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This Volume is for REFERENCE USE ONLY
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« . • • STATE OF
: MISSOURI
OF STATUTE MILES
-
KEY UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI. ....... .. ...... _ ...... ..nO
MISSOURI STATE NORMAL SCHOOLS ..... . ...... .jQ
Cm TRAINING SCHOOLS ..... ...........,«..........MO
PRIVATE COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.........,.*
JUNIOR COLLEGES,...,,, ....... ....... ........ , ...... 1...O
HIGH SCHOOLS - 1919
"First Class ..................... ........... ..... ..................,..*
First Oass with Teaclter Training Courses,,.....^
Second Class. ..................... .... ....... ... ...... , ..... ..o
Third Class...,....,,...,.. ......... ..... .„„.„.„ ..... ....©
Unclassified...,.,. ....... *.... ..... .......... ...................o
pe Girardeau
THE PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION
OF TEACHERS FOR AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
A STUDY BASED UPON AN EXAMINATION OF TAX-SUPPORTED NORMAL SCHOOLS IN THE STATE OF MISSOURI
By WILLIAM S. LEARNED, WILLIAM C. BAGLEY
AND CHAELES A. McMiiERY, GEORGE D. STEAYEE WALTEE F. DEAKBOEN, ISAAC L. KANDEL, HOMEE W. JOSSELYN
NEW YORK
THE CARNEGIE FOUNDATION
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF TEACHING
576 FIFTH AVENUE
D. B. UPDIKE • THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS • BOSTON
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE xv
I. INTRODUCTION
A. CHARACTER AND CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE ENQUIRY 3
B. METHOD AND PERSONNEL 5
C. A GENERAL STATEMENT OF CONCLUSIONS 7
Democracy and Education; Education and the Teacher; New Standards Essential for Genuine Education; A New Training for Teachers; The Teacher and the Public; The Present Crisis in Public Education
II. THE STATE OF MISSOURI 16
Surface 'Features; Characteristics of Population; Occupations; Political History; Educational Development
III. ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF NORMAL SCHOOLS
A. THE ORIGIN OF NORMAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES 22
Earliest Advocacy of Teacher-training; Early Experiments; Development of Public Opinion; Example of Germany; Efforts of Educational Leaders; The Term " Normal School;" Teacher-training in Germany; Legislative Activity in Massachusetts; Normal School Development in Connecticut; The New York Practice; Normal School or Academy? The Normal School in 1 866 ; Early View of the Function of a Normal School
B. NORMAL SCHOOLS IN MISSOURI 34
Early Efforts; Joseph Baldwin; Three State Institutions authorized; Method of Locating Educational Institutions; Changes in Status and in Scope of Work; 1871-191^; Growth in Numbers; Opposition; Financial Struggles; Effect of Poverty on the Schools; Relations with Colleges and Universities
IV. GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL OF MISSOURI NORMAL SCHOOLS
A. THE PRESENT SYSTEM 42
Control First vested in a Single Board; Objections to the Single Board; Separate Boards — Contemporary Criticism; Attempts to unify the Schools Educationally; Present Operation of the Separate Boards; Function of a Board not Understood ; What is the Function of a Board of Regents? Party Politics in the Boards ; Weakness of the Boards in Material as well as in Educational Problems; Lack of Unity in Policies affecting the Whole State; Each School a Law unto Itself; Educational Diversity of the Institutions; Loss to the Schools of Critical Re vision; The Normal Schools versus the State University; Sources of Rivalry; Effects of Institutional Competition; The Local Board System Responsible
B- PROPOSALS FOR A BETTER ORGANIZATION OF PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR
TEACHERS 54
Preparation of Teachers a Homogeneous Undertaking; A Reorganized University; A Professional Board of Executives; Effects of Proposed Re-
iv CONTENTS
organization; The City Training Schools should be included; Voluntary Cooperation
C. REORGANIZATION OB" STATE EDUCATIONAL CONTROL 63
Principle of Centralization ; The State Unit of Administration; Advantages of State Control ; Conditions of Successful State Administration ; Unifica- tion of Control in Missouri; Experiments in Other States; Lessons from Recent Experience ; Relations of Constituent Departments
V. PURPOSE OF A NORMAL SCHOOL
A. GENERAL FUNCTION 70
1. The Existing Conception. Early Conception of the Function of a Normal School ; Subsequent Variations ; Special Considerations affecting a Nor- mal School's Conception of its Function ; Pressure for Academic Credit; Effect of Local Control; "Democracy" the Justification; Professional Training long Uncertain as to its Method
2. Normal Schools should train Teachers. Obstacles to Professional Training 78 are Disappearing; Unity of Aim Increasing; A Normal School's Obliga- tion to the State
B. SCOPE OF ORGANIZATION 8£
1. Historical View, Early Work chiefly for Elementary Teachers ; Prepara- tion of High School Teachers; Normal Schools and High Schools ; High Schools and University; Readjustment of Normal Schools for Higher Instruction; Results of Reorganization
2. How should the Scope of a Normal School's Activities be determined ?ef Stand- 89 ard" Institutions and Others; The Present Policy of Missouri Normal Schools — Pressure of Local Situation; Example of Other Institutions; Expansion a Matter of Pride; Personal Expansion; Service of Normal Schools in enforcing the Idea of Professional Training; Criticism by Uni- versities partly Ill-founded; The Scope of an Institution's Work should
be determined in View of all the Facts; Organization of Criticism needed
VL PERSONNEL OF THE MISSOUEI NORMAL SCHOOLS
A. TEACHERS 99
Age, Sex, and Parentage ; Educational Equipment; Secondary and Higher Training — Degrees; Degrees Classified; Geography of Training; Com- binations of Training; Graduate Degrees; Retardation in Training; Re- tardation and Graduate Work; Experience; Kind of Experience; Teach- ing Assignment; Length of Program; What is a Reasonable Load? Good Teaching as Exacting as Research; Productive Scholarship; Economic Status — Family and Dependents; Length of Tenure; Salaries — Varia- tion among the Schools; Comparison with the University; The Best Paid Groups; Insurance; Teachers at Harris Teachers College
B. STUDENTS 117 Age and Sex — Nationality and Nativity; Parental Occupation and In- come— Size of Family; Choice of Vocation — Other Teachers in Family; Financial Attraction; Distance from School; Previous Education; Quality
of the Normal School Student; Comparison of Secondary Training in High School and in Normal School; Attendance at Colleges and Other Normal
CONTENTS v
Schools; Teaching Experience; Immediate Intentions of Students ; Study Elsewhere; Students at Harris Teachers College
VII. CUEEICULA OF THE NORMAL SCHOOLS
A. OUTSTANDING PROBLEMS IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF CURRICULA FOR THE
PREPARATION OF TEACHERS 128
1. Standards of Admission. Professional Subject-matter Well Developed; Chief Question is One of Purchase and Distribution of Training; Mis- souri has Temporized with Compromises ; An Adequate Policy Needed ; Should Preparatory Curricula be Prescribed?
2. Residence Requirements 131 a. Prolonged Preparation Needed for Teachers of All Grades Alike;
Why Longer Training for High School Teaching? Is High School Instruction More " Advanced"? Social Distinctions implied between Elementary and High Schools; The Elementary Teacher versus the High School Teacher; Contrast in Teachers the Chief Obstacle to Progress; Distinctions in Training should Disappear; The Outlook for such a Program
6. Adequate Residence Requirements depend upon Prospect of Ex- 139 tended Service ; Service of Women now terminates with Marriage ; Reasons offered for the Present Practice ; Will the Married Teacher neglect her Home? Will the Married Woman prove a Less Efficient Teacher? Marriage an Advantageous Qualification for a Teacher of Children; Enormous Waste of the Present System; Conservation of Professional Effort in Europe ; Absence of Organized Effort among Elementary Teachers in America; Married Teachers would Require Better Conditions ; Effect of Prolonged Tenure on Training
3. Prescription versus Election of Studies. Definition of Prescription; Theory 144 of *f Equivalence" of Courses for Professional Purposes ; The Professional Student not Qualified to Elect; Sequence Difficult to Maintain; Is the Attitude of the Student improved by Election? Effect of Election on "Initiative"
4. The Extent and Criteria of Curriculum Differentiation 148 a. Incidental versus Organized Professional Training ; Arithmetic ; Other
Elementary Subjects; High School Subjects; Special Curricula in Normal Schools for High School Teachers;* Advantage of Differen- tiation.
6. Degree of Differentiation required; Middle and Upper Grades still 153 form a Single Field; Mental and Physical Considerations warrant Differentiation; Objections to Differentiation; Choice of Service Dif- ficult; Knowledge too Specialized; Difficulty of Adjusting Supply and Demand; Character and Extent of Legitimate Differentiation of Training; Specialized Preparation for Administration; Specialized Preparation for Rural School Teachers
B. ORGANIZATION OF CUEEICULA IN THE STATE NOBMAL SCHOOLS AND CITY
TEAINING SCHOOLS OF MISSOURI l6l
1, Curricula as Wholes
a. General Characteristics of the Normal School Curricula; Personal Welfare of the Student placed above Needs of the Service; " Ladder
vi CONTENTS
of Promotion" in Missouri Normal Schools; Effect upon the Schools Unfortunate
6. Secondary Curriculum Leading to the Rural Certificate; Contradic- 164 tory Aims; Secondary Professional Curricula should be Abolished
c. Collegiate Curricula of the Normal Schools; Not True Curricula; 166 Existing "Curricula*' not Professional
d. Curricula of the City Training Schools; The Harris Teachers College 169 Curriculum for Elementary Teachers; Contrast between State Nor- mal Schools and City Training Schools; Normal Schools have be- littled Elementary Instruction; The City Training Schools miss their
Full Opportunity
2. Organization and Content of Specific Courses 17 '2
a. Professional Courses of Secondary Grade 1 73
(1) Subject-matter of the Common School Branches with Emphasis upon Method; Concentration and Uniform Treatment needed
(2) The Psychology of Learning (8) Rural Life Problems
(4) Rural School Management
(5) Methods and Observation ; Successful Procedure in Minnesota
J. Professional Courses of Collegiate Grade; Inter-school Variations 177
(1) Psychology; Introductory Course; Advanced Courses in Psychol- 178 ogy; Teaching Less an Applied Science than a Fine Art; Psychol- ogy Necessary to a Sound View of Education ; Twofold Require- ment from Psychology; Proposed Organization of Courses in Psychology
(2) History of Education; Courses offered in Missouri Schools ; Func- 1 84 tion of History of Education in the Professional Preparation of Teachers ; Suggested Rearrangement of History of Education
(3) General Method and Principles of Teaching; Present Status of 187 "General Method;" Most Advantageous Position of the Course
(4) School Management, Class Management, and School Economy; 190 Relation to Other Subjects
(5) Observation, Participation, and Practice Teaching IQ9, (a) Size of the Training School as related to Normal School En- rolment; Control of Local School Facilities Indispensable; Minimal Standards of Practice Facilities
(&) Housing and Equipment of Training Departments ; Bad Con- 1 97 ditions easily Remedied
(c) Relation between the Training School and Other Normal 199 School Departments; Lack of Cooperation in Missouri Schools ; Difficulties of Cooperation ; Organized Cooperation
(d) The Apprentice System as related to the Unification of 202 Courses; Defects and Advantages of the System at St. Louis; Suggested Improvements
(e) Spirit and Morale of the Practice Schools; Reasons for Low 205 Morale; Laissez-faire Policy a Mistake; Training School Tests show Low Standards
CONTENTS vii
(/) Courses in Observation as Prerequisite to Practice Teaching; 211 Lessons for Demonstration at St. Louis; Courses in Obser- vation at the Springfield Normal School; Demonstration Teaching at Warrensburg (g) Supervision of Practice Teaching
(i) The Supervisory Staff; Ratio of Supervisors to Student- teachers; Status and Equipment of Supervisors and Critic Teachers
(ii) Methods of Supervision; Lesson Plans; Inspection of Class Work; Conferences; Testing Results; Program of Studies; Should the Practice School experiment with the Curriculum?
(K) Concentrated versus Distributed Practice Teaching (*) Most Favorable Position of Practice Teaching in the Curric- ulum
c. Collegiate Courses in Specific Methods of Teaching; Good Special 225 Method a Function of Subject-matter Courses; "Curriculum" Courses
d. Courses in Academic Subjects 228
(1) English and Public Speaking; Amount and Variety Excessive for Sound Curricula; Professional Character Negligible; How should Content Courses be Professionalized?
(2) Ancient Languages 232
(3) Modern Foreign Languages
(4) History and Government
(5) Mathematics 236
(6) Physics and Chemistry 238
(7) Botany, Zoology, Physiology, Hygiene, and Sanitation 239
(8) Geography and Geology 240
(9) Agriculture 240
(10) Fine Arts 242
(11) Commercial Subj ects 243
(12) Manual or Industrial Arts 245
(13) Home Economics 245
(14) Library Economy 246
(15) Physical Training 247
C, THE O.UALITY OF NORMAL SCHOOL TEACHING AS AN ELEMENT IN THE CUR-
RICULUM 247
The Normal School Instructor primarily a Teacher; Characteristics of Normal School Teaching; Teaching should be Exemplary; The Elements of Good Teaching; Utilizing Good Models; Stimulating Good Teaching; Some Form of Educational Criticism Desirable; An ce Educational Ad- viser;'* Other Solutions
D. SELECTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF CURRICULA 258
1. The Present Situation. Relative Use made of Collegiate Instructors; Causes of Waste: Duplication of Classes; An Extravagant Elective Sys- tem ; Lack of Intercollegiate Differentiation ; Concentration of Advanced
viii CONTENTS
Curricula in Latin; Concentration of All High School Curricula; Ad- vantages of Differentiation; Effect of the Present Policies upon the Basic Work of the Institutions
2. Number and Kind of Curricula needed in Missouri. Teachers in Rural 265 Schools; Teachers in Graded Elementary Schools; Teachers in High Schools; How shall this Need be Met?
VIII. OPERATION OF THE NORMAL SCHOOLS
A. PRESIDENT AND STAFF $72
1. The President. Modern Conception of a President's Duties; Function 273 of the President in the Missouri Normal Schools ; Effects of the Presi- dent's Prerogative on the School; Personal Prerogative should be Limited
2. The Staff. Large Departmental Initiative; Effects of the Elective Sys- tern on the Teacher; Present Tenure of Position Unjust; Leaves of Absence for Study or Experience ; Administrative Use of Professional Training; Departmental Distribution of Training; Departmental Dis- tribution of Salaries; Secondary versus Collegiate Instructors; Part- time and Student Assistants; Instructors in the Summer Session; Train- ing of Summer Instructors; Hours and Salaries of Summer Instruc- tors ; Contrasting Policies of Summer Session Administration
B. THE STUDENT BODY : SIGNIFICANT FEATURES IN SELECTION, ORGANISATION,
AND ADMINISTRATIVE TREATMENT
1. Men as Normal School Students. Motives in Male Attendance; Reaction of Male Attendance on the Institution
2. Problem of the Secondary Student. Characteristics of the Extreme Age 295 Groups; Geographical Distribution; Previous Schooling; Opportuni- ties for High School Attendance; Teaching Experience; Quality of
the Older Secondary Student; Treatment of the Young Secondary Student; Special Needs of the Older Secondary Student; A State Higli School
3. Organisation of Attendance. The Problem of Normal School Attend- SOI ance; Educational Effects of the Present System; Changes in Student Body from Term to Term; Sequence of Years; Need of Central Ad- ministration and Favorable Legislation; Opportunity of the Schools
for Independent Action
4. Admission and Classification 307
a. Requirements for Admission; Regulations of Local Boards; Exami- nation versus " Proving up;" Reorganization of the Secondary Pro- gram; "Proving up" Policy established; Uniform Administration of Admission Requirements Needed; What should be the Method of Admission?
b. Classification of Students; Procedure at Kirksville; Composition of SIS Classes thus formed; Fixed Curricula the Only Solution
5. Student Programs. Speed the Student's Central Consideration; Much 317 Pressure for Excessive Programs ; Present Practice: Collegiate Pro- grams; Secondary Programs; Time Required for Preparation; Is the Standard of Credit in the Normal Schools too Low?
