis. Book-keeping. Physiology. Chemistry. United States history and Constitution. Vocal music. Methods in language teaching- Methods in reading teachingweekly. weekly. In all the large cities the problem of supplying the schools with well qualified teachers is one of pressing importance. The State normal schools, many of which have borne an honorable part in the educational progress of the last twenty years, are utterly inadequate to furnish teachers for all the schools. This fact, and the wish to give a systematic and homogeneous character to the instruction, have induced most of the large cities to establish normal schools or training classes to supply their own schools with teachers. These two classes of normal schools act in perfect harmony, and, under somewhat different conditions, labor for the same ends.1 While the State normal schools are generally co-educational, the city training schools are usually for young ladies exclusively; and as the professional course is seldom more than a year in length, the scholarship required for admission is higher, usually equivalent to that of high school graduates. Mr. S. A. Ellis, city superintendent of public schools at Rochester, N. Y., has kindly furnished this Bureau with a statement of the plan of the normal training class of that city, an outline of which is here given: The class (1) Condition of entrance.-Each applicant for membership must be eighteen years of age, and must have received at least three years of academic training. (2) Time.-The course embraces the forty weeks of the school year. meets for one hour each week to discuss the topic assigned the previous week. (3) Subjects.-The subjects studied are— (a) Education. (b) Teachers' qualifications. (e) School organization, management, and discipline. (d) Duties of teachers in reference to the physical, moral, and intellectual wellbeing of pupils. (e) History of pedagogy. (f) Psychology-its practical application to the work of teaching. (9) Mental philosophy in its application to the work of teaching. (h) Methods of teaching the various school branches. (i) Moral training. (4) Method of study.-Questions upon each topic are arranged, printed, and distributed to the class a week or more previous to the discussion of that topic. Mem 1 Report of City Superintendent, Minneapolis, Minn. bers of the class are required to prepare for the discussion by the study of the books of any good author, by personal observation, by conversation with those who have given attention to the subject, and by their own thinking and reasoning. (5) Programme of weekly meeting: (a) Roll call. (b) Literary quotations from six or eight members of the class, these having been previously appointed for the purpose. (c) Reading of the minutes of the previous meeting by any one upon whom the leader may call, and additions and corrections. (d) The leader calls upon members of the class in turn (using cards) to answer and discuss the questions in the printed list, opportunity being given for voluntary remarks or questions upon each topic thus discussed. (6) Reference library.-Books of leading authors upon all subjects in the course of study, from a reference library for the special use of training class. (7) Examination certificates.—A second-grade certificate is given to each member of the class who passes successfully the examination given at the close of the year's work, which is good for one year of teaching. At the expiration of that time, a'l who shall have demonstrated their ability to manage and instruct a class of pupils receive first-grade certificates, which entitle them to teach in any position in the public schools below the high school, except as principal. (8) Practice. All substitutes and temporary assistants are taken from the training class, as well as nearly all appointments to permanent positions. MODEL SCHOOLS. The value of practice schools has often been the subject of discussion. At the present time, however, all authorities are well nigh unanimous in recognizing the usefulness and necessity of practice schools, or some other provision for actual school-room work for young teachers, before they enter upon the work independently. As a matter of fact, provision of some kind for training, or practice teaching, is made almost everywhere in institutions where teachers are educated. If the query arises: "Can these model schools be conducted successfully to the real benefit of the student-teachers and without injury to the young pupils?" the evidence at hand would seem to answer in the affirmative. In spite of certain inherent difficulties of managing a practice school with success, and although it is no doubt true that many of these schools are not model schools, experience has shown that it is quite possible for them to compete with the public schools of the respective localities, and even to surpass them in efficiency and excellency of management. Of the Toronto Practice School it has been said by a very competent judge that "the instruction is of the best kind. The fees of admission are higher than those of the high school. Notwithstanding Toronto is abundantly supplied with excellent schools, the model school has 400 pupils, all it can accommodate, and more than 1,000 registered applicants are waiting their turn to enter." Careful supervision of the work of the young teacher, and conscientious preparation on his part under proper guidance, go far to make up for certain advantages which the regular public school may have over such a practice school; so that the latter ranks high relatively, if not absolutely. It is evident, however, that the value of practice teaching to the student-teacher depends largely on the criticism which follows it; in criticising, "reasons based upon a sound philosophy should be given for the opinions expressed and conclusions reached." This condition is not always easily fulfilled, but it is by no means unattainable.1 Of 124 public normal schools tabulated for the past year, 84 