STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, WORCESTER. E. HARLOW RUSSELL, PRINCIPAL. The year covered by this report (1907-08) has been a year strictly devoted to typical normal school work, so far as the wide divergence of normal school ideals and practice in this country justifies the application of the term "typical" to the work of any one school. That the best or final means for the training of teachers for our public schools have not been fully worked out and agreed upon is sufficiently apparent in the fact of this very divergence, coupled with the confidence so often shown by those who practice widely different or even opposite methods of procedure. Our ends are the same; but as to the means and proportions of the processes by which these ends may be most effectively and economically secured there are hardly two persons in the service who are found fully to agree. Under these conditions it would seem wise to adopt a policy of management which should permit, and perhaps encourage, a degree of individuality and even a spirit of experimentation. Such a liberal policy has long prevailed in Massachusetts, and there is much evidence that the exercise of it has helped to give distinction to her normal schools. In recent years there is less talk of making them "uniform" than was heard when the horizon of normal training was much narrower than it has since become, and when here and there a self-styled "educator " assumed to enjoy almost a monopoly of the subject. In almost every normal school of the present day may be found one or more features upon which, perhaps by way of experiment, special stress is laid. At Worcester, for example, especially in comparatively recent years, the element of practice-teaching has been much emphasized in the somewhat novel form of "apprenticeship" in the public schools of that city, with the view of placing the pupil-teacher as nearly as possible in such actual surroundings as those in which she must soon begin her independent work. This method has found favor and adoption in several other similar schools located in towns large enough to afford suitable opportunity for its employment. Mention is made of it here simply to illustrate the point that normal training has not yet reached its final stage, but is still a growing art, with an inviting future before it, and that experiments should be judged by their results, rather than by a priori comparison with what may have long been the practice. Education, like agriculture, is an ancient art, and, no less than agriculture, is still beset with unsolved problems; so that it has been suggested that a normal school would do well to consider itself in the light of an educational experiment station, and not as a tribunal of last appeal in all questions of the theory and practice of teaching. EMPLOYMENT OF GRADUATES. Of the graduates of last June a larger number than ever before had already been engaged as teachers at the time of receiving their diplomas, and by the end of the summer vacation in September many superintendents had applied to us in vain for candidates. MANUAL TRAINING. As intimated in our last report, the correlation of drawing and manual training in due proportion to other subjects is a but matter difficult to settle to our satisfaction. We see no way to go on experimenting with it, under such light as observation and experience can give. With something of the fundamental principles of construction and of applied design, we can at least qualify our students to teach and illustrate the elements of the art, under the supervision of a special instructor, and prepare them to acquire further knowledge and skill whenever the demand for it shall be laid upon them. NATURE STUDY. The work in nature study this year took the direction of window gardening, and easily allied itself with the course in botany, to which it formed an admirable supplement or extension, while at the same time following a path of its own making. The principal aim was to transplant during the autumn specimens of the more common wild species found in our pastures, woods and meadows, and see how many could be made to adopt in-door conditions, and become, in a manner, "household pets" of the students. This had the advantage of being, necessarily, individual work, and it was also something which the students. when they should become teachers could easily carry into their schools, with the effect of familiarizing children with the interest and beauty that lie in the surroundings amid which they will pass their lives. The experiment discovered great difference in the viability or aptitude of various wild plants to bear the change to domestication. Some languished and died as of homesickness, while others flourished and burst into joyous bloom. Scores of species were thus gathered, and a great multitude of specimens, in pots, pans, fern-globes, boxes, etc., adorned windows and tables throughout the building, attesting the interest felt in the experiment. SCHOOL HYGIENE. In view of the awakened attention to hygiene, general and special, in the community, we are giving more time to that branch than ever before, and are making the subject of chemistry directly contributory to it by experimental study of air, water, foods, combustion, etc. This course is laying a scientific foundation upon which may be intelligibly unified a great number of the rules and maxims that must always constitute for most people what are called "the laws of health." THE FACULTY. Two new instructors have been added to the staff, to fill vacancies. Miss Helen L. Brown and Miss Olive Russell, after several years of faithful and acceptable service as kindergartners, resigned their positions in June, and have been succeeded by Miss Annie L. Turner of Boston, an experienced and highly successful kindergartner, who has taken hold of her work with a spirit and in a manner that promises gratifying results. Mr. J. Mace Andress, who has enjoyed unusual advantages of study and training for normal school work, having taken degrees at the Michigan Normal College at Ypsilanti, at Chicago University and at Harvard University, takes the place of Dr. Frank Drew, whose resignation took effect at the end of the school year in June. The qualifications in educational theory and practice which Mr. Andress brings to his work give assurance of the value that his service will bring to the normal school. STUDENTS. Our numbers are considerably in excess of those reported a year ago, showing a gain in attendance of more than 20 per cent., while the age, scholarship and character of the entering class appear to sustain the standard long maintained in this school. The proportion of young men is much larger than for several years past, as is also the number of candidates admitted upon high school certificates of superior scholarship. BOARDING ACCOMMODATIONS. The principal continues to urge upon the visitors his conviction that the future prosperity of this school, at least so far as attendance is concerned, requires adequate provision to be made for the boarding of students from a distance. Suitable boarding places in private families can no longer be found in the neighborhood of the school, and our grounds, five acres in extent, afford an eligible site for the erection of such a boarding house as those already provided for a majority of the normal schools of the State. STATISTICS. 1. Total number of students for the year ending in June, 1908, 113. Number of graduate students in English literature (spring term), 58. 2. Number admitted in June and September, 1908, 59. Number admitted since the beginning of the school in 1874, 2,092. 3. Average age of students last admitted, 18 years, 8 months. 4. Residences of students last admitted: Worcester County, 58; New Hampshire, 1; total, 59. 5. Occupations of pupils' parents: mechanics, 23; salesmen, 7; foremen, 6; agents, 3; farmers, 2; manufacturers, 2; merchants, 2; policemen, 2; clergyman, engineer, brewer, bookkeeper, contractor, teamster, fireman, caretaker, 1 each; not employed, 1; unknown, 3; total, 59. 6. Number in the graduating class, June, 1908, 34. Number of graduates since 1876, 1,253. 7. Average age of the graduating class, June, 1908, 21 years, 3 months. 8. Library: reference books reported last year, 7,674; volumes added since, 384; total, 8,058. Text books reported last year, 8,392; volumes added since, 344; volumes discarded as worn out or out of date, 2,111; total, 6,625. Whole number of volumes now in the library, 14,683. GEORGE I. ALDRICH, Board of Visitors. |