CONTENTS ix
6. Student Rating: Examinations. Selective Function of Ratings; The Prac- 321 tice in Missouri; Comparison with Harris Teachers College; Seasonal Changes in Student Failure ; Relation of Examinations to Elimination ; Why the Normal Schools are Non-Selective; Lack of Thorough Exam- inations a Source of Weakness
7. Administration of Credit Administration of Credit at Kirksville — The 328 Theory; The Practice; Credit for Admission ; Secondary Credit; Colle- giate Credit ; Time Required for Graduation ; Administration of Credit
at Warrensburg; Administration of Credit at Cape Girardeau; Admin- istration of Credit at Springfield ; Administration of Credit at Maryville ; Essentials of Credit Administration
8. Graduation, Certification) and Appointment 344
a. Graduation
b. Certification of Graduates ; Present Form of Certification Inadequate ; 345 Certification should be Specific; Certificates should Issue from One Source; The Institutions' Share in Certification; Need of a Unified Administration
c. Appointment of Graduates; Present Method of Recommending 349 Teachers; Demand for Teachers not yet Specialized; Improvements Needed in System of Appointments; Normal School Responsible for Teachers in Service
9. The Quality of Normal School Administration as an Element in the Normal 353
School Cumculum 10, Recent Changes in the Institutions 354
IX. PRODUCT OF THE NORMAL SCHOOL 357
A. NORMAL SCHOOL GRADUATES OF 1915 357
Relation of Salaries to Training; Normal School Students at the University
B. NORMAL SCHOOL STUDENTS AMONG THE TEACHING POPULATION 36l
1. Teachers in Rural Schools
2. Teachers and Supervisors in Graded Elementary Schools 364 a. The State at Large; Conditions of Training; Conditions of Reward
6. St. Louis and Kansas City 368
3. Teachers and Supervisors in High Schools 372
a. The State at Large
b. St. Louis and Kansas City 375
4. City and Town Superintendents . 376
5. County Superintendents 379
C. WHAT HAVE THE NORMAL SCHOOLS DONE FOR THE STATE? 380
Normal Schools most Effective in Small Communities; Normal School In- fluence Widespread but Vague ; Good Teachers Impossible at the Present Economic Level
X- LINCOLN INSTITUTE 385
XL SUMMARY OF PROPOSALS FOR THE PREPARATION OF MISSOURI TEACHERS IN
NORMAL SCHOOLS 387
Purpose of the Proposals
CONTENTS
A. CONCLUSIONS AND PROPOSALS EELATING TO EXTERNAL ORGANIZATION AND
CONTROL 388
1. Constitutional Modifications
%. Legislative Provisions
3. Administrative Policies of the Board $90
B. CONCLUSIONS AND PROPOSALS RELATING TO INTERNAL ORGANIZATION AND
PROCEDURE 391
1. Purpose and Scope of Normal School Effort
2. The Curricula
a. Outstanding Problems of Curriculum Construction
b. Organization of Secondary Curricula
c. Organization of Collegiate Curricula
d. Quality of Normal School Instruction as a Factor in the Curriculum.
e. Selection and Distribution of Curricula
3. Staff of Instruction 395
a. The Presidents
b. The Teachers
4. The Student Body 39®
APPENDIX
§ I. COLLECTION AND TREATMENT OF DATA
A. The Normal Schools 401
B. The Teaching Population 405
§ II. CURRICULA
TABLE 1. Collegiate Courses offered in Missouri State Normal Schools, 1917-18 406
TABLE 2. Collegiate Offerings in various Normal School Departments; 1937-1 8 41 1 TABLE 3. Individual Curricula illustrative of the Operation of the Elective System
in Missouri Normal Schools (10 cases) 41 1 TABLE 4. City Training School Curricula
A. The Harris Teachers College Curriculum for Kindergartners 417
B. The Kansas City Teacher-training Curriculum 418
§111. DATES OF THE FIRST ESTABLISHMENT OF STATE NORMAL SCHOOLS 418
§ IV. NORMAL SCHOOL TEACHERS
TABLE 5. Age and Sex Distribution 419
TABLE 6. Occupation of Father 41 9
TABLE 7. Number of Other Teachers in the Family 419
TABLE 8. A. Degrees and Class of Institution from which they were received 4SO B. Degrees held by Teachers at the Normal Schools,, at the Soldan High
School in St. Louis, and at the State University TABLE 9. Degrees held by Teachers in Various Normal School Departments 421
TABLE 10. Sources of Degrees
CONTENTS xi
TABLE 11. Combinations of Training ' 422
TABLE 12. Total Teaching Experience 422
TABLE IS. Combinations of Teaching Experience 423
TABLE 14. Varieties of Teaching Experience 423
TABLE 15. Distribution of Annual Salaries,, 1915-16 423
TABLE 16. Departmental Salaries, 1915-16 424
TABLE 17. Length of Weekly Programs, 1915-16 425 TABLE 18. Salaries of Normal School Teachers according to their Grade of Work,
1915-16 425 TAB!E 1 9- Extent of Secondary Work reported by the forty-one best trained Nor- mal School Teachers, 1915-16 425 TABLE 20. Training of eighty-one Teachers who taught only in the Summer Ses- sion, 1916 426 TABLE 21. Salary and Hours of ninety-three Summer Instructors, 191 6 427
§ V. NORMAL SCHOOL STUDENTS
TABLE 22. A. Classification of the Total Enrolment, 1913-14 428 J3. "Standard" Enrolment, 1913-14 428 TABLE 23. Proportion of Men in Various Normal School Classifications, 1913-14 428 TABLE 24. Changes in the Proportion of Men Students since 1871 428 TABLE 25. Proportion of Secondary Enrolment, 1913-14 429 TABLE 26. Age Distribution of Total Enrolment, 1913-14 429 TABLE 27. Nationality of Parents 429 TABLE 28. Father's Occupation 430 TABLE 29. Father's Income 431 TABLE 30. " Is teaching the best paid employment you could conveniently under- take?" 431 TABLE 31. "Are you self-dependent in paying for your education?" 431 TABLE 32. Size of Family 431 TABLE 33. Other Teachers in the Family 432 TABLE 34. "How many of your family ever attended a normal school?' 432 TABLE 35. High School Attendance 432 TABLE 36. Ratings of 871 High School Graduates
A. Ratings of Ability distributed among Occupations 432
B. Ratings of Ability distributed within Occupational Groups 433 TABLE 37. Comparison of Collegiate Ratings at Normal Schools of Students pre- pared at High Schools with Ratings of Students prepared at the Normal Schools 433
TABLE 38. Proportion of Students reporting Teaching Experience 433
TABLE 39. Distribution of Teaching Experience 433
TABLE 40. " Do you plan to teach permanently?" 434 TABLE 41. Kind of Teaching sought by those intending to Teach immediately
upon leaving the Normal School 434
TABLE 42, Programs Scheduled by All Collegiate Students in 191S-14 434
TABLE 43. Programs Scheduled by All Secondary Students in 1913-14 435
TABLE 44. Distribution of Student Grades, 1913-14 435
xii CONTENTS
TABLE 45. Seasonal Variation in Collegiate Student Failure, 1913-14 435
TABLE 46. Size of Normal School Classes, 1915-16 436
TABLE 47. Proportions of Large and Small Classes in Various Departments, 1915—
16 436
TABLE 48. Number of Four-year Bachelor's Degrees from Missouri State Normal
Schools • 437
TABLE 49- Subsequent Employment of Recipients of Normal School Certificates
in 1915 437
TABLE 50. Distribution of Recipients of Diplomas or Certificates in 1915 by Classes
among their Various Subsequent Occupations , 438
§ VI. TEACHING POPULATION
TABLE 51. Teachers in Graded Elementary Schools, 1915. Duration of Normal School Attendance 438
TABLE 52. Teachers in Graded Elementary Schools, 1915. Proportion of Terms spent at each Normal School in Collegiate Work 438
TABLE 53. Teachers in Graded Elementary Schools, 1915. Distribution of Terms of Collegiate Normal School Attendance 438
TABLE 54. Teachers in Graded Elementary Schools, 1915. Number reporting Col- legiate Work at Normal Schools with average number of Terms of Attendance 439
TABLE 55. Teachers in Graced Elementary Schools, 1915. High School Prepara- tion of 1556 Teachers who had attended State Normal Schools 439
TABLE 56. High School Teachers, 1915 (except St. Louis and Kansas City). Dis- tribution of Collegiate Training 439
TABLE 57. High School Teachers, 1915 (except St. Louis and Kansas City). Dis- tribution of Normal School Training 439
TABLE 58. Subjects taught by Missouri High School Teachers and Supervisors,
1916-17 440
§ VII. BIENNIAL STATE EXPENDITURES FOE NORMAL SCHOOLS, 1871-1918 441
§ VIIL THE JUDGMENT OF EXPERIENCED TEACHERS AS TO THE VALUE OF VARIOUS
ELEMENTS IN THEIR TRAINING 442
§ IX. THE RESULTS OF STANDARD TESTS IN THE ELEMENTARY TRAINING DEPART- MENTS OF MISSOURI STATE NORMAL SCHOOLS AND IN THE EXPERIMENTAL
SCHOOL AT THE STATE UNIVERSITY 445
TABLE 59. Number of Pupils by Schools and Grades 445
TABLE 60. Median Ages of Pupils by Grades 445
TABLE 6l. Number and Per Cent of Pupils Two or more Years Retarded 445
TABLE 62. Number and Per Cent of Pupils Two or more Years Accelerated 446
TABLE 63. Speed of Addition 446
TABLE 64. Accuracy of Addition 447
TABLE 65. Speed of Subtraction 447
TABLE 66. Accuracy of Subtraction 447
TABLE 67. Speed of Multiplication 448
TABLE 68. Accuracy of Multiplication 448
CONTENTS xiii
TABLE 69. Speed of Division 448
TABLE 70. Accuracy of Division 448 TABLE 71. Comparison of Ranks in Courtis Tests , 449
TABLE 72. Median Scores in Stone Reasoning Test 449
TABLE 73. Spelling of Words from the Ayres List 449
TABLE 74. Spelling of Words from the Boston List 450
TABLE 75. Speed of Handwriting 450
TABLE 76. Quality of Handwriting 451
TABLE 77. Kansas Silent Reading Tests' 451
TABLE 78. Speed of Silent Reading 452
TABLE 79. Reproduction of Passage Read 452
TABLE 80. Answers to Questions on Passage Read 452
TABLE 81. Compositions 453
TABLE 82. Summary of Ranks given Each School 453 TABLE 83. Progress of Training Schools from Grade to Grade in certain selected
Abilities 455
TABLE 84. Joint Performance of Training Schools in Courtis Tests 455
TABLE 85. Correlations b6tween certain Abilities measured in the Tests 456
INDEX 457
PREFACE
THIS Study of the Preparation of Teachers for the Public Schools originated in an official request made to the Carnegie Foundation by the Governor of Mis- souri in July, 1914. Governor Major defined the problem of the state with respect to its teachers in the following words :
"One of the chief problems confronting this and other states is a wholesome sup- ply of adequately- trained and prepared teachers. In this matter Missouri has made great progress during the last eighteen months. We have a great university and five splendid normal schools, and teachers' training courses in about 75 high schools. The question, however, is ever open as to what is the best preparation and what is the duty of the State in meeting it, and how can the State secure the greatest benefit at a minimum expense."
The enquiry undertaken by the Carnegie Foundation with the cooperation of many students of education began with an examination of the agencies for the training of teachers in the State of Missouri as thus enumerated. A study of these agencies, how- ever, inevitably disclosed a more far-reaching problem, and led to an attempt to eval- uate the process itself whereby teachers are prepared, and to an effort to formulate trustworthy principles of procedure. This development of the scope of the enquiry has modified the undertaking in certain important particulars: first, attention has been concentrated on the normal schools, inasmuch as they represent the professional prob- lem of teacher-training in its simplest form ; second, instead of a report addressed only to legislators and to lay readers generally, the study has come to include a somewhat technical discussion of the fundamental considerations that enter into the organiza- tion and conduct of the courses of study intended for teacher-training ; and third, in- stead of a short bulletin, there has necessarily resulted a volume sufficiently large to admit of the treatment of these professional topics. Throughout the report there is woven a discussion of the statutory and administrative conditions in the Missouri in- stitutions for the training of teachers; and the general treatment has been greatly illuminated by an intensive study of the elements of the Missouri teaching popula- tion with which the problem of teacher-training is most concerned.
While the present report, therefore, is confined to a discussion of the normal school and its function, its curriculum, and its capabilities for the preparation of teachers for the different grades of schools, it will necessarily be supplemented by a second report, dealing with an examination of teacher preparation in colleges and universi- ties. This could scarcely be based upon the study of a single institution in one state.
In the Introduction to the report, not only is the evolution of the study made clear, but also detailed reference is made to the teachers and writers on education who have participated in its preparation. This includes many representatives of normal schools, colleges, and universities, men. whose opinions have been formed upon actual experience as well as upon long study of the problem. The result which is here laid
xvi PREFACE
before students of education is, therefore, the outcome of the coordinated effort of a considerable body of skilled professional men.
Outside of the information contained in the Introduction, certain aspects of the report may be mentioned from the standpoint of the Carnegie Foundation itself.
The various bulletins dealing with educational subjects that have been issued by the Carnegie Foundation in the last dozen years may be grouped in two classes. To the first class belong bulletins of a professional character addressed to members of the profession concerned. Such was the bulletin printed in 1910 on Medical Education in the United States and Canada, which was addressed immediately to teachers and practitioners of medicine. In the second group of bulletins are included those which are aimed to state in simple and clear form educational questions and results generally known to professional men, but whose knowledge is not widespread outside of the profession itself. Such a bulletin is that just issued entitled " Justice and the Poor," which seeks to convey to the intelligent layman a clear statement of the causes thru which a denial of justice to the poor has oftentimes resulted not by any intention of the law, but because the administration of the law has not kept up with its intent.
The present report belongs to the first group of bulletins. It is addressed to the men and women who are working in a distinct professional field, namely, that of teach- ing— a much larger field than that of medicine. No teacher in the elementary or sec- ondary or normal schools, or in the school of education of a college or university, can fail to be interested in the effort to do what has been attempted in this report. It represents the first comprehensive formulation of good practice in the largest field of professional training for public service in our country, and it is believed that the work has been done with such care that the results here set forth are worthy of the thoughtful study of every earnest and intelligent teacher.
It will be evident to the reader that this exceedingly important task has had a most sympathetic handling even tho the treatment has necessarily been critical in method. In spite of widely differing training and experience, the authors have been singularly unanimous in their conclusions. Aside from the inevitable peculiarity of their individual points of view, their examination of the situation has been as com- pletely unbiased and disinterested as it was possible to make it. Their commission from the Foundation centred in a true statement and a reasonable interpretation of the facts, however familiar or however novel the results ; and their conclusions indicate this. For example, as urged in the earlier reports of the Foundation, there appears here to be no reason why tax-supported normal schools should not give themselves unreservedly to the great business of properly preparing teachers. On the other hand, bhe contention between normal school and college as to which shall prepare high school teachers — a dispute that previously seemed important — now appears superficial. The Carnegie Foundation has had no preconceived theory to promulgate. It has, in- leed, never committed itself to any pronouncement concerning normal schools beyond ,he mere assumption that it is the duty of the normal school to train teachers.
PREFACE xvii
This report makes clear that what is really needed is not arbitrary distinctions as between normal schools and colleges,, but an enlightened administration of the state's entire teacher- training function exercised from a single directing body equipped to prepare teachers for all schools as thoroughly as possible. No man or woman faces a harder task than that which confronts the untrained teacher who essays to teach others that which he has himself never learned. Nothing goes so far to reduce a pro- fession to the level of the commonplace as the lack of a background of knowledge and of professional spirit in its members.
To-day in the elementary schools of the nation, and particularly in the rural schools, the American woman is carrying the heavy load of public school teaching. In every state of the Union young women are teaching whose formal education never went beyond one year of high school, who receive little assistance or encouragement from the school authorities, and yet who, out of native ability and enthusiasm, thru hard work and the saving grace of a wholesome sense of proportion, become true teachers. Seldom does a community give credit to the brave womanly figure that carries on its slender shoulders so heavy a responsibility. But it is idle with the re- stricted preparation, the lack of sympathetic counsel, and the scant pay that are the characteristics of elementary school teaching to-day, to expect such heroic service ex- cept in a limited number of cases. The aim of each state should be to work toward a situation where the teacher in the elementary and secondary schools shall possess a training that is adequate and a professional recognition that will attract and satisfy the aspirations and the economic needs of able men and women. To open the door to a finer preparation for the life of a teacher and to put this profession on a plane of the highest honor and dignity is fundamental to any true progress in education for our country.
To attain this is only in part a matter of cost and of the teacher's salary. One "cannot go out in the market with any sum of money, however large, and buy good teaching. An adequate army of sincere, able, and thoughtful teachers can be recruited only from a people who discriminate between that which is sincere and that which is su- perficial and insincere. Education in a democracy, to serve its real purpose, must be an education of the whole people. The school reacts on the body politic and the ideals of the democracy react on the school. An honest and thorough system of public schools, manned by able and well-trained teachers, can only arise among a people who themselves believe in honesty and thoroughness.
It must be confessed that the most striking weakness of American political, social, and economic thinking lies in the superficial character of our education. In our pub- lic schools, and no less in our universities and colleges, education is interpreted only too often to mean a smattering of knowledge in many things; seldom is it construed in terms of mastery of any one subject or as the ability to think clearly. Our schools reflect the almost universal superficiality of our people, and our citizenship is edu- cated to the ideal of superficiality in our schools. Inhere is no end to these mutual
xviii PREFACE
reactions except an aroused public opinion that will demand sincere teaching and a body of teachers who will educate the children of the nation to the ideals of simpli- city, sincerity, and thoroughness. An honest system of education and a clear-thinking public opinion must be developed together. This is the fundamental problem of a democracy.