report practice training schools attached. These are of several grades, in some instances beginning with the kindergarten and including all the intermediate grades through the grammar school. Many of the city training schools are model schools entirely, a primary or grammar school being assigned for the purpose, in which the pupil-teachers have daily practice under the supervision of an experienced instructor. Recitations and lectures on professional subjects furnish opportunity for acquiring knowledge of the theory as exemplified in the practice of the art. The system of "apprenticeship," as practised by the pupils of the State Normal School at Worcester, Mass., is worthy of note: The student, after three terms, or a year and a half in the normal school, is allowed to go into one of the public schools of the city of Worcester to serve as assistant to the teacher of that school; to take part in the instruction, management, and general work of teaching, under the direction of the teacher; and even to act as substitute for the teacher for an hour, a half-day or a day, at the discretion of the latter and with the approval of the superintendent. One student only at a time is assigned to any one teacher; but each student serves in at least three grades of schools in the course of his term of service, the duration of which is six months, or half a school year. After finishing his apprenticeship, the student resumes his course at the normal school, spending another half-year there before receiving his diploma. 1 Professor Ledeman, in paper read before Michigan Schoolmasters' Club. During the period of apprenticeship, four days of each week are devoted exclusively to it by those employed in the work. One day of the week (Wednesday) is spent by them in the normal school, where they are employed, not in the ordinary study and work of the institution, but in the following manner: They hold such consultation with the teachers of the school and make such use of books as may be most helpful to them in their immediate work as apprentices; they make informal statements to the school of such facts of their experience as may be of advantage to the other students to hear,-concerning ways of teaching, cases of discipline and the like,-keeping in mind always the private character of the daily life of the school room, and under special warning against revelations that might seem objectionable. Each apprentice keeps a diary of the occupation and experience of every day's service, and this record is inspected by the faculty of the normal school. He also makes out a report at the end of his term, in which he gives his own estimate of his success in his work. The apprenticeship is designed to give the student practical acquaintance with the work of teaching, and training in that work. It is founded in the conviction that, whether education be a science or not, teaching in the public schools of Massachusetts is an art,-an art to the successful practice of which there is need of some initiation under the guidance of experience and skill; an initiation akin to that which an apprentice passes through in learning his trade. A secondary purpose is to furnish the faculty of the normal school with more full and satisfactory data for their estimate of the teaching ability of students. How the recruits will behave under fire cannot be determined by drill in the manual, or by dress parade. The apprenticeship goes far towards answering the important question. The apprentice is visited by the faculty of the normal school while engaged in his work, and is carefully observed and assisted by suggestions. The teacher of each school in which he has served makes out a report of the apprentice work of the pupil-teacher, on a scale of ten credits, showing the number of absences and tardinesses, power of control, power of interesting, skill in questioning, skill in explaining and illustrating, enthusiasm, bearing, with remarks on weakness or deficiency, and what traits of excellence (if any) have been shown in teaching or management. The additional 6 months of preparation required by the system under consideration secure to the student greater maturity of body and mind. The need of such maturity is apparent in the case of the majority of those who enter upon the work of teaching. That the object of the apprenticeship is attainable by the plan adopted, is not merely probable, but is already matter of experience. The method, although believed to be new in this country, is not in itself a thing new or untried. The German system of public education requires of the candidate for the office of teacher a season of service under direction, of probation under supervision, the essential elements of which are embodied in this apprenticeship. Something like it also prevails extensively in England. Moreover, the method is simply the extension of one that was for five years in successful operation in this school. The students are found to derive from their experience a fresh interest in their chosen work. They realize the practical bearings of the principles and methods they have studied; they acquire the "courage of having done the thing before"; they test their remedies for the school diseases of inattention, disobedience, and the like, by trial on actual patients; they acquire skill that is of vast moment to them at the critical period when they take charge, as teachers, of their first school. It is no small evidence of good results that the school board of the city of Worcester heartily approve the system on the ground of the benefit accruing indirectly to the city schools, through the greater fitness of the apprentices to become teachers. As the student of the normal school who passes successfully through the period of apprenticeship receives a certificate of the fact in connection with his diploma at graduation, the extra time required for the experience must in almost every case be more than made good by the greater probability of securing a