Finally, one cannot forget that since this report was undertaken the whole prob- lem of education in our country, as in all countries, has received a new emphasis, and has been subjected to a new scrutiny. The letter of the Governor of Missouri, out of which this study arose, was dated July 18, 1914. Two weeks later Europe had entered upon the great war which was later to involve the United States as well. This report appears after the actual armed conflict has ceased, but at the very mo- ment when our country is face to face with the necessity of evaluating anew its system of education. Economic no less than social conditions are upon a new basis. Within the last year and a half the value of the teacher's salary — often more properly called wages — has been cut in half by the rise in the cost of living. Along with the demand of the moment for an improved and inspiring system of public schools, we are con- fronted with a situation in which the best teachers are rapidly withdrawing from the profession. The country faces a real crisis in its educational development, and the passing of that crisis depends mainly on the possibility of training and bringing into the schools teachers fitted for their high task. The whole problem of the service of the schools themselves hangs absolutely upon the ability to dbtain the requisite supply of devoted, able, and well-prepared teachers.
In such a situation there is need for preserving a true perspective. The American people do not intend that the schools shall be made the victims of any sudden dis- turbance. The public, when it understands the situation, will be ready to pay the price for good teachers, but it should also be clearly apprehended that a mere raise of pay of the future public school teachers, whether in the rural schools or in the city schools, is but a partial solution of the problem. The teacher must have before him a career that will attract the high-minded and ambitious student. He must be able to earn in that career a living salary and one that will provide for his comfort and for his protection in old age, but that is only one of the conditions to be fulfilled. Before all else we must have in our minds a clear knowledge of what good teaching is, of the methods by which teachers may be fitted for their calling, and under what super- vision and organization the schools shall be conducted in order that the intellectual, social, and spiiitual aspirations of teachers may be realized for the common good.
Above and beyond all considerations of salary, it is necessary to have among teach- ers the spirit which rises out of professional training — adequate, scholarly, devoted
and which will make all who breathe its atmosphere proud to belong to a profession where such qualifications are widespread and recognized features. Without such a con- dition, no mere horizontal raise of salary will transform our schools into places of true instruction for children and for youth.
PREFACE xix
It is the purpose of this report to point the way not only to better financial rec- ognition of the teacher's service and to make clear to the public its duties in this respect, but still more to emphasize the need for that professional conception of ability, of knowledge, and of preparation which must characterize the teachers' equip- ment before the schools can become the effective agency in civilization which they aim to be.
HENRY S. PEITCHETT.
January, 1920.
THE PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION OF TEACHERS FOR AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
INTRODUCTION
A, CHARACTER AND CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE ENQ.UIRY
THE present Bulletin, the fourteenth in the Foundation's series of educational pub- lications, contains the first section of a study begun more than five years ago. In July, 1914, the Carnegie Foundation received from the Governor of the State of Missouri, Elliott W. Major, an invitation to consider the problem of the "supply of adequately trained and prepared teachers" in that state, with reference especially to the question, "What is the best preparation and what is the duty of the state in meeting it, and how can the state secure the greatest benefit at a minimum expense ?"
The proposal for an examination into the preparation of teachers for American public schools had received serious consideration at various times since the educa- tional studies of the Foundation were first undertaken. The problem was found to differ materially from that of legal or medical education, in that the preparation of teachers involves much larger numbers, is much more local in character, and depends more directly on state authority for its management. The conclusion had at length been reached that the only satisfactory treatment of the problem at present would be one that approached it as primarily a state enterprise.
The invitation from Missouri was therefore accepted by the Foundation, and the enquiry was formally inaugurated at a conference held at Jefferson City, Missouri, on November 28, 1914. Here, at the Governor's request, the President of the Founda- tion met about one hundred of the leading workers in the schools, normal schools, and colleges of the state, and discussed with them the proposed study, receiving, at the close of the conference, their unanimous endorsement and pledge of cooperation in the undertaking.
The enquiry was projected in two main divisions. The first was to consist of a careful examination of all the various institutions in the state engaged in preparing teachers for the public schools. The report which follows embodies a part of the results of this phase of the work as explained more fully below. The second division contemplated a census of the teachers of the state. It was proposed to make this as nearly complete as possible in order to determine the actual characteristics of the teaching population with reference to its training, and to secure data from which effectively to analyze the problem of teacher supply. The response to this endeavor was highly satisfactory; and data were secured from more than four-fifths of the twenty thousand teachers in the public schools. The results have been studied with care, and will be published in detail in a separate bulletin having as its central topic the relations between a state, as represented in its official department of education, and the entire body of teachers in its service.
It was at first expected that the institutional study could be presented as a whole in a single volume, but it soon became evident that a sectional treatment wottld be
4 THE PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION OF TEACHERS
necessary if justice were to be done even to a few selected aspects of the subject. Thus the first question suggested in the Governor's invitation, "What is the best preparation ?" immediately assumed formidable dimensions, and an attempt was made quite independent of the Missouri study to formulate a theory of the preparation of teachers, together with concrete applications in terms of specific curricula,, that would be acceptable to the leading students in that field all over the country. This set of theses and provisional curricula was issued early in 1917, and elicited an ex- traordinary amount of valuable comment and criticism from representative sources — material which is now being worked over for a revised edition of these proposals.
In like manner a consideration of the problems found to be uppermost in the normal schools on the one hand and in the universities and colleges on the other, suggested that separate treatment was advisable, altho fundamentally the two sets of institutions have much in common and, judging by present indications, are rap- idly approaching an identical conception of their task in so far as the preparation of teachers is concerned. Consequently the efforts of the college and university to provide professional training in education have been postponed for later considera- tion, and the present discussion is concerned solely with the state and city normal schools; except as the questions of government and control, curriculum organization, and some-others, necessarily involve all state institutions engaged in this work.
Even with this restriction it was found to be impossible to include within reason- able limits an examination of all features, or even of all important features, of normal school activity. To many it will appear difficult to justify the omission of any refer- ence to housing or material equipment. Still more would probably regard a study of normal school financing, here omitted, as of greater importance than many topics that have been discussed, while much might have been said concerning extra-mural activities such as correspondence study, extension lectures, and other field service for which no place has been found.
Whether well or ill advised, the determining policy in the selection of topics has been to consider those phases of a school's life that bear most directly upon its edu- cational procedure and success. An institution's per capita costs may have no con- sistent relation to its real performance, and a luxurious plant may house an unsat- isfactory educational philosophy. Granted, however, a sound purpose and a know- ledge of tested and successful procedure, an institution or a state may usually be trusted not to attempt more than its funds will permit it to do well. For this reason it is primarily the educational significance of a given scheme of organization and of its administrative working-out that should be subjected to careful and periodical review.
It was believed, moreover, that such a treatment would not only prove most help- ful to Missouri, but would be of the greatest service elsewhere as well. The purposes for which teachers should be especially trained are virtually the same throughout the country, and it is greatly in the interests of our national solidarity to make this identity complete and emphatic. By virtue of this common purpose institutional
INTRODUCTION 5
experience everywhere may be utilized in gradually building up legitimate stand- ards of practice whereby any single institution may measure itself or be measured by others. It is to such common elements in the educational problems presented that this study has addressed itself. There are few of the situations here presented as occurring in Missouri that have not appeared in quite as acute form in many other, perhaps most, American states, and it is hoped that this more than local application may considerably enhance whatever merit the bulletin may possess.
B. METHOD AND PERSONNEL
The study was organized and conducted by Dr. William S. Learned, of the Foun- dation staff. Dr. I. L. Kandel reviewed the report and contributed the account of the rise of normal schools outside of Missouri. At every stage of the enquiry the expe- rience in such studies of the President of the Foundation, Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, and of the Secretary, Dr. Clyde Furst, has been freely drawn upon.
Dr. William C. Bagley, Director of the School of Education at the University of Illinois when the study was begun, and now Professor of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, was asked to make a special study of normal school curricula. Dr. Bagley has had extensive experience in elementary school work as well as in normal schools in both eastern and western parts of the country; he is responsi- ble for most of the sections discussing the curricula and for innumerable helpful sug- gestions throughout the book.
The other participants in the study as a whole were Dr. Charles A. McMurry, Professor of Elementary Education at George Peabody College for Teachers, for- merly director of the training department at the Illinois State Normal University and at the Northern Illinois State Normal School; and Dr. George D. Strayer, Pro- fessor of Educational Administration at Teachers College, Columbia University, and late President of the National Education Association. These gentlemen, altho already familiar with the Missouri institutions, visited them again for the present purpose, and their findings are embodied in the report.
Important use has been made at many points in the text of the statistics secured from teachers in service in the state. The work of assembling and collating these has been in charge of Mr. Homer W. Josselyn, previously Associate Professor of School Administration in the University of Kansas.
A specific contribution of much significance for its purpose was furnished by Dr. Walter F. Dearborn, Professor of Education at Harvard University. With the help of specially trained assistants from his department, Dr. Dearborn carried out an extensive series of measurements of various forms of school Achievement in the training classes of the five normal schools. These tests supplied an indispensable check upon the judgments of the observers, with which they tallied to a surprising degree. The main results are printed in the Appendix.
6 THE PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION OF TEACHERS
Aside from the persons mentioned above, many others have rendered valuable aid as the study progressed, either by way of experienced judgment and advice or skilled technical assistance. Special acknowledgment is due to Mrs. Dorothy R. Roberts, to whom fell the arduous task of verifying and editing the mass of tabular material on which much of the study rests.
Of the method followed in the enquiry it may be said that it has been the inten- tion to base conclusions only upon a first-hand knowledge of all the facts, wherever this was obtainable. All of the observers did considerable field work in the state, some of them spending several months there; personal written reports were made to them by practically every normal school instructor, and by three-fourths of the stu- dents in attendance when the schools were visited; many classes were attended, and personal interviews were had with a large number both of teachers and of students; the school records were carefully examined, and in many cases were verified by grad- uates. Conditions affecting the normal schools in the state at large were judged by an extended visit to the Ozark region, by interviews with many county superintend- ents and written reports from each one in the state, and by personal visits and inter- views with the superintendents in the twenty-five largest cities of the state and written reports from nearly all the rest* The colleges of the Missouri college union were visited, and while the data collected from them 4re not contained in this por- tion of the report, these visits threw considerable light upon the work of the normal schools and upon educational conditions at large.
In the great number of facts and impressions thus gathered the authors have tried to distinguish the essential features of the institutional situation as they found it, tracing it, so far as possible, to the earlier conditions that had produced it The catalogues and bulletins of all the schools from their establishment, and especially the annual reports of the State Superintendent of Public Schools from 1867 on, fur- nished a gratifying amount of material for a genetic treatment of this sort. The progress of the schools since they were examined in 1915 and 1916 has not been followed except in certain isolated details. The study was considered to have value not as giving a minute and complete account of certain institutions, but rather as an interpretation of the educational significance of a certain order of organization and administration caught as nearly as might be in cross section. Moreover, the most striking changes that have taken place since the schools were visited are due to ab- normal conditions, consequent upon the war, and have an unnatural relation to what went before; there would be little point in describing these.
The spirit of the enquiry is of course critical, as befits any serious examination of arrangements intended to modify the education of a free people; any other atti- tude is obviously inconsistent with a true conception of public service. Nevertheless it would be impossible to frame or make headway with proposals for improvement without a sympathetic appreciation of conditions as they exist. Such an appreciation was facilitated to an unusual degree by the hearty and intelligent co5peration of
INTRODUCTION 7
the men and women in the normal schools. With the rarest exceptions these work- ers met thei representatives of the study apparently without other thought than to show clearly the real nature of their problems, and to aid in arriving at just and effective conclusions. It is to their aid that the authors are chiefly indebted. Without exaggeration, the normal school teachers themselves could be regarded as the authors of a large portion of the report, and if it has been urged therein that the develop- ment of the educational policies of the schools be entrusted in much greater measure to the abler teachers, it is because this conclusion has grown out of immediate contact with the persons available for such responsibilities.
C. A GENERAL STATEMENT OF CONCLUSIONS
DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION
The subject of the present study is of surpassing importance to a democracy. An attempt has been made to describe and appraise the efforts of an American common- wealth to provide itself with suitable instructors for its youthful population. It will be generally admitted that the teachers of children and youth, while not the sole in- struments, are by far the most influential instruments thru which a people may con- sciously control its future; that they directly determine in great part both the extent and the degree to which sound fundamental ideas pervade, unite, and move a people. The significance of an enquiry as to how those teachers are chosen and prepared is therefore apparent.
Furthermore, the importance of such a study is vastly increased at a time when the whole democratic scheme of life is emerging from a struggle with an opposing world- order that exhibits a singularly effective tho misdirected social organization. As an outcome of the conflict a sincere democracy is compelled to consider how it may ex- change its earlier forms and institutions for more adequate expressions of its own cherished ideals ; how it shall acquire the power for orderly and masterful action rising out of a clear national purpose, and combine this with its passion for freedom, truth, and justice in individual relations. The democratic conception of society has grown slowly by the groping application of a few fundamental notions, and is as yet scarcely more than in bud; its full bloom into a stable world-order promises a thrilling spec- tacle in which America may participate with great effect. What is the central con- dition, if there be such, on which this epoch-making development depends?
As a necessary means of self-preservation the consciously directed spread of true ideas has long been an admitted principle of democratic government; general intelli- gence has been ftimlj felt to be one of its objects, and the school has been accepted as a proper instrument thereto. But as the most effectual means for ensuring human safety, welfare, and growth; as the one defence against elements that would ruin the whole apparatus of orderly progress; and consequently as the central policy of ademo- cratic organization, the wide diffusion of a high Degree < of intelligence has been
8 THE PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION OF TEACHERS
neglected to the,present day. This is the task which now confronts us. The condition that will determine the successful development of a genuine democracy in America rests in our willingness to establish, as our foremost policy of public action, a popu- lar education that is substantial and unequivocal.
Universal compulsory education, tho far from achieved, is a familiar slogan for which we make a brave stand; but to the duration and content of this education, and to the means used in providing it, we have paid little attention- Longer to counte- nance this delusion is to fail in our great experiment. Free and true ideas important to human welfare must be brought skilfully and vividly, and thru a prolonged period, not to prospective leaders only, as some would have it, but to every child and youth. To have this contact is his right as a candidate for membership in a democratic society; to profit by it must be made his primary obligation. Even our theory of universal education has hitherto been satisfied with a scanty offering formally pre- sented and often properly declined; to pass it around to all was our main ambition. Henceforth, the state must assume responsibility for the product in the case of each normal individual from the beginning well thru adolescence. Hitherto, if each child attended a school for a few weeks in the year, it has been considered that the require- ment was met; hereafter, it is indispensable that each child develop into what shall be, according to his abilities, an educated person, or show why that is impossible.
EDUCATION AND THE TEACHER
This shift in education from a nominally universal to a substantial basis involves preeminently and almost exclusively the teacher. So far as the state can provide educa- tion, the teacher is the substance of it. The measure of our past and present deficiency is startlingly revealed by the manner in which we have persistently evaded this fact. Education has been much, and on the whole reverently, on our lips, but so little have we grasped its purport that the sole factor which can give it reality and mean- ing, namely, the teacher, is grossly ill-equipped, ill-rewarded, and lacking in distinc- tion. A school system with us is an elaborate hierarchical device that undertakes thru successive gradations of textbook makers, superintendents, principals, and super- visors to isolate and prepare each modicum of knowledge and skill so that it may safely be entrusted to the humble teacher at the bottom, who is drilled for a few weeks only, if at all, in directions for administering it ultimately to the child. Mean- while superintendents and school boards publicly measure their success by numbers enrolled, by buildings and material equipment added, and by multiplied kinds of schooling introduced; and the people are taught to accept this as education. Such perversions are ample comment on the thoughtlessness of our formula. The school authorities are rare who by enlightened and fearless propaganda have convinced their public that education consists first of all in the superior quality and skill of its in- dividual teachers, and is otherwise meaningless.
Veritable education, as contrasted with the present dependence upon estimates by
INTRODUCTION 9
bulk and housing, signifies a complete transformation in the character and status of the teaching profession. Such a transformation once properly accomplished, the other necessary modifications will inevitably take care of themselves. America, with its hun- dred millions of people, needs upward of three-quarters of a million men and women to represent her with the childhood and youth of the nation in a deliberate and thor- ough educative process. If wars are to cease and democracy is permanently to hold the field, it will be a democracy with sufficient wisdom to confide this, its most respon- sible task, to its most competent citizens, and to prepare them thoroughly for its safe discharge. Genuine education, in a sense consistent with any honest vision of its mean- ing, can proceed only thru immediate contact with keen minds fully informed and per- suaded of what the rising generation may become, and dedicated to such achievement. Persons so equipped will in general not be had unless the distinguished rewards and opportunities of life are attainable thru teaching careers. Moreover, these careers must not be mere avenues of promotion, as in notable cases to-day, but must con- stitute and be recognized as opportunities for achievement in themselves. Any other course means simply to exploit the future in the interest of the present by abandon- ing its control to second-rate minds. Plato^s provision that the head of the state be the director of education expresses the unavoidable perspective in a completed de- mocracy.1
NEW STANDARDS ESSENTIAL FOE GENUINE EDUCATION
Marked changes must ensue in our present system of schooling if we undertake to carry out an honest interpretation of our avowed aim of "universal education*" by making it not only universal but also education. In the first place our elementary and secondary school systems must be thoroughly integrated into one homogeneous and indivisible unit — a varied but coherent twelve-year career for mind and body, whereby, as a youth, each citizen may acquire a certificate of the health, intelligence, and character that underlie a successful society.
This done, distinctions of training, experience, and salary among teaching positions within this unit must also disappear. Proper training for teaching the third grade should be as prolonged and as serious as training for teaching the tenth or twelfth grade, and should be equally well rewarded. To pass childhood thru a graded quality of instruction in order finally to place those who survive in charge of real teachers only at the top is a blunder that explains more of the dire results noticeable in our schools than we dare acknowledge.
If the status of all teachers, upper and lower, urban and rural, is to be approxi- mately the same in an honestly equipped school system, what shall that status be? The standards of preparation cannot well be lower in amount than those now de- manded for superior secondary instruction. Four years of well-directed training sub-
1 The State of Vermont already has the enviable distinction of paying its commissioner of education more than any other state official, including the governor.
10 THE PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION OF TEACHERS
sequent to a high school education is sufficient, with selected material, to lay the foun- dations of a superior teacher. Experience, skilled practical guidance, and further spe- cialized study, attended always by discriminating selection, should result in a group having relatively high mental and social power and fit to serve any community as leaders. For to lead youth effectively implies, by any acceptable definition, the power and resources required to lead the community also.
On the other hand, if training of any sort can provide men and women who are equipped and willing to serve youth as youth should be served, their service is pre- eminent. To the individual parent, as to the state, it is quite the most appealing good, after physical health; and it is altogether a more difficult service than any other to render well. Teachers that approach such a standard of work, therefore, will require the recognition and rewards commensurate with it. This is a test of shifted values that can be met in America with the greatest ease. No question of obligation to a class is involved; it is a case simply of an enlightened democracy purchasing for the future goods that shall make it great. Billions cheerfully spent for defending and extend- ing liberty abroad are a challenge, whatever the cost, to broaden and make sound the foundations of liberty at home.
In the schools the attainment of such a standard would modify many things. The present methods and attitudes of supervision would disappear; its hierarchy would be transformed. Organization would, of course, remain, but the pupil would meet di- rectly and constantly a well-selected and tested leader prepared to speak with per- sonal effect and to win response by virtue of trained intelligence. Such leaders, instead of taking minute orders from higher officers, would themselves assume the responsi- bility, in joint action, for the conduct and development of instruction — the life- long business of capable minds. In other words, education would become ajint-hand process by skilled practitioners like any other professional service, instead of a second or third hand operation with its consequent perfunctory effects.
A NEW TRAINING FOE TEACHEES
The degree of selection and training contemplated promises another sweeping im- provement of far-reaching importance. In the teacher of to-day the slight prepara- tion required and the casual way in which the work may be picked up or dropped result in a person bred to routine and conformity, possessing little original insight for his work. He forms one of a secluded class, protected as well as repressed by the rigid machine of which he is a part. To correct this, we need to pick out men and women of large ability and give them a long and thorough preparation aimed solely at their future task. By so doing we can entrust our schools to independent and self- possessed personalities who fairly represent the spirit of their time, who bring the schools into the vital current of events, and make them closely responsive to the criticisms and aspirations of the people they serve. Thus only can we secure a sensi- tive and flexible education that moves intelligently and surely on its path.
INTRODUCTION 11
In demanding for all teachers the standards now required for good secondary in- struction, the reference is to their amount only. To make a teacher in the sense out- lined above, which is the only sense in which teachers can be of use under future conditions, the present form of preparation, elementary and secondary alike, needs revision. It is a matter primarily of point of view. The average secondary teacher to-day is a person who has taken a college course for his own sake and as he chose. At or near the close thereof he has concluded to "go into teaching" — temporarily, and with no thought of the requirements of a difficult profession. The elementary teacher in the country districts is untrained; in the cities he, or more frequently she, has sometimes undergone specific training, but oftener, particularly in the West, his elementary school service has been a time-marking occupation until he could secure college points sufficient to "promote" him to a high school, itself a temporary stopping- place on the road to a profession or, in the case of women, to marriage. In either group the point of view of the public service is neither enforced by the public nor dreamed of by the teacher. The public confesses by the measure of its own rewards that the quality of its teaching service is no supreme or vital matter to it, if only the forms are there according to the letter of the law. It therefore offers its candidates, in lieu of professional training, an education that fits their general needs, and invites them in the intervals of study to come and manage the schools for awhile in order to fill their purses.
We are fast learning that if democracy is to have genuine education and survive, this sort of thing must cease. The hollowness of the process has its faithful counter- part in the hollowness of the teacher's plan and purpose. For a serious educative undertaking, the way must be paved by a thoroughly well-organized course of train- ing, directed toward the specific work to be done, and exhausting our professional resources in that field. The task is difficult and responsible enough even with the most liberal training we know; to omit this, or to conceive the work as an incidental diversion for the employment of "general culture," is to miss the point completely. The first and sole consideration in planning a teacher's preparation is the question : Does this feature contribute most to the effective discharge of the particular duty in view, as the welfare of the service requires? Personal considerations are beside the mark.
Circumstances in America have made us largely dependent upon women for the teachers we have, and the proposals made above might not completely equalize men's share in instruction even at three or four times the present salaries, tho it would tend to do so. Whether this ensue or not, the steps suggested would at least remove the meaningless restriction of the profession to unmarried women. To teach well is the privilege of maturity and experience; it is the prerogative of men and women of affairs, of fatherhood, of motherhood; it is the business of brains and a vigorous social par- ticipation that draws the pupil into the stream of interesting and instructive per- sons and events. What have immature girls to do with this except as they prepare to make it the main object of their lives irrespective of marriage?
12 THE PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION OF TEACHERS
The changes urged above have one other interesting and important implication. The attainment of an integrated school system, manned by teachers of similar and homogeneous training for the purpose, involves a like simplification and coordina- tion of our agencies for preparing teachers. To-day normal school and university reflect and perpetuate the traditional cleavage between elementary and secondary school. In the best instances there is involved here only the friction of overlapping territory rather than essentially unsympathetic views of the process by which a teacher should be prepared. However far apart some normal schools and some uni- versities may be, the enlightened and progressive elements of each party are moving along the same intellectual road.
The time has come to clear up the existing confusion. All institutional education for the teaching profession should be placed clearly upon a collegiate footing and organized under a single competent direction as a part of the state university, where one exists, parallel with medical, legal, engineering, and other similar divisions of higher education. This signifies no " concessions " either to the university or to the normal schools. " Normal " schools should drop that name, and as professional col- leges of education should become an acknowledged part of the greater university whole simply because they are a part of the state's system of higher education, which is all the term "university" now implies. We would thus secure a unified and cen- tralized authority prepared to deal in a consistent and efficient manner with the state's largest problem in higher and professional education.
THE TEACHEK AND THE PUBLIC
The type of teacher here proposed is a radically different individual from his pres- ent prototype, and demands a vigorous and discriminating introduction to the pub- lic that he is intended to serve. It is the public that must purchase the services of such a teacher; it is the public, therefore, that must be convinced of his worth.
Upon the teachers themselves the outward responsibility for such a movement can- not fairly be placed; from them may reasonably be expected the maximum develop- ment and refinement of their own procedure — a far more conclusive argument for more of it, at its best, than any "demands for social justice" to teachers as a class. To double or to treble the public investment in such service, to extend largely its resources by broader and richer training, to seek a selection of ability preeminently suited to its purpose — this is a matter of public policy, and has nothing to do with the personal needs or demands of any group of people. This is the work primarily of that portion of the educated public that knows the value of good teachers. Spe- cifically, it is to school superintendents and school boards, and, above all, to state commissioners of education, that the public has a right to look for reasoned and con- vincing insistence that the best teachers are worth while, and it is they who are responsible for organizing public opinion to demand that the best teachers be em- ployed. It is of relatively small importance that teachers should be well paid merely
INTRODUCTION 13
because they are teachers, but it is of supreme importance to any society that com- petent teachers who are capable of fine service should be amply rewarded and care- fully protected throughout their careers.
To attain this it is proper, not that teachers themselves should agitate, unionize, and strike, but that school executives, municipal and state, in well-organized cam- paigns, should rally their thousands of lay supporters and attack city and state gov- ernments and the uninformed public opinion about them in the interests of better teaching. Leadership of this sort in the protection and promotion of a community's most precious asset is the foremost duty of state and city superintendents. It is their business to make an abundance of good teaching an arresting and winning cause in chambers of commerce, churches, rotary clubs, labor unions, and similar civic and so- cial organizations of citizen parents who control taxation. Fine instruction does not at present prevail in American communities simply because it is not understood; the average parent's interest in his child's school is almost imperceptible, not because his interest in his child is not profound, but because the teaching purpose and process has never taken the parent convincingly into its confidence. That such a confidence would too often exhaust the uncertain and ill-preparedi teacher has not assisted the exchange. Parent- teacher associations have rendered an important service by promot- ing helpful social relations between home and school, but they obviously have not taught the parent how to discriminate between the teaching now provided and the better teaching that might be provided, nor is that their purpose. Here is a field al- most completely un worked. Enthusiasm and personal sacrifice to secure good teach- ing for his children are latent in well-nigh every parent. He must, however, know defi- nitely and vividly what good teaching is, and he must understand clearly that its value is on the whole directly related to its cost. Convince any American public that the alleged products of a fine teacher are real, and the cost will speedily become a wholly secondary consideration.
THE PRESENT CBISIS IN PUBLIC EDUCATION
It is scarcely appropriate to present a study of conditions affecting the future progress of public instruction in the United States without more than passing refer- ence to the situation of the teacher arising from the universal economic dislocation now ensuing upon the recent war. Within a few months the value of a teacher's sal- ary or " wages " has fallen approximately fifty per cent There is nothing ominous about this fact, inasmuch as the same thing has happened to every other salaried professional worker in common with the rest of the world, but there are portentous possibilities in the failure of school authorities to make a prompt repair of the damage their first obligation.
Readjustment is slow for several reasons, but chiefly because it is assumed to be a question merely of the personal comfort of a class of public servants instead of an im- mediate menace to the welfare of the children and indirectly of the communities of
14 THE PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION OF TEACHERS
which they form a part. Popular pressure governs public taxation. Orderly children comfortably housed exert no pressure. Their teachers may descend the full scale of excellence with little popular protest and with an agreeable decrease in the budget. Where this result can be achieved simply by letting salaries stand still, as at pres- ent, those taxpayers who are intent solely upon their income make full use of the opportunity before the friends of education find their voices. To-day, therefore, in- stead of a sensitive public opinion moving swiftly to defend our finest possession, we have the unhappy spectacle of a rapidly accelerating exodus from the staffs of public schools throughout the country ; and very many schools cannot open their doors be- cause of lack of teachers, even the poorest.
The situation is complicated by a further unfortunate but obvious difficulty. The school superintendent of any given community should be the one intelligent and determined stimulus or rallying-point, as the case may be, for all forces seeking better public education. As a matter of fact, however, conditions of tenure in this country have been such that in probably the majority of communities the school superintend- ent feels more keenly and responds more readily to the pressure of the " business in- terests " than to the less vociferous appeals for better schools. Superintendents who
stake their careers on the one really important objective in their entire program
better salaries for better teachers — court removal, or loss of influence. Hence the real initiative in such a proposal is more often awaited from other sources, or is left to the school board as it may be moved to emulate other cities. The numerous and splendid examples of the contrary courageous policy, by skilfully attracting popular support, have steadily improved standards of salary, and have given American schools what excellence they possess. In such a crisis as the present, these men gather up all the weight of a public sentiment that they have assiduously organized and cultivated, and save their hard won gains by bringing their teachers' salaries promptly to the new level.
It may safely be said that it is not the intention of the American people to sacri- fice the American school, both present and future, to the whim of a sudden economic upheaval — an upheaval, the net result of which, far from touching the country's resources, has produced such material expansion and enrichment, both absolute and relative to other countries, as few nations in history have ever yet experienced. Wealth for public education is potentially available as never before. Personnel, too, is abundant. To-day, as always, the supply of "bom teachers " is far beyond the de- mand. The sole need is to make it worth while for gifted teachers to secure thorough training and to spend their lives in providing that which every intelligent adult most desires, both for himself and for his children, and that which alone in the end exalts a nation.
All of the elements in the situation favor not only a speedy recovery of the old equilibrium, but a notable shift of wealth and emphasis in favor of far better public schools, that is, of far better teaching, than has ever been known before. Our illumi-
INTRODUCTION 15
nating experiences with education, both positive and negative, in our own army ; the significant disclosures of the war in the behavior of foreign nations, both allied and opposed, as a result of their educational practices; the greatly refined definition of the democratic human purpose and ideal as the assured outcome of the long struggle; and finally, the general shock of pervasive change and rapid readjustment that has delivered us from old conventions and favors fresh attitudes; — all of these novel and impressive considerations urge us manifestly in one direction. There probably never was a time in our history when popular education could be brought so easily into a permanently larger financial perspective, when an abundance of good teaching could be made available with such unanimity from all sides, as just now.
Those who desire this outcome of the present opportunity must move to its accom- plishment, and the foremost requirement for the purpose is simply the indispensable steering-gear of all successful democratic progress — the effectual organization and thrust of a resolute public opinion. Whether set in motion by a skilful superintend- ent as his main line of defence, or operating in spite of deputed agents, there should be for every school system an independent and unofficial organ of approval or criti- cism wherewith to focus progressive opinion, to invigorate official ideals, or to turn the scale of wavering decisions in favor of the better cause*
Just now, especially, there is needed in every community that has not already doubled its appropriations for teachers' salaries in the present emergency, a vigorous Citizens' Committee for Public Safety in Education. Let such a body first conduct a more or less, formal referendum on the present issue, clearly stated: "Shall the per- sons with whom our children are obliged to spend five to six hours daily in school, obeying their directions and absorbing their ideas, be a dull and sordid group of spiritless wage workers, or shall they be select and skilful men and women possessed of such intellectual and social power and status as we desire our children — all chil- dren— to assume?" Then let this body do its utmost to give the verdict immediate effect by demanding greatly increased rewards, better conditions of work, and, above all, longer training and more critical selection.
When the actual desires of the individual parents, and of all other generous and far-sighted minds everywhere, become clearly articulate on this point there will be no "crisis in education;" there will be only the overwhelming recognition that the teacher must represent, not another worker merely, like the rest of us, but a spirit- ual institution; that, before all others, this person, set as a copy and guide to youth for months and years together, must be the visible embodiment of the ideal that the present generation holds for its successors. It will then be agreed that those fine personalities that can render this service must be cherished and protected, enabled to live life as life is meant to be lived, and encouraged to transmit its best product to our children who create the future.
II
THE STATE OF MISSOURI SURFACE FEATURES
MISSOURI is one of the larger states and among the wealthiest in the American Union. It lies along the west bank of the Mississippi River, extending in rhomboidal shape thru some four degrees of latitude northwest from parallel 26° 30", which is likewise the southern boundary of Kentucky and Virginia. The Missouri River ( " The Great Muddy "), from which the state derives its name, forms the northern part of its west- ern boundary as far as Kansas City. Turning eastward at that point, the river crosses the centre of the state to a point near St. Louis on the Mississippi, thus furnishing a natural highway between these two important centres in which the large affairs of the entire region are mainly transacted. In length of navigable waterways within or on Its borders Missouri stands fifth among the states.
The total area is about seventy thousand square miles, or nearly two-thirds that of the kingdom of Italy. The northern, northwestern, and western portions contain some of the most productive farm land in the country, while the south central sec- tion is occupied by the low dome of the northern Ozarks, in general elevations of from eleven to sixteen hundred feet above the sea. These give place in the extreme southeast to a small area of Mississippi lowlands, where conditions are typically southern.
CHARACTERISTICS OF POPULATION
The population within these limits represents the coalescence of several elements. While the territory was still in French and Spanish hands, many Americans, chiefly from the southern states, found their way past the French colonies and trading-posts that lined the Mississippi, and took up homesteads in the interior. When the Louisi- ana Territory was purchased by the United States in 180S, about three-fifths of the inhabitants, largely confined to what is now Missouri, were Americans, including what negroes they brought with them, and after that date the immigration from Ken- tucky, Tennessee, and Virginia continued yet more rapidly. From 1815 on, arrivals from north of the Ohio were numerous, tho not until sometime after the Civil Wax- did they tend to dominate the state.1
Not far from one-fourth (2£.7 per cent) of the entire population is of foreign ex- traction, and of this element about one-half is German; Irish, English, and Russians are the next in frequency, tho in small proportions. The German element is an old
1 The reports of the county superintendents shortly after the Civil War throw some lighten immigration from other f?1??,^.1 fc ^fected education. Thus in 1868 Clinton County reports : "The Eastern teachers are generally well qual- ified. The Greene County superintendent says : "A large majority of our teachers were educated in the East and came here expressly to teach." And the superintendent in Henry County ^ives the following interesting: informa- tion : We have a very fair corps of teachers," From "Ohio, seventeen ; Indiana, eleven ; Missouri, ten ; Illinois, five ; Iowa two; Virginia, two; Kentucky, one; New Hampshire, one; New York, one; Vermont, one; Pennsylvania, SSiJSf TmV°n\; Te?n*f ee< °ne; and Canada, one." These teachers received from $85 to $40 per month -not Sim \\ « HT +* each*r? >n thjsamf district to-day. (See Report of the Superintendent of Public Schools, 1808. This annual publication will be referred to hereafter as the State Report*}
THE STATE OF MISSOURI
17
one, appearing first about 1845, and passing its maximum inflow long before the century closed. The attitude of the state toward slavery as well as its progress in education seems to have been favorably afiected by these newcomers. Most immi- grants from abroad prefer urban to rural conditions. In 1910 persons of foreign birth or parentage constituted thirty-eight per cent of the white urban population in Missouri, and only twelve per cent in the rural districts. The total proportion of foreign birth in 1910 showed no increase since 1900. The countries from which the increases relative to 1900 were largest are Greece, Turkey, Roumania, Hungary, and Mexico; Russia and Italy more than doubled the number of their representatives and Austria nearly so.