position, and the greater likelihood of success at the outset of the teacher's career. There are, however, individuals in the school for whom it is impossible or impracticable to undertake this special preparation. The apprenticeship is not enforced upon any student; it is simply recommended. Individuals who do not enter upon it enjoy all the advantages of the school with this single exception.' PHYSICAL AND MANUAL TRAINING AT NORMAL SCHOOLS. In the matter of physical training, calisthenics and light gymnastics are the means most generally employed. Free movements, wands, rings, dumb-bells, Indian clubs, bars, chest-weights, etc., are in use, with out-door sports, and at some schools military I Catalogue. drill for male pupils. Well-equipped gymnasiums are provided at a number of the institutions, with special instructors, as at the Nashville Normal College, where an hour's exercise in the gymnasium is required on alternate days, under the charge of a lady and a gentleman director. Manual training is furnished chiefly in the construction of apparatus, with practice in the use of tools in schools where workshops have been established. At the Female Normal School at Salem, Mass., the use of carpenter's tools is taught to those ladies who may desire such instruction. At most of the normal schools for colored pupils industrial training is provided in connection with normal instruction; and at Hampton, Va., this is made compulsory, both as a matter of discipline and in order that the colored teacher may be self-supporting during the long intervals between the sessions of colored schools. At white State normal schools where such instruction is given, it is not claimed that students are necessarily introduced to what is known as manual training, as this is not the primary object. The object is to enable students to furnish for themselves, at small expense, the apparatus which can be used for teaching elementary science in their future schools. This end may be fully accomplished, and none go out without an equipment which is ample at the beginning of their work. They also possess the ability to enlarge and perfect this equipment as occasion demands. Teachers thus supplied have the means of objective teaching no matter where they go, and the construction of such apparatus is stimulating to teachers, while the possession of it carries interest and delight as well as useful knowledge to the common schools.1 In urging the necessity for manual and industrial training in the New York Normal College, where the course is four years, President Hunter says: Inasmuch as the chief difficulty encountered in engrafting manual training on the common school system is the want of competent teachers, I would suggest that such teachers could be easily trained in the normal college, and a sufficient number prepared in a year or two to enable your board to introduce manual training in all the primary and female grammar schools of the city. If manual and industrial training is to become a part of the public school curriculum, the normal college is the proper place to make a beginning. At the end of the second year in the college, at the time when the professional work is begun, the students, through their parents, could be permitted to select either of two normal courses, a normal course (the same as at present), or a normal course for manual and industrial training. This change could be made at a moderate cost, and the superior intelligence of our students would quickly enable them to master all the mysteries of manual training as far as it may be carried out in the common schools. The change would have this advantage, too, it would relieve the pressure by the regular graduates for positions as teachers of the ordinary classes in the common schools; and, above all, it would provide excellent employment for that class of students whose aptitudes run in the line of handicraft rather than in that of purely intellectual work.2 TEACHERS' INSTITUTES. In discussing the professional training of teachers, next to normal schools in importance, we must notice teachers' institutes, associations, conventions, and reading circles. For the great mass of teachers who either from lack of time, means, or opportunity, have failed to acquire a special training in normal schools for the work of their profession, there is no instrumentality so helpful and so potent for good as the teachers' institute. This important feature of professional preparation has received recognition in this country for the last half century, and in the same year with the establishment of the two oldest normal schools in America, the first institute for teachers was held in the city of Hartford, Conn. So general is the recognized importance of this work that the States, with few exceptions, and also several of the Territories, have incorporated in the school laws a proviso for teachers' institutes, making attendance compulsory, and, in some instances, withholding teachers' certificates and imposing penalties for non-attendance. For two decades after their introduction, teachers' institutes led a desultory sort of existence, tentative and fragmentary, experiencing rebuffs of fortune, apathetic consideration at the hands of teachers and educators generally, though most seriously retarded by lack of interest and the paralyzing conservatism of legislators who failed to see the necessity or importance of these "peripatetic normals." Credit is due the New England States, however, for their early legislation on the subject, and the readiness with which the teaching fraternity accepted these powerful and necessary aids to educational progress. The Middle and several of the Western States, likewise, soon awoke to the practical value of institutes, and as early as 1847 we find legislative appropriations for these in New York State, which have been continued uninterruptedly since that date. Dennison Olmstead, a graduate of Yale, projected a plan for a schoolmaster's academy in 1816; and Professor Kingsley, of the same institution, in 1823, proposed that intermediate schools be maintained in every county for thorough training of those who desired to teach in the common schools. Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet advocated teachers' seminaries in a series of essays published in 1825, but the credit of the first regularly organized teachers' institute was reserved for Hon. Henry Barnard, then secretary of the board of education of the State of Connecticut, who with a few friends conducted the first meeting of the kind of which we have record, in October, 1839, in the city of Hartford. A class of 26 young men was assembled, and for 6 weeks they were instructed by able teachers and lecturers, reviewing and extending the topics, then usually taught in common schools, and receiving thorough instruction in pedagogics with the advantage of observation in the public schools of the city. In the spring of 1840 a similar arrangement was made for female teachers, but for several years afterwards there were no meetings of a similar character. New York held its first institute in 1843, which was the first so named, and which was conducted by J. S. Denman, school superintendent of Tompkins County. This meeting lasted two weeks, and was a revelation of the new agent in school improvement. Rhode Island and Massachusetts took up the work in 1845; New Hampshire and Vermont in 1846, with Maine the year following. The western country, largely peopled by settlers from the more cultured eastern States, was not slow in building up schools and following out the lines of educational advancement as far as the sparsely settled districts would permit. Indiana reports an institute in 1846, believed to have been the first held in the State. Ohio had one in 1847, while Wisconsin held educational meetings somewhat like teachers' institutes before it assumed the dignity of Statehood in 1848. Only meagre details of the form and scope of these pioneer institutes are accessible. They were often more of teachers' conventions than what we now understand as normal institutes; yet they gave an impetus to educational work, and inspired a feeling of dignity and pride in the profession that has been invaluable in the results to the cause of common school education. It is not to be supposed that they were generally of as long duration, or as professional in character, as the first institute held by Dr. Barnard. They were properly experimental, and, doubtless, usually disconnected and fragmentary, for at that early day the public school system itself was by no means efficient, and normal schools for the professional training of teachers had just made their advent upon the educational horizon. While in Wisconsin the present system of institutes grew out of the establishment of normal schools and pedagogical departments in seminaries, in Iowa the first statutory organization for the improvement of teachers in public schools was called a "teachers' institute," and for a long time these migratory academic supplied the place of schools of professional training. These early assemblies of teachers were purely voluntary, and grew out of ambitious endeavors to keep abreast of the progress of the age, and a conscientious desire to qualify themselves for the responsibilities of their position. Experience has corrected many of the evils of the earlier systems, and well-nigh perfected the teachers' institute as an essential factor in educational training. It is sometimes urged by those who have either insufficient knowledge of the subject, or whose observation has comprehended only ill-conducted institutes, or those too ambitious in scope, and consequently superficial, that teachers' institutes interfere with the work of normal schools. They claim that the teacher students acquire only a smattering of the branches professedly taught, with a modicum of practical training; or else, by an energetic and systematic "cramming" process, they are enabled to pass the required examination and secure the coveted teacher's certificate, and thus swell the army of incompetents, whose chief work is the "artificial production of stupidity in schools." This impression is erroneous, as may be learned from the testimony of principals of normal schools, who, from their opportunities of observing results as conductors of institutes and at the same time professors in normal schools, are the best authority on the subject. As a body they indorse the teachers' institute as absolutely necessary to qualify the great mass of new recruits who each year enter the profession; and instead of creating the belief that the institute is a sufficient preparation for the work of teaching, as is sometimes alleged, these organizations, when wisely conducted, convince the teacher of his need of thorough training, and incite in many an ambition to pursue a complete normal course. Properly managed institutes are useful auxiliaries to normal schools where such exist, and they are important, though not perfect, substitutes where none exist. Even with normal schools established and supported by law, it is absolutely impossible to confine instruction in practical pedagogies to these institutions. The increase in population in the United States will always create a demand for competent teachers which the normal schools will be unable to supply, so that the great body of reserves must rely upon the institutes for practical training for their sphere of labor. The legitimate and formal province of teachers' institutes, and their direct work, is practical and progressive instruction in methods and principles of teaching, and in organizing, conducting, and controlling schools. These objects are effected in a variety of ways. The managers must consider the educational status of the locality in which the institute is held, as well as the most important needs of the teachers who are to be instructed. In a community where normal schools of approved excellence |