In total population Missouri, with about three and one-quarter millions, ranks seventh among the states, altho its land area gives it only the eighteenth place. Nearly five per cent are negroes — a slowly dwindling element largely confined to towns ; slightly over one per cent of the Missouri farmers are negroes. About three- fifths of the total population live in the country or in places with fewer than twenty- five hundred inhabitants. This class diminished somewhat (3.5 per cent) between 19001 and 1910, while the urban population increased more than one-fifth during the same period. Seventy-one out of the one hundred fourteen counties showed a loss in 1910 as compared with twenty that had decreased in 1900, while the absolute gain in St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and Jackson County, where Kansas City is located, far outweighed the gain — six per cent — in the state as a whole. In density of pop- ulation Missouri leads all states west of the Mississippi, and is similar to .New Hamp- shire, Michigan, and Virginia in the East.
OCCUPATIONS
The distribution of occupations in Missouri follows closely that of the United States as a whole. While not quite so typical as Indiana or Wisconsin, the state exhibits a disposition of occupations that is wholly representative of the country at large. The distribution in 1910 of persons ten years of age and over who were engaged in gainful occupations in the United States and in Missouri was as follows :
|
Agriculture, Forestry, and Animal Hus- bandry |
Extraction of Minerals |
Manufacturing and Mechanical Industries |
Trans- porta- tion |
Trade |
Public Service |
Profes- sional Service |
Domestic and Per- sonal Ser- vice |
Clerical Occupa- tions |
|
|
U.S. |
33.2% • |
2.5% |
27.9% |
6.9% |
9.5% |
1.2% |
4.4% |
9.9% |
4.6% |
|
Missouri |
35.5 |
2.1 |
23.6 |
7.1 |
11.1 |
1.1 |
4.7 |
9.8 |
5.0 |
As appears above, the emphasis falls on the agricultural rather than on the manu- facturing phase of industry, altho both are important. Missouri rants fifth among the states in the total value of its farm property, which showed in 1910 a relative
1 Missouri was one of six states with diminished rural population in 1910, New Hampshire, Vermont, Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa being t|ie others.
18 THE PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION OF TEACHERS
increase greater than In any decade since I860; it ranks tenth in the value per acre of its farm land, and sixth in the total value of its crops, of which cereals, chiefly corn,, constitute two-thirds. As the number of farmers decreases, the size of farms increases slightly; the proportion of tenant farmers has remained nearly the same during the past thirty years — thirty per cent,
In manufactures Missouri is the ninth state in number of establishments, tenth in total value of manufactured products, and eleventh in number of wage- earners. Three- quarters of the manufacturing is done in ten cities of ten thousand or more inhab- itants, two-thirds of it in St. Louis and Kansas City alone — the only cities in the state having over one hundred thousand inhabitants. The particular industries are well dis- tributed. The following furnish the greatest proportions of the total value of man- ufactured products: slaughtering and meat-packing (13.9 per cent), boots and shoes (8.5 per cent), flour-mill and grist-mill products (7.8 per cent), and printing and pub- lishing (5.S per cent). In value of mining products Missouri ranks eleventh. Over two- thirds of this comes from lead and zinc mines, which furnish about seventy per cent of the entire American output of these metals.
POLITICAL HISTORY
Politically the state fills a unique place in the story of the nation's development. On its admission as a slave-holding state in 1821 was conditioned the freedom of all other territory north of its southern boundary, included in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. As a border state of the early southern group it was peculiarly accessible to northern influences, and soon developed a strong anti-slavery minority. This party held the state for the Union during the Civil War, and induced it voluntarily to abandon slavery and to sacrifice nearly as many lives in the Union cause as did Massachusetts. After ten years of radical Republican government during and after the Civil War, the state gradually returned to its normal democratic affiliation, which it retained until 1909. Since then its parties have been more evenly balanced. The first constitution of 18£0 was overthrown by the upheaval during the war, and was fol- lowed in 1865 by an instrument containing a remarkable mixture of intolerance and reform, to which in protest succeeded the constitution of 1875, a conservative, and in some respects repressive, fundamental law under which, with occasional amend- ment, the state has operated ever since. A revision is greatly needed and apparently very generally desired.
EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
In education Missouri has furnished an instructive chapter, particularly in its experience with the idea of public schooling at public expense. The characteristic feature of its history in this respect has been the struggle between a well-informed and devoted educational leadership and an exceedingly conservative legislative opin- ion. The attitude of the public mind was first determined by the traditions of the
THE STATE OF MISSOURI 19
original settlers from southern states, where education was a family matter to be ac- complished thru private neighborhood cooperation, or by means of tutor and gov- erness. The idea of free public education was associated habitually with charitable provision for poor and orphaned children.1 This point of view was further sanctioned by a religious motive,, which operated with more or less vigor to retain all education under sectarian influences. The impulse to education was as active in early Missouri history as anywhere else in the nation. Denominational colleges were established liter- ally by the score. The Baptists alone, the most numerous among Protestant denomi- nations, founded sixteen colleges, of which four still survive. But enthusiasm for free schools, controlled and supported by state and local authority and independ- ent of religious affiliation, was a slow growth.
Previous to 18S4, therefore, educational legislation was confined to the charter- ing of private academies. The legislation of 1834, 1835, and 1839, altho foreshadow- ing a system of free public schools, was either wholly inoperative or but partly effec- tive. Taxation for school purposes was in general hotly opposed by the rich, and by those who had no children. "Subscription" schools, where for perhaps a dollar a month per child a teacher would give instruction as long as he could hold attendance, abounded in all parts of the state. An act of 1853 permanently established a state superintendency, except for the period of the Civil War, and marked progress in financial support, but in 1861, altho all counties were organized, about one-fourth of the school expenses was still supplied from tuition fees. It was then estimated that one hundred thousand children in the state at large did not attend school, and that nearly one-fifth of the organized school districts had no schoolhouses.2
The close of the Civil War found radical elements for the first time in control. These immediately set out to popularize the free public school, and succeeded to the extent at least of securing "qualified toleration," as Superintendent Monteith put it. Normal schools won a foothold; centralized county supervision was inaugurated, and for a time the outlook for public education was bright, only to be clouded again by the reaction of 1874 and 1875, when the earlier balance of opinion was restored. County superintendents were then abolished contrary to the judgment, it would appear, of nearly every important educational authority in the state, and in spite of continued agitation they were not restored until 1909. The normal schools fought for their lives in the legislature for ten years or more, and when finally accepted, were but meagrely supported. The constitution of 1875 laid down financial restrictions that have ever since made the state appear to be throttling its own educational interests.
Thru all this tlie educational leaders of the commonwealth have held a true course; the state has at least been well advised. The whole series of state superintendents,
1 The charter of Ste, Genevieve Academy, 1808, provides that the children of the poor and of Indians shall be taught gratis. The constitution of 1820, Art. VI, Sec. 1, reads: " One school or more shall be established in each township as soon as practicable and necessary where the poor shall be taught gratis." The school law of 1839 provides schools at which children of "indigent persons "are 'to he admitted without payment toward the teacher's wages and without supplying their allotted share of the fuel. (Art. IV. Sec. SI, 42.) a State Report, 1861, pa&es 107, 108 (Senate-Journal, 21st G. A. Sess. 1, App.).
20 THE PROFESSIONAL PKEPAEATION OE TEACHERS
with scarcely an exception, altho of necessity party men, and not always broadly educated, labored heroically, regardless of party, for a sound and effective program. While recording chiefly their helpless struggles with confused and inadequate legis- lation, their annual reports have urged unremittingly the best and most obvious practical improvements. To these efforts were added the generally harmonious support and propaganda of the university and normal schools, the private colleges, and other institutional agencies. From about the turn of the new century, and with the dis- appearance of the preceding generation of lawmakers, this tedious campaign of educa- tion began to bear fruit, and the period since then has witnessed some excellent con- structive legislation — the beginnings of a system worthy of the needs and resources of a great state.
As a problem for education, and particularly as a problem in the preparation of teachers for a public school system, the State of Missouri may fairly be regarded as typical of the country as a whole. Characteristics of surface and population are mark- edly representative. In their organization of public education the northern and west- ern states are in general superior, while the southern states fall somewhat, often considerably, behind. If certain significant criteria given usually in the reports of the United States Commissioner of Education be reviewed, the rather low average position of the state becomes apparent. These rankings of 1915-16 give the following result :
Amount Rank among States
Average expenditure per capita of population five to eighteen years of age $19.97 32d
Average number of days attendance for each child five to eighteen years of age 96.1 25th
Average number of days attendance by each pupil enrolled 118.5 30th
Average number of days schools were kept 161,8 29th
Number attending daily for each 100 enrolled 73.2 27th
Proportion of school population enrolled 81.08% 18th
Proportion of secondary school attendance1 15.4% 28th
Average monthly salary of all teachers $69.19 21st
Income of permanent school funds $872,289.00 7th
Illiterates among native whites of native parentage 3,4/%? 35th
In six of the ten items given above, Missouri ranks below the median, and in a seventh the state is itself the median among the forty-nine independent units that constitute the nation. The relation of school expenditure to the per capita wealth of the state would appear to be of equal importance with the points already noted. But the fact that Missouri ranks twenty-ninth in per capita wealth and twenty-sev- enth in proportion of school expenditure thereon loses much of its apparent mean- ing as an educational measure, when it is considered that Massachusetts ranks twenty-
1 Not given in the Commissioner's Report. The figure used here is the proportion of secondary students in public and private schools, 1915-16, with reference to the population from 15 to 19 years of ag-e, inclusive. The latter fac- tor was secured by taking, of the total population, as estimated by the Census Bureau for 1916, such a proportion as the age group in question constituted of the- total population in 1910. For Missouri this was 10.1 per cent. The absolute proportion thus arrived at is, of course, open to criticism; for purposes of comparison., however, the mea- sure is significant: it ranges from 35.1 per cent in California to 6.5 per cent in South Carolina.
THE STATE OF MISSOURI 21
seventh in per capita wealth and third in the proportion expended for schools, while Idaho ranks thirty-first in wealth and leads the states in the proportion given to schools.1
However closely this condition in Missouri may approximate the average or median, the reason for it is hardly typical of those other communities in which a similar or worse state of public education exists; in Missouri it is simply an acquiescent atti- tude of mind that is responsible, whereas elsewhere the situation is usually compli- cated by difficult racial considerations. A thriving university of national importance, six prosperous normal schools, a half a score of private colleges of good repute — all bear testimony to a vigorous intellectual life; while the metropolis of the state pos- sesses a school system that competent critics consider among the first two or three in America. Such a state may have whatever it most desires.
1 These figures are taken from the Commissioner's Report for 1917, and are for 1912.
Ill
ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF NORMAL SCHOOLS A. THE ORIGIN OF NORMAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES
EARLIEST ADVOCACY OF TEACHER-TRAINING
THE recognition that a teacher should have qualifications for his profession some- what more specialized than the vague requirement that he be a "fit person '' appears to have dawned faintly toward the close of the eighteenth century. In 1789 there appeared in the Massachusetts Magazine an "Essay upon the Importance of Study- ing the English Language Grammatically," in which the author advocates the estab- lishment of a public grammar school in each county in place of the existing Latin grammar schools. "At the head of this county school I would place an able precep- tor, who should superintend the whole instruction of youth entrusted to his care, and who, together with a board of overseers, should annually examine young gentle- men designed for schoolmasters in reading, writing, arithmetic, and English gram- mar, and if they are found qualified for the office of schoolkeeping and able to teach these branches with ease and propriety, to recommend them for this purpose. No man ought to be suffered to superintend ever so small a school except he has been first examined by a body of men of this character and authorized for this purpose." It may be objected that this statement is not a definite advocacy of training for the teaching profession ; it will be admitted, however, that the insistence on proper selec- tion and some form of certification are at least essential steps in the direction of more adequate professional preparation.
Professor Denison Olmstead, of Yale College, was more specific in his commence- ment address in 181S on "The State of Education in Connecticut." Here is presented a definite recommendation of a seminary for schoolmasters in which 6Cthe pupils were to study and recite whatever they themselves were afterwards to teach, partly for the purpose of acquiring a more perfect knowledge of these subjects, and partly of learning from the methods adopted by the principal the best modes of teaching."" The course was to include lectures on the organization and government of schools. Eleven years later another Yale professor, James L. Kingsley, advocated in the NortJi Amer- ican Review the establishment of an institution "intermediate between the com- mon schools and the university.'1 "Such a measure would give new vigor to the whole system of education. The board of visitors, which now decides on the qualifications of instructors, must be, in most instances, a very imperfect check on the intrusion of ignorance. The teachers, it is understood, have now very seldom any other prepara- tion than they receive in the very school where they afterwards instruct, or in the school of some neighboring district, where the advantages for improvement are no better." In a pamphlet, Sitgrgestions on Ed^^Jcation^ also written in 18£3, William Russell, a teacher in the New Township Academy in New Haven, who in 18S6 be- came the editor of one of the earliest American professional magazines, the Journal
NORMAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES . 28
of Education, supported Professor Kingsley's recommendation and attributed the in- adequacy of the common schools to the lack of trained teachers. This defect could be removed by the establishment of seminaries for the training and licensing of teachers.
EARLY EXPERIMENTS
The suggestions of Kingsley and Russell had been anticipated by a few months by the Rev. Samuel R. Hall, who, after a successful teaching experience of eight years, opened a seminary for the training of teachers at Concord, Vermont, in March, 18£3. In 1829 Hall published the first American textbook on education, Lectures on School- Keeping^ which had a great vogue in many parts of the country, and in New York State and Kentucky was officially distributed among the teachers. When the Teach- ers' Seminary was organized in 1830 as a department of the Phillips Academy at An- dover, " to afford the means of a thorough scientific and practical education prepar- atory to the profession of teaching," Hall became the first principal and remained until 1837, when he took charge of another school at Plymouth, New Hampshire. Lecturing in 1833 on the "Necessity of Educating Teachers," Hall stated that "there is not in our whole country, one seminary where the educator of children can be thor- oughly qualified for his important work." He then referred to the thirty seminaries in Prussia and to a few schools in Massachusetts which "devote particular attention to the qualifications of teachers, but yet in connection with a general school for the common purposes of education."" He clearly had in mind the establishment of sep- arate professional institutions, when he urged, "Educate men for the business of teaching, employ and pay them when educated."
Neither the establishment of the seminary at Concord in 1823 nor its subsequent success appears to have attracted much attention. Efforts to secure the establishment of institutions for the preparation of teachers became more frequent and more insist- ent about 1825, and appai'ently the movement was spontaneous and for a time, at any rate, was but slightly influenced by foreign example and practice. In 1825 Walter R. Johnson, of German town, Pennsylvania, wrote Observations on the Improvement of Seminaries of Learning in the United States ', with Suggestions for its Accomplishment. Foremost among his suggestions was that for the establishment of seminaries for teachers similar to those existing in Prussia. " A perfect plan for the education of teachers and professors would require that the institution with which the school for teachers is proposed to be connected should embrace a complete circle of the sciences and arts, and that a professor should be appointed to lecture on the mode of teach- ing in each separate department." The professional preparation should include the study of the theory and principles of education, school practice and government, and the science of mental development. In the same year Philip Lindsey, the acting president of the College of New Jersey, in an address at Princeton urged that "Our country needs Seminaries purposely to train up and qualify young men for the pro- fession of teaching. We have our theological seminaries, our medical and law schools.
m ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF NORMAL SCHOOLS
which receive the graduates of our colleges and fit them for their respective profes- sions and whenever the profession of teaching shall be duly honored and appreciated, it is not doubted but that it will receive similar attention and be favored with equal advantages." Later in the same year, in his inaugural address as President of the University of Nashville, Lindsey emphasized the same point. John Maclean, another Princeton professor, subsequently president, recommended in 18S8" the establishment (by the state) of an institution to educate young men for the business of teaching."
DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC OPINION
These isolated instances indicate the tendencies of the day, but the popularization of the idea of preparing teachers was not due to these writers. The earliest contribu- tion to the subject which attracted general attention was Thomas H. Gallaudet's Plan of a Seminary for the Education and Instruction of Youtli^ which appeared in the Connecticut Observer in 18&5. "Why not have an institution," asks Gallaudet, " for the training up of instructors for their sphere of labor, as well as institutions to prepare young men for the duties of the divine, the lawyer or the physician? . . . Such an institution would also tend to elevate the tone of public sentiment and to quicken the zeal of public effort with regard to the correct intellectual and moral education of the rising generation." The curriculum of this institution should include the common branches of English education and the theory and practice of education. A library and practice school should be connected with the seminary. Connecticut's debt to Gallaudet was later recognized when the students of the first normal school established in the state, at New Britain in 1850, formed a Gallaudet Society,
In 18S4-&5 James G. Carter, the "father of normal schools," entered upon the task of urging the establishment of normal schools1 in Massachusetts, and did not lay it down until the first state normal school in this country was opened at Lexington in 1839. His Essays on Popular Education, which appeared in the Boston Patriot ^ at- tracted considerable attention not only in this country but also abroad. He argued that it was uneconomical to expend money on education until satisfactory and well- qualified teachers could be secured. The mere possession of knowledge was no guar- antee of ability to communicate it. "When instructors understand their profession, that is, in a word, when they understand the philosophy of the infant mind, what powers are earliest developed and what studies are best adapted to their development, then it will be time to lay out and subdivide their work into an energetic system of public instruction.55 The institution for the training of teachers should be main- tained by the state as part of the free school system, and should include a library and a school for children of different ages. It is significant that Carter does not yet refer to foreign examples, but puts his scheme forward as something new and visionary. In 18S7 he petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to appropriate money for the estab- lishment of a state institution for the training of teachers. On the refusal of the legisla- ture he opened a private seminary at Lancaster in 1827, but met with little success.
NORMAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES 525
EXAMPLE OF GERMANY
New influences, however, began to make themselves felt about 1830. The theorists discovered that everything that had been urged in favor of the preparation of teach- ers had already been put into successful practice in Prussia and elsewhere. Henry E. Dwight in his Travels in the North of Germany in 1825~1S%6, which appeared in 1829., devotes one of his letters to an account of seminaries for the Education of School- masters. He points out that "to understand a subject will not of itself enable one to impart a clear view of the best mode of communicating knowledge to the minds of children. This capacity can only be acquired by previous preparation or by long experience." He had great hopes of the results of such seminaries. "Were such school- masters provided for the education of youth in Connecticut, the intellectual charac- ter of the mass of inhabitants would, in one generation, not only become superior to that of every other people, but it would become the wonder and admiration of our country."
EFFORTS OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERS
After 1830 the work of propaganda was definitely taken up in professional circles, and the efforts continued unremittingly until they were crowned with success about ten years later. In 1831 William C. Woodbridge began to urge the importance of training teachers in his Annals of Education, and in June of that year gave an account of the Prussian system. To the Rev. Charles Brooks is due the chief credit for the popularization and the ultimate acceptance in Massachusetts of the idea of teacher- training. His attention was directed to the subject during a visit to Europe in 1834* and by prolonged discussion on his return voyage with Dr. EL Julius, who was sent to this country by the Prussian government to investigate prison conditions. In a Thanksgiving address delivered at Hingham in 1835 he advocated the establishment of teachers' seminaries and proposed a series of conventions to be held in Plymouth County to promote the idea. The first convention was held in December, 1836, and was followed by five others. Untiring in his efforts, Brooks addressed meetings in various important centres in Massachusetts in 1836 and 1837, and extended his en- deavors to New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Everywhere he took as his theme the statement, "As is the Teacher so is the School," and drew his illustrations and examples from Prussia and Holland. The influence of Dr. Julius has already been mentioned; an outline of the Prussian system by him was printed in 1835 with legislative documents in Massachusetts and New York. To this was added the inspiration that Brooks derived from M. Cousin's Report on Public Instruction in Germany. The translation of this work by Sarah Aus- tin, with an introduction by J. Orville Taylor, was published in New York in 1835, and in the same year a paper, printed in 1836 and based on Cousin's Report, was read before the American Institute of Instruction. Further information on the Prussian educational system was furnished in the widely distributed reports of Calvin E. Stowe
£6 ^ ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF NORMAL SCHOOLS
(Elementary Education in Europe, 1837) and of Alexander D. Bache (Report on Edu- cation in Europe ', 1839).
THE TERM "NORMAL SCHOOL"
It was at this period that the term "normal school" began to replace "teachers' seminaries." There can be no doubt that this was due directly to Cousin's Report on Germany and the subsequent Report on Public Instruction in Holland. Cousin merely applied the current French term to the corresponding institutions in the countries visited by him. The French system of training teachers had hardly begun to have a national status when Cousin made- his report. The Convention had, on October 30, 1794, decreed the creation in Paris of an Nicole Normale in which citizens of the Re- public over the age of twenty-one and already instructed in the useful sciences should be taught how to teach and then go back to their own districts and in turn train other teachers. It was intended that the course should last four months, but the experiment, with which were associated such men as Legrange, Laplace, Monge, Hauy, and Ber- nardin de St. Pierre, failed. It is interesting to note that the Committee of Public Instruction adopted this idea from the plan successfully employed by the Commit- tee of Public Safety to train citizens drawn to Paris from all parts of the country, in the processes for manufacturing gunpowder and cannon. In a note to his Lecture on Normal Schools and Teachers* Seminaries Stowe wrote, "The French adjective nor- mal is derived from the Latin noun norma, which signifies a carpenter's square^ a ride, a pattern, a model; and the very general use of this term to designate institutions for the preparation of teachers, leads us at once to the idea of a model school for practice, an essential constituent part of a Teachers* Seminary" The term ecole normale does not appear to have been employed earlier than 1794. The successful establishment of a state system for the preparation of teachers in 1832 was due to the success of the normal primary school founded in Strasbourg in 1810 and planned on the German model.
Beyond contributing the title, the French system does not appear to have exercised any influence on the development of normal schools. There can be no doubt that the promotion of the idea of training teachers was directly influenced by the Prussian example. Brooks himself had no hesitation in recognizing this influence. In a lec- ture on the History of the Missionary Agency, in Massachusetts, of the State Normal Schools in Prussia, delivered in 1864 at the Quarter-Centennial Normal School cele- bration of Framingham, he stated, "I must say, that to the Prussian system of state normal schools belongs the distinctive glory of this day." He was conscious, however, of the political limitations of the Prussian system; "though I preferred the Holland system of governmental supervision, I concluded to take the Prussian system of state normal schools as my model and guide." The adoption of the Prussian model was evidently not undertaken blindly; the essential social and political differences between the two countries were clearly recognized and debated. "There were a few papers that
NORMAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES £7
laughed at me," said Brooks, "as a dreamer wishing to fill a republican state with monarchical institutions."
TEACH KII-TBAINING- IN GERMANY
Experiments in the training of teachers had been under way in Germany for more than a century before the attention of American students was directed to them. Duke Ernest of Gotha had contemplated the establishment of special courses for pre- paring teachers in 1654, but an exhausted treasury led to a postponement of the scheme until 1698. In 1696 Francke had instituted at Halle a Seminariwn praecep- torum to furnish teachers both for his orphanage and higher schools. His example inspired several of his disciples, especially Johann Julius Hecker, who opened an in- stitution for the preparation of teachers in Berlin in 1748; here provision was. made for the study of a large number of academic subjects., pedagogy, and method, and for practice teaching. A royal grant was made to Hecker's schools in 1753, and an order was issued by Frederick the Great that all vacancies in. schools on royal domains and later throughout Prussia should be filled with teachers trained under Hecker. Unfortunately Frederick's practice of filling school positions with veterans from his armies defeated his own purposes, and the beginning of the nineteenth century saw the Prussian elementary schools in decline.
From this condition the schools were saved by the rapid and extensive establish- ment of normal schools under the direct influence of educators who had visited Pes- talozzi. In 1803 J. E. Plarnann, who had been a student at Burgdorf, established a normal school in Berlin which received royal recognition two years later. At this time the government sent a few students to Yverdun; on their return these men established institutions for the training of teachers or became inspectors of schools. Since the government did little to codify the school regulations or to organize the curriculum of the schools, the great progress in elementary education that was noticed by American observers was due almost wholly to the rapid increase in the number of trained teachers consequent on the multiplication of normal schools. In 1806 there had been eleven such institutions, to which fourwere added in 1811 and 181S; in 18£5 there were twenty-eight and in 1840 thirty-eight. They offered a three-year course, and under the influence of Harnisch at Weissenfels and Diesterweg at Mors had become powerful instruments in raising both the intellectual and professional status of teach- ers. Ludwig Beckedorff was especially influential in promoting the welfare of the nor- mal schools. From 18£1 to 1827 he was councillor in the Ministry for Public Wor- ship, Education, and Public Health, with special charge of normal schools and ele- mentary education. He gave particular attention to the former in the belief that the standards of elementary education could be more effectually raised thru the improve- ment of teachers than by relying on the amateur efforts of the provincial and local ad- ministrative machinery. In 1836 the professional status of elementary school teachers was clearly defined by the issue of regulations for the examinations of candidates at
28 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF NORMAL SCHOOLS
the close of their normal school training and again after not more than three years of probationary service. The existence of such conditions was bound to strike the foreign observer ; and it was the report of these conditions that profoundly affected the movement for the preparation of teachers in the United States.
LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITY IN MASSACHUSETTS
The establishment of state normal schools became a practical issue soon after Carter's election to the legislature in 1885. He had the full support of the Ameri- can Institute of Instruction, which he had helped to found in 1830 and before which he had lectured in 1881 on "the necessary and most practicable means of raising the qualifications of teachers." In 1836, as a member of the Committee of Education, he advocated the establishment of a seminary for the professional education of teachers, and in the following year he drafted the bill establishing the first Board of Educa- tion in Massachusetts. On its creation he became one of its first members. In January, 1837, the Institute presented a memorial to the legislature praying "that provision may be made for the better preparation of the teachers of the schools of the Common- wealth." This followed an earlier resolution at a meeting held in Boston at which it was
" Resolved, That the business of teaching should be performed by those who have studied the subject as a profession. Therefore, Resolved, That there ought to be at least one seminary in each state, devoted entirely to the education of teachers; and that this seminary should be authorized to confer appropriate degrees."
In the same year Brooks lectured on the subject of teacher-training before the House of Representatives. In the following year the Board of Education, stimulated by the promise of a gift of $10,000 conditional on the appropriation of an equal sum by the legislature for the purpose of improving the qualifications of teachers, passed resolutions " accepting the proposition and authorizing the Governor, with the advice and consent of the Council, to draw his warrant upon the treasurer for the sum of ten thousand dollars, to be placed at the disposal of the Board for the purpose specified in the original communication." In these resolutions, as well as in securing the gift from his friend Edmund Dwight, Horace Mann played an important part. He had in the same year delivered before the Plymouth County Association for the Improvement of Common Schools a lecture on Special Preparation, a Prerequisite to Teaching, and, as he indicated in the following year, he had definite views on the superiority of a specifically professional institution over the academy plan of New York. The cumulative efforts of the educational stalwarts of the period, Carter, Brooks, Woodbridge, and Mann, culminated in the opening of the first public normal school in the country at Lexington on July 3, 1839, followed two months later by the opening of a second normal school at Barre on September 4, 1839, and of the third at Bridgewater a year later, on September 9, 1840. In 1845 it was resolved by the Board of Education "that the schools heretofore known as Normal Schools shall be hereafter designated as State Normal Schools."
NORMAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES 29
The length of the course In these normal schools was one year. Boys were admitted at the age of seventeen and girls at sixteen after declaring their Intention to qualify themselves to become school teachers, and after passing an examination in orthogra- phy, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, and arithmetic. The course of study included "orthography, reading, grammar, composition, rhetoric and logic; "writing and drawing; arithmetic, mental and written, algebra, geometry, bookkeep- ing, navigation, surveying ; geography, ancient and modern, with chronology, statis- tics, and general history; human physiology, and hygiene or the laws of health; men- tal philosophy; music 5 constitution and history of Massachusetts and of the United States; natural philosophy; the principles of piety and morality common to all sects of Christians ; the science and art of teaching with reference to all the above named subjects." Attached to each normal school was an experimental or model school in which the students practised under the supervision of the principal and the obser- vation and criticisms of their fellow students; "here the knowledge which they ac- quire in the science of teaching is practically applied. The art is made to grow out of the science, instead of being empirical." Thus were laid down the main lines of the American normal school.
NORMAL SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT IN CONNECTICUT
In Connecticut the movement for the training of teachers became active in 1838 after the passage in that year of the act to provide for the better supervision of common schools. Henry Barnard, as chairman of the committee that reported this act, urged the importance of the problem of teacher preparation in the House of Representatives, and in 1839 the Connecticut Common School Journal published a number of articles discussing this subject and giving a history of normal schools in Prussia, Holland, and France. This was followed in the next four years by the re- publication of the works of Gallaudet, Stowe, and Bache. In the First Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board of Commissioners of Common Schools., Henry Barnard urged the establishment "of at least one seminary for teachers." Barnard was even ready to accept a compromise temporarily by the setting up of teachers' depart- ments in academies, altho he was himself convinced that the normal school was the institution ultimately desirable. In 1839 he inaugurated a voluntary course for teach- ers at Hartford, in which a number of specialists lectured on academic subjects and methods of teaching, and Barnard on the relations of the teacher to the school sys- tem, parents, and pupils, on school hygiene, teachers' associations, and methods of interesting parents. Barnard continued his campaign, and in his Third Annual Report declared that "the most effectual way of improving the qualifications of teachers, of creating in them, and in the community, a proper estimate of the true dignity and use- fulness of the office, of carrying out into practice the soundest views of education, is to establish at least one institution for their specific training." Some of the objections that were raised and met by Barnard were that teachers could be trained in colleges,
80 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF NORMAL SCHOOLS
academies, and private schools, that special training is wasteful owing to the brief professional career of teachers, that special normal schools cannot turn out sufficient teachers nor districts pay sufficiently high salaries to encourage training, that the expense would be great, and, finally, that the normal school was objectionable as a foreign importation. A committee of eight appointed by the General Assembly reported in favor of normal schools in 1845, and three years later another commit- tee, after visiting normal schools in Massachusetts and academies in New York, made a report similar to that of the earlier committee. In 1850 the movement culminated in the establishment of the first normal school at New Britain.
THE NEW YOBK PRACTICE
The development of teacher- training in New York State differed from that in New England. Governor De Witt Clinton urged the establishment of a seminary for teachers in his message to the legislature in 18£6, but John C. Spencer, chair- man of the literature committee, insisted that the training of teachers should be entrusted to the colleges and academies. In 18&7 an act was passed "to provide permanent funds for the annual appropriation to common schools, to increase the literature fund, and to promote the education of teachers." Altho no provision was made immediately for the third purpose, this is the first act in the country for the education of teachers. A few training departments in academies were reported in 1831. A definite step was taken in 1834, when it was provided that "the trustees of academies to which any distribution of money shall be made by virtue of this act shall cause the same to be expended in educating teachers of common schools in such manner and under such regulations as said Regents shall prescribe." Owing to inadequate funds, only eight academies were recognized for the purpose, and eight others were added in 1838. Besides academic subjects, teachers in training were re- quired to study moral and intellectual philosophy and principles of teaching. In 1840 the Rev. Alonzo Potter of Union College was commissioned by the state superintend- ent to visit and report on the work of the academies. He found that the teachers in training were more interested in the academic than the professional studies; they did not stay for the full length of the course, three years; and no practice teaching was provided, altho this deficiency was not of importance since most of the students had already taught. He advocated a course of eighteen months to two years, with differentiation for teachers in rural schools and primary schools in villages and cities, and commended the special normal schools of Prussia and France. Such schools, he declared, "devoted exclusively to the preparation of teachers have some advantage over any other method." Horace Mannas view on the subject has already been men- tioned. Spencer, however, continued his opposition, and eight more academies were recognized as training centres. Colonel Samuel Young, his successor, was of the opinion in 1843 that the money was diffused over too many schools, and in the following year, under the influence probably of a report on the Massachusetts normal schools
NORMAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES 31
by the Chairman of the Assembly Committee on Colleges, Academies, and Common Schools,, a bill was passed establishing the State Normal School at Albany, and lead- ing to the discontinuance of training in the academies. No further progress was made with the establishment of state institutions until the appropriation of a state grant to the Oswego Normal School in 186$ and the final adoption of the school as a state institution four years later.
NORMAL SCHOOL OR ACADEMY ?
The divergent practice in the early training of teachers in New York State and New England led to interesting discussions of the problem wherever the question came up. In Michigan John D. Pierce, in his First Annual Report as superintendent in 1836, advocated the training of teachers at institutions organized upon either the Prussian or New York models. In 1843, however. Superintendent Ira May hew stated in his Report, "Normal schools, designed expressly for the education of professional teachers, are indispensable to the perfection of any system of national education.'"1 A normal school act was passed in 1849, and in 1853 the Ypsilanti school was opened. In I86& the academy system which had been established in Maine in 1846 was declared to be a failure, and two normal schools were then established "to be thor- oughly devoted to the work of training teachers for their professional labors." The State Superintendent, the Rev. Edward Ballard, declared that "the opinion has been but too prevalent that a high school or academy can qualify teachers as well for their work as the institutions especially established for this purpose. . . . But it must be a fallacious supposition to consider, that the discipline in either of these cases can be equal to the regular, systematic and thorough drill of the full proposed normal course." The same problem came up in Wisconsin, when in 1857 the legislature appropriated twenty-five per cent of the income from swamp lands for normal schools. Instead of establishing normal schools, the Board of Regents decided to distribute the money to colleges and academies maintaining normal classes, which were organ- ized by Henry Barnard, who became agent of the Normal Regents in 1858. The experiment was not successful, for in 1868 Superintendent J. L. Pickard wrote in his Report •, "These normal departments of colleges, academies, and high schools have not satisfactorily met the necessity. They are almost always subordinate departments; nor will the aid furnished warrant giving them a prominent place. Much good has been accomplished by these agencies, but they are at present inadequate to the de- mand. Permanent normal schools are needed, whose sole business shall be the train- ing of teachers." A normal department was opened in the University in 1863, fol- lowed by three normal schools in 1866. In his report for that year the Superintendent, John Gr. McMynn, made a statement on the subject which deserves the consideration of all who are interested in the professional training of teachers :
"The development of our Normal School system is the most difficult educa- tional problem that presents itself for solution at the present time. To make
32 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF NORMAL SCHOOLS
these schools promote the interests of public education, to so conduct them as to secure for them the confidence of the people, to so manage them as to train teachers in them for the common schools, to guard against the tendency to convert them into academies or high schools, to render them so attractive and so efficient as to bring large numbers of teachers under their influence, and to carry them on with such economy as to keep their expenses within the income provided for their support, will demand the watchful care of the people, the heartiest cooperation of the Legislature, and the greatest discretion and wisdom of the Board appointed to manage them.
"They may be well attended, the discipline may be excellent and their teach- ers well qualified; classes may graduate with honor, and the people may cherish a just pride in the attainments of those who have pursued their course of study; in fact they may be excellent colleges, but if they are not training schools for teachers, and if everything else be not kept subordinate to the specific object for which they were founded, the result will be disastrous, not only to these schools, but to our whole educational system. The success of Normal Schools in other states — while it has been such as to warrant a hope that the policy we have inaugurated may be successfully carried out — has not been so marked and so uniform as to assure us that we shall not encounter difficulties that prudence, forecast and energy alone will enable us to overcome."
By 1870 the question had been virtually settled everywhere in favor of normal schools. The list presented in the Appendix1 gives the date of the first establishment of state normal schools throughout the country. In some states the schools had been preceded by training departments in colleges, academies, and high schools; in others, particularly in the south, by teachers' institutes.
THE NORMAL SCHOOL IN 1866
There was at this time no consensus of opinion or practice on the length of a nor- mal school course, which varied from one to three years. There was, however, consid- erable agreement on the content of the curriculum. The course of study adopted in Massachusetts in 1866 covered a period of two years, and included arithmetic, alge- bra, geometry, chemistry, grammar and analysis of the English language, rhetoric and English literature, geography and history, physiology and hygiene, botany and zoology, natural philosophy, mineralogy and geology, astronomy, mental and moral science, the civil polity of Massachusetts and the United States, The theory and art of teaching included principles and methods of instruction, school organization and government, and the school laws of Massachusetts. The variations that occurred else- where were due to the influence of Oswegoq at Ypsilanti the course of study introduced in 1863 included, besides the elementary subjects, object lessons in geography, com- mon things, colors, geometrical figures, botany, zoology and properties of bodies, and drawing. At Winona, Minnesota, the "best methods of teaching * went side by side with the academic study of subject-matter, while the theory and practice of teach- ing included "intellectual and moral philosophy ; lectures on the principles of edu-
1 See page 418.
NORMAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES 33
cation ; history of education ; didactic exercises or sublectures ; observation in model school; preparation of sketches; criticism lessons in teaching; teaching in practice school; and school laws of Minnesota." Thus the main lines that were to mark the future development of the normal school were already laid down when the Missouri system was inaugurated. Some, at least, of the problems that were later to disturb the even development of the normal schools appear to have come to the surface. In Mas- sachusetts, for instance, "the Board [in 1866] deem it unwise to encourage the for- mation of regular advanced classes, whose instruction cannot fail to divert a con- siderable amount of the time and attention of the teachers from the undergraduate course." In general the defects of the day were not unlike those found at a later date. The students suffered from inadequate preparation and fitness; they did not remain long enough to profit by the course; the faculties were too small; and on the whole the normal schools attempted to do too much for pupils of every type.
EARLY VIEW OF THE FUNCTION OF A NOEMAL SCHOOL
It is not out of place to present by way of summary a contemporary view of the function of the normal school, given in a special Report of the Commissioner of Com- mon Schools in Ohio presented to the General Assembly in 1866:
66 The course of instruction in most of the Normal Schools of this country is two years, with a one year's course in a few of them, for teachers of primary schools. While the one single object is to increase the teaching power of the student, the exercises have practically a four-fold aim: —
"l.To impart to the student a thorough teaching knowledge of all the branches ordinarily taught in common schools. This includes not only a mas- tery of the subjects as knowledge, which is the first requisite for successful teach- ing, but also a mastery of them as subjects to be taught to others. This is the one distinctive idea which runs through every lesson and exercise.
"$. To impart to the prospective teacher a practical knowledge of the guiding principles of his art, and to enable him to reduce such principles to something like a philosophical system. In other words, the second aim is to teach the science of education. This is usually sought to be accomplished by lectures.
"3. To impart to the teacher a knowledge of the best methods of instruc- tion and government, including the methods specially applicable to each stage of the child's progress and to each branch of knowledge. This part of the course is sometimes united with the first, each recitation being conducted with a view of unfolding the true method of teaching the topic. But in all Normal Schools where instruction in methods of teaching is made duly prominent, separate ex- ercises are also devoted to the subject.
"4. To impart to the student skill in the art of teaching by an application of his knowledge of principles and methods in actual practice. For this pur- pose most Normal Schools have a Model or Experimental Department, in which the students practice utider the supervision and criticism of a skilled teacher. In the best Training Schools these model-lessons, as they are called, are made the basis of instruction in methods. In some Normal Schools the practice of the stu- dents is obtained by giving model lessons to their own classes/'
34 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF NORMAL SCHOOLS
B. NOKMAL SCHOOLS IN MISSOURI
For the preparation of teachers in the public schools of Missouri the state has devel- oped, in addition to the university, six institutions supported, except for certain fees, wholly by legislative appropriation. Five bear the numbers of the districts that they serve, and are usually referred to by the name of the city in which they are located. In the order of their establishment as state schools they are: Kirksville and War- rensburg, 1870; Cape Girardeau, 1873; Springfield and Maryville, 1906. The sixth, Lincoln Institute, is a school for colored teachers located at the capital, Jefferson City. As its problems and conditions differ considerably from those in the other schools, it is not included in the main discussion.1
EAKLY EFFORTS
Massachusetts was scarcely more than committed to its new institution for train- ing teachers (1839) when the obvious value of the plan was recognized and similar schools were advocated by educational officers in many states. In Missouri, except for the war's interruption, there was a persistent and steadily widening campaign from 184S until the school at Kirksville was established in 1870. State superintendents, and secretaries of state who served ex officio at times in their stead, urged the usual argu- ments in annual reports, and one governor (1 844-48) came forward with an elaborate plan for a combined industrial and pedagogical school. " Home teachers for home schools" as against inferior "foreign or imported teachers" was a popular cry in a state where one- fourth of the districts had no teachers, and three-fourths of those that had teachers secured them from outside the state.2 As to the precise nature of the desired institution, proposals varied from a normal department in the university to a scheme for an independent school in each congressional district — eight in all; but the only early legislation on the subject was an act of 1849 establishing a professorship of the- ory and practice of teaching in the state university, and a system of two-year scholar- ships for each county — all to be financed with an annual appropriation of $1000. The university took no action. In 1856 the Missouri State Teachers Association at its first session passed resolutions in support of normal schools, possibly inspired thereto by Horace Mann, who attended the meetings. This movement had local effect the following year in the establishment of the St. Louis City Normal School, later known as the Harris Teachers College. But the war halted the efforts for state schools until, at its meeting ten years later (1866), the reorganized teachers association took up the subject again in an emphatic memorial to the General Assembly.
JOSEPH BALDWIN
The prospect was not unfavorable, therefore, when, in 1867, Joseph Baldwin came from Indiana to open his normal school at Kirksville. Altho a private venture, it
1 See page 385.
2 House Journal, 1857, 19th Adj. Sess., Appendix, pages 116, 117.
NORMAL SCHOOLS IN MISSOURI 25
was started as an avowed forerunner of a state system, and Baldwin entered at once into an energetic campaign to place it on that footing. As a leading figure In the pro- fessional education of teachers in Missouri for the next dozen years Joseph Baldwin deserves more than passing notice. Born in Pennsylvania in 18S7 and educated at Bethany College in Virginia, he early sought the frontier, teaching for four years in western Missouri — 1852-56. During the next eleven years he conducted four dif- ferent normal schools in Indiana and Pennsylvania, attended a fifth, and served a year in the army. He apparently found his work when he came to Kirksville, for his subsequent career was more stable. A man of modest scholarship, Baldwin seems to have been a noble, strongly emotional soul, who took up his cause with the ardor of an evangelist. He was himself an elder in the Church of the Disciples of Christ, and selected two ordained ministers as his first assistants. For all of them the educational appeal was a veritable gospel, and this became and long remained the note of the whole normal school movement in Missouri. The primary task has been to arouse and inspire country boys and girls, usually handicapped by lack of funds and defective early training, to secure an education. Large numbers of normal school teachers have labored to this end with splendid, almost apostolic, zeal and have done an incalcula- ble amount of good.
THEEE STATE INSTITUTIONS AUTHOKIZED
In 1870, after much agitation and several unsuccessful attempts, legislation was finally secured providing for two institutions to be controlled by a single, central board of seven men, the location of the schools to be auctioned off to the towns mak- ing the highest bids in land and cash appropriations. A third institution for south- east Missouri was voted in 1873. The change from a central board to local boards in 1874 will be discussed later; but space may be taken here to comment on this method of locating state educational institutions — the method followed in all subsequent cases.
METHOD OF LOCATING EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
The principle seems to be based on the assumption that to have any particular community profit by the presence of a state institution is intolerable, but as such advantage cannot well be avoided, the community should first be made to pay as much as possible for the privilege. While the financial saving to a wealthy state is negli- gible, the community paying the bonus has generally laid its plans to " take it out of the school" at the first opportunity, thus winning for the new institution not friends but exploiters, wh0 claim not only legitimate business but often " jobs." In 1871 Superintendent Monteith protested against a plan that engendered "so much of local strife and bitterness besides tempting an ambitious community to assume a burden of taxation heavier than they are able to bear."" l Warrensburg was forced to repudi-
1 State Report, 1871 , -page 20,
86 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF NORMAL SCHOOLS
ate $50,000 of her pledge of $£00,000, and Rolla, after securing the state school of mines with the help of a bond issue of $75,000, succumbed in a similar fashion by going to court and proving the action to have been taken in an unconstitutional manner. Even when in possession the towns have had to defend their title : when the university was destroyed by fire, the people of Columbia were literally " held up" for a fresh bonus of $50,000.
Aside from entirely ignoring the educational merits of the problem, the bad effects of this system have been marked. Kirksville and Chillicothe were involved in a bitter legal wrangle over the first school in the northern district. The Springfield institution narrowly escaped going to a border town, Webb City, a fate which, perhaps not un- luckily, overtook the third district school because of Cape Girardeau's four thousand dollar margin over Ironton in a property valuation, altho Cape Girardeau was at the time sixteen miles from a railroad. To its decided detriment the fifth district school was located at Maryville, all but out of the state; while Warrensburg, on a single railroad and but one county distant from Kansas, won over Sedalia, a thriving and more centrally located town, which in 1871 was connected in five of the six different directions in which its railroads radiate to-day, The dear lesson from Missouri's expe- rience is that state schools should be located by a competent educational commimon on educational considerations only, and that the state should pay all the bills.
CHANGJES IN STATUS AND IN SCOPE OF WORK, 1871-1914
As originally planned and as conducted for the first thirty years of their history, the normal schools offered a four-year course based approximately upon the gradua- tion requirements of the elementary school. A convenient break came at the end of the first two years, and during this early period by far the larger number of students took only this preliminary work, — the majority, probably, only the first year either in whole or in part. A preparatory year long paralleled the upper grade work for mature students who had not completed the elementary school; and a graduate honor was offered for successful experience and a course of reading. Practice schools were contemplated from the outset, and have been maintained except for certain lean years when lack of funds forced their suspension. The summer session, which is now more largely attended than all others, was first introduced as a private venture of the faculty at Warrensburg in 1894,1 and has had an extraordinary gix>wth, due not a little to favoring legislation 2 whereby successful attendance could be counted in lieu of examinations for certificates.
Until 1904 the schools could be technically rated only as secondary institutions. Their character was in fact somewhat different. Most of the advanced students were mature men and women, who had had some, often considerable, experience as teach- ers; they were a select group with unusually industrious habits, and could not fairly
1 State Report, 1896, page 85,
2 Ibid., 1902, page 2 ; 1906, pagre 16.
NORMAL SCHOOLS IN MISSOURI 37
be compared with the strictly secondary type of student. There were some also who had received a secondary education elsewhere, and were taking only the professional work of the normal school. With such a body of students the transition to a genuine collegiate status seemed a simple matter.
In 1904 an agreement between the three existing schools had the effect shortly of placing the last two years of the four-year course on a time level with early college work. High school graduates were given credit for ten of the eighteen units in the four-year "normal" course, and as the number of high school graduates steadily in- creased, the last eight units came eventually to correspond to the first two collegiate years. For a while thereafter the first two years of the "normal" course were made to do duty for the entire high school period by fitting in more or less elastic prepara- tory terms. For a considerable time also the high school graduates took their profes- sional work in low grade classes with students of less training. Gradually, however, the first two years were expanded into a four-year high school course, professional work was largely deferred to the collegiate years, and the present organization ap- peared. Coincident with the change of 1904 was the projection of two "post-gradu- ate" -years leading to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, which included the single year of advanced residence work, recognized by the degree of Master of Pedagogy, that had been announced shortly before.
GEOWTH IN NUMBERS
The success of the summer school with its favorable effect on the total enrolment1 has tended to obscure the actual extent of institutional growth during the recent period of expansion. The average attendance from term to term at Warrensburg's regular session, taken over a period of six years, 1893 to 1898, was six hundred thirty-one, and from 1911 to 191 4i it was seven hundred nine, or a gain of twelve per cent. Cape Girardeau shows an increase from two hundred forty-four to four hun- dred sixty-three, or ninety per cent; and Kirksville, from four hundred fifty-eight to six hundred thirty-three, or thirty-eight per cent.2 For a period of sixteen years of recent development in this type of normal school a joint increase of thirty-five per cent is certainly moderate, and is much nearer the truth than an apparent gain of one hundred forty per cent based on the total annual enrolment. The two new schools at Springfield and Mary ville, established midway in this period, may appear to have checked the growth of the others. As a matter of fact, however, these have served sections of the state that were ill represented before.3
1 For an expression of the enrolment of 1914 in terms of a standard unit of enrolment for one year, see page 428.
2 At Cape Girardeau the facts were available for only four of the six years in the first period. At Kirksville the average attendance from 1893 to 1898 was lacking, but was inferred to be seventy-one per cent of the average total enrolment in the regular session, this being about the proportion at the other twa schools.
8 In 1916 over half of Maryville's spring enrolment (268) was from the local county, and with those from counties immediately adjoining, made up seventy per cent of the school's total attendance. Greene County, in which Spring- field is located, sent one student to the regular session at Warrensburg in 1904-05, the year before the school was established at Springfield, but sent 274 to Springfield in 1914. Six contiguous counties sent ten to Warrensburg in 1904-05 as compared with 188 to Springfield in 1914. Nine per cent only of the regular session students at Warrens- burg in 1904-05 came from counties in the present Springfield district.
38 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF NORMAL SCHOOLS
OPPOSITION
It was a decade or more after their organization before the schools could be said to be secure in public opinion. Attempts at abolition were initiated in every legisla- ture but one from 1871 to 1883.1 The constitution of 1875 protected the university, but left the normal schools at the mercy of statutory law; they therefore shared the fluctuating support of the public school system itself in a community where the tra- dition of the free public school was not yet strong. Throughout the seventies the catalogues annually devote several pages to general defence; in 1880 the Kirks ville bulletin declared : " Success has been achieved in the face of stupendous difficulties. To secure the necessary means seemed a hopeless task. At every step bitter and determined opposition has been encountered. Public sentiment in Missouri was largely opposed to popular education, and hence opposed to Normal Schools, the best means of elevat- ing the common schools.1"1 Superintendent Shannon considered that the definite resolu- tions of support secured in the Democratic Convention of 1880 marked the end of this opposition,2 altho as late as 1895 President Osborne of Wairensburg observed that "in some sections of the state there is strong opposition to the employment of Normal School graduates.1"13 The position of the schools was further embarrassed by the pro- nounced objection of envious towns that saw in them only local benefits. They charged the. state with supporting institutions to take the place of local high schools. Even the small elementary practice schools were attacked as so much further aid to local education. These critics pointed chiefly to the high proportion of local attendance that has characterized all of the normal schools from the beginning — a feature that is marked even after allowing for residents attracted to the town by the school itself.
FINANCIAL STRUGGLES
The struggle for existence, altho finally successful, kept the schools impoverished and uncertain of their future. At Kirksville the state spent $50,000 to finish the plant after the county had laid out $75,000. But Cape Girardeau alone built the first home for its school at a cost of $50,000, and Warrensburg, after spending $150,000, waited ten years for $10,000 from the state with which to complete its building. In the mean- time, at Warrensburg (1880) teachers gave up part of their salaries to obtain money enough to finish off rooms in which to teach, and students gave entertainments to pay for the sidewalks. The annual appropriation to each school was reduced in 1877 from $10,000 to $7500, and at Kirksville two-thirds of that was long held up by the audi- tor. As late as 1898, the state appropriations at Warrensburg lacked $5000 of the amount needed to pay the teachers alone ; and for over twenty-five years this school had no appropriations for library or apparatus, the necessary sums being eked out with small incidental fees, or with tuition from students not pledged to teach or coming from outside the state.4
1 History of the Mrst District State Normal School, by E. M. Violette, 1905, page 82. a State Report, 1880, page 35. 8 Ibid., 1895, page 85. * For a complete list of biennial expenditures from appropriations, see pag-e 441.
NORMAL SCHOOLS IN MISSOURI 39
EFFECT OF POVERTY ON THE SCHOOLS
This policy of near-starvation could not fail to react seriously on the operation and reputation of the schools. In fact, continued financial embarrassment in the face of a pressing opportunity seems to have been the principal cause of their weakness. Every new student that could be corralled, and every old student that could be retained, was valuable both for his fees and as a means of additional pressure on the legislature for more funds. What this led to educationally is seen in President Osborne's protest in 1886: "The classes are necessarily very large, numbering, in some instances, from sixty to seventy members. This renders proper classification impossible under the circum- stances. The teachers are overworked, their best efforts are checkmated by a bad clas- sification, and both discipline and scholastic acquirements suffer in consequence."1 Yet there were few attempts to hold the numbers within limits consistent with good re- sults. In 1889 Warrensburg did raise the age of admission for girls to sixteen, the same as for boys, and President Osborne notes that "this change considerably reduced the rate of increase in attendance for the year 1890, but the enrolment is still much too large for the number of teachers employed."'"' 2 Kirksville and Cape Girardeau de- clined to follow.
Consequently it is not surprising to find State Superintendent Coleman, himself a product of the normal school, declaring in 1889: "One real trouble has always existed in our normal schools : the students try to do the work required in too short a time. The course of study is not too comprehensive, but students are admitted too young on too low a standard of scholarship, and then pushed too rapidly."3 He urges the elimination of all primary work, a minimum age of sixteen for admission, and a rea- sonable four-year curriculum that actually requires four years. Of course very young students, rapid promotion, and the consequent early diploma or degree, mean more students ; and, paradoxically perhaps, by holding out a degree close at hand, these policies mean longer attendance by each student, thus bringing us again to the funda- mental consideration — enrolment. All of these tendencies in the normal schools have persisted almost if not quite to the present day, and appear distinctly traceable to the legislator's policy that considers gross enrolment as the main justification for increased appropriations.
RELATIONS WITH COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
Conditions such as these were inevitably reflected in the opinion of outside insti- tutions with which the normal school came into competition. Reference is made here not to the several "private normals7' and small denominational colleges, most of which have since disappeared, — schools that from time to time made common cause in at- tacking the certificate privileges of the normal schools, and that on at least two occa- sions4 came close to success. It is a question rather of the reputation of the state nor-
1 State Eeport, 1886, page 119. 2 Ibid., 1890, pagre 114.
8 Ibid.* 1889, page 27. * 1895 and 1905, See Violette, op. cit., page 83.
40 ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF NORMAL SCHOOLS
mal schools among the stronger institutions of recognized collegiate standing. These colleges., to be sure, had secondary departments, and were therefore in direct compe- tition with the normal schools ; the university itself maintained such a department until 1893. Furthermore, many normal school students and nearly all graduates were as old as the average college student. President Baldwin had projected an institution which, in his phrase, was to become the "peer of the college," and which did at first essay many college subjects. Conditions which it could not control, however, soon brought the normal school to the level of its low admission requirements ; while its advanced classes were left empty, it was overrun with elementary, short time students; and its financial support was such as to make good educational standards impossible in handling such large numbers.
On the other hand, the university and the better colleges were steadily climbing upward; admission requirements were gradually advanced; students entered at least for the year and usually for the entire course. While the normal schools were neces- sarily local in their sympathies, the colleges, and particularly the university, were seek- ing their places in the larger fraternity of scholars, and were jealous of the standards that placed them there. The normal schools were victims of an isolated statutory and economic situation that governed completely the material with which they dealt and the terms of their own operation, while the higher schools were lifted and carried along more or less by the current of national educational opinion.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that with no agency at hand to bring about and maintain a mutual understanding, friction should arise the moment the question of recognition of credit appeared. The nature of entrance requirements and the method of their enforcement; the basis on which advanced standing is accepted; the whole sys- tem of school credit for promotion and graduation; the organization and sequence of courses; the accuracy and completeness of classification; the training of instructors and the conditions under which they work, — questions like these become vital when institutions agree to a mutual interchange of accounts; and it is around these points that the criticisms by other institutions have centred. These criticisms became acute when the normal schools began consciously to provide for the preparation of teachers for high schools. High schools in Missouri have sprung largely from the elementary school system, and have carried up out of the elementary ranks the best of the ele- mentary teachers. For small schools there was no alternative. Finding themselves thus in possession of the field, the normal schools have naturally and very fortunately as- sumed the burden of making these high school teachers as good as possible. Meanwhile the strong, fully accredited high schools the country over have in general desired a college- trained staff. Consequently as weak schools became strong schools the problem grew more perplexing. Can the normal school give as suitable and thorough training for high school teachers as the college ? If not, why not?
In the absence of a state authority empowered to study and accommodate the situa- tion, controversy has run high both in Missouri and elsewhere, and has done injustice
NORMAL SCHOOLS IN MISSOURI 41
to both parties. The service performed by the normal schools has been in itself worthy and devoted. They have been a powerful and ceaseless leaven of righteousness and progress operating where no other existing force could operate. This fact all honest observers must recognize. Their achievement should not be obscured or belittled by criticisms aroused thru their aspirations for academic rating. It is inevitable and proper in view of their past history, however, that if such rating be accorded, the nor- mal schools should demonstrate their fulfilment of the standards by which they seek to be judged. Such fulfilment can hardly be by affirmation merely; the burden of proof rests with them.
IV
GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL OF MISSOURI NORMAL SCHOOLS
A. THE PIIESENT SYSTEM CONTROL FIRST VESTED IN A SINGLE BOARD
AT the time of their establishment the responsible oversight of the state normal schools was lodged with a single board of regents. As this arrangement is in marked contrast with the multiple board system of to-day to which it was shortly changed, its main features together with the reasons for its discontinuance are of interest.
The board was created by act of the legislature at its session in 1870; it was to consist, in addition to the three ew-officio members of the State Board of Education, of four men appointed by the governor, two of whom were to be chosen from the coun- ties north of the Missouri River, and two from the counties south of the river, these being the districts proposed for the two schools then projected. In the attempted legislation of 1869 and in the original drafts of 1870, when first six and then four schools were planned, the control contemplated was the same — a board first of fif- teen,1 then of eleven members.2 This plan appears to have been persistently adhered to by the promoters of the movement; they evidently thought of the work of these schools as the same throughout; duplication was resorted to for the sake of geograph- ical convenience, but a single aim was to be defined and attained by a single man- agement. With this idea the board located its first two schools, and drew up common courses of study and common regulations for their operation. But serious opposition was aroused in the agitation over location.3 Charges of corruption long hampered the board in its work.
OBJECTIONS TO THE SINGLE BOARD
Aided by such recent experience, southeast Missouri with aggressive sectional zeal brought it about that the school assigned to it in 1873 should be entrusted to a sepa- rate board, in which the appointive members should all be local. This wedge afforded a good opening for an attack on the central board. Other districts felt that they might obtain a school more readily if all schools were locally controlled than if they had to deal with a centralized management.4 It was the practice at the time to turn over the entire legislative appropriation for an institution to its regents immediately after ap- proval. Communities that had bled themselves to secure their respective schools con- sidered it intolerable that five or ten thousand dollars that would belong eventually to them should be held up for months. As the handling of the money seemed to be clearly theirs, it appeared likewise an infringement of their dignity to have even the educational affairs of the institution controlled from a distance* So firmly fixed was
1 House Journal, 1869, page 256. * Ibid,, 1870, pages 299-301. 8 See page 35.
4 This and certain other statements in this section are made on the authority of conversations with persons actively
interested in' this movement at the time.
THE PRESENT SYSTEM 43
this idea of local proprietorship that later, under the new order, the whole board of the Second District School, except the state superintendent, was at first drawn from the one county, three being citizens of Warrensburg. Even the normal school teachers were opposed to the central board, as appears in a resolution of the Kirks- ville faculty of December IS, 1873.1
SEPARATE BOARDS — CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM
The old plan gave way in 1874, and was followed by the present system — a board for each school consisting of the state superintendent ex officio and six others. These are appointed from thelocal district by the governor in three classes of two each for six years instead of four as previously; at least one member of the board to be a resident of the county in which the school is located. The extension of term and the elimina- tion of two of the ew-officio members — the secretary of state and the attorney-gen- eral— were clearly steps in the right direction. An amendment of 1889, by requiring that not more than four regents belong to any one political party, completed the present arrangement. This proviso seems to have done away with the most flagrant political abuses of the new plan ; a strong minority of three being usually able to make itself felt.
As to just how the new scheme worked in its early days we have no information ex- cept thru cautious public utterances of officials. Two of these are unequivocal enough regarding its educational features, and state admirably the principles which later experience has in general shown to be correct. State Superintendent John Monteith, after seeing the new plan in operation for nearly a year, reports as follows:
"Organization for the conduct and government of the State Normals is yet, as I think, quite far from what it should be. The new law of last winter, in many respects good, does not provide the best system of control No large school of the class under consideration can prosper, unless at its head is jplaced an accom- plished President, learned, of excellent executive ability, and fitted for his spe- cialty. When such a head is secured the school is better with the least possi- ble outside government. This Director" should, to a very large extent, be held responsible for the careful and wise conduct of the school. I am, therefore, op- posed to the system of local boards. A general board to supervise the whole system of schools, with executive committees to visit and attend to the business of each individual school, is found by experience to be far better. It is cheaper. It unifies the general features of the schools without impairing their individu- ality."2
Montejth's successor, Dr. R. D. Shannon, began his service with 1875. Looking back on bis double term of office in 1882, he says:
"By the harmonious cooperation of the boards of regents of the several Normal schools, they have been brought much nearer to a common standard within the last six years. But this is merely a fortuitous circumstance controlled by no in- fluence stronger than the pleasant and agreeable relations between boards sep-
* Violette, op. oit., page 193. 8 State Report, 1874, page 17.
4* GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL
arated by great distance and ignorant both of each other and of the conditions and needs of the schools over which they do not preside. ... As there can be but one policy upon the part of the State with reference to these institutions, — since the interests of all sections are identical as to education, and demand the same qualifications upon the part of teachers and the same methods of in- struction— it would be better to secure perfect uniformity in the courses of in- struction and perfect harmony in the management of these schools by placing three of them under a single board."1
ATTEMPTS TO UNIFY THE SCHOOLS EDUCATIONALLY
In 1874, in view of the dissolution of the central board that was just then taking place. President Baldwin of Kirksville urged a joint committee of presidents to pass upon applications for graduation,2 doubtless with the idea that this would also help to keep the schools together. In his next report he pleads for "unity of plan, harmony of action, and hearty cooperation"3 among all the state institutions. President Cheney of Cape Girardeau, in his report of the same year, put first among his needs "the same course or courses of study for all these schools," and "the same conditions of grad- uation in all. 'H All these desiderata were secured by Superintendent Shannon thru conference, and for ten years the joint board of presidents that President Baldwin had suggested went from school to school as an effective body for educational control. The result was marked; President Osborne of Warrensburg declared: "The value of these measures in bringing about unity in the normal work can scarcely be overesti- mated. The tendency of a common course of study towards this end is at once appar- ent;" and he saw in it a "means of annually comparing results and thus promoting a generous rivalry."5 But a union held only by 'this voluntary personal tie was bound to dissolve as the individuals changed, and the schools drifted apart. Not until 1899 did they succeed in bringing about another common course of study. In 1904 they united, with important reservations on the part of Kirksville, in essential administrative arrangements, and corrected these again in 1914; the important agreement of 1916 will be mentioned later. These occasional seasons of harmony — all voluntary and oc- curring only when the situation had become bad — were, however, merely incidents in long periods of marked divergence. In fact, since 1899 attempts to unite on a cur- riculum have been abandoned entirely, and each institution has been busy following the particular vision of its own leader, who calls the procedure "meeting local con- ditions," or "developing the genius of the institution," or "satisfying the demands of the people," or "upholding democracy in education," as the case may be.
PRESENT OPERATION OF THE SEPARATE BOARDS
This review of the early changes in organization and of the fitful and futile efforts of the heads of the institutions to secure united action, at least in their educational
1 State Report, 1882, page xii. 2 Ibid., 1874, page 45. 8 Ibid., 1875, page 188. 4 Ibid. , 1875, page 195. e Ibid. , 1878, page 283.
THE PRESENT SYSTEM 45
function, brings us to a general examination of the system as it appears to operate to-day. A careful study of the personnel of the several boards of regents was not made. Present or past members of each board were Interviewed, in certain cases repeatedly and at some length. The character of these gentlemen would indicate that, on the whole, the boards have represented a high average of general ability. Some mem- bers have served their respective institutions for from twenty to thirty years, the tendency in some places, particularly at Cape Girardeau, being toward rather stable membership. The additions year by year reflect, of course, the qualities of the gov- ernor who appoints them, but on the whole it is improbable that this method of selection will anywhere provide a better group of men. The one remediable defect in the present system is the rapidity with which the boards may change, in spite of a six-year term. Owing to death or resignation it has occurred several times recently that three members have changed in a single biennium, and even in the natural course of events a governor who so desires may change four members, or a majority of the board, within his single term of office. Moreover, the elective state superintendent is likely to change within the same period, making an almost complete overturn of the group. When it is remembered that the one condition of the successful operation of a lay board is that the replacements be made slowly enough to enable the head of the school and the older members of the board to educate the newcomers to a sound con- ception of their duties, it will be seen that changes now come too fast; to say nothing of the unwisdom of having the whole character of the board subject to the ideas of any one governor. The board may and often does come together but once or twice a year, and its opportunity to study the situation may be very slight; one new member in each biennium would allow sufficient elasticity, and would at the same time ensure a stable and as well-informed a membership as the nature of the selections would permit.
FUNCTION OF A BOARD NOT UNDERSTOOD
It is to a lack of knowledge of their duties on the part of board members that many of the internal difficulties of the schools are directly traceable. Most students of edu- cation will agree that efficient control of an educational institution involves broadly two kinds of responsibility: first, the care that the concrete processes of education — study and instruction, training and testing — shall go forward with the maximum speed and thoroughness; and second, solely for the sake of the first, that the material means and equipment — buildings, apparatus, and salaries — shall be adequately and economically supplied, A third responsibility, lacking which the otiber two may be met in vain, is not so generally discerned, namely, that the aim of the institution shall be continually reconsidered in the light of changing situations and promptly and wisely readjusted. Under modern conditions all of these obligations are tasks for well -trained men giving their entire time to their work, if the business of preparing teachers is to be prosecuted with success equal to that even of a modern manufactur- ing concern.
46 GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL
WHAT is THE FUNCTION OF A BOARD OF REGENTS ?
What, then, is the function of the regents? By good fortune the field work of this study was begun with the school at Mary ville at a meeting with the board of regents of that institution, where the impression, subsequently confirmed by the head of the school, was gained that almost ideal conditions existed between school and board. A perusal of the state reports later revealed a letter from the president of this board — then president of the local school board — giving his views as to the function of a school board. We cannot do better than quote this in part:
"Upon one side is democracy represented by the Board of Education, and upon the other a cultured institution. Between the two as an intermediary is the super- intendent. The relation of the board to the community is somewhat analogous to that of the superintendent to the board. While some of the duties of the board are fixed by legal enactment, many of them are by implication. It is its duty to look after the highest welfare of the institution intrusted to its care. It is also its duty to lead the community to recognize what is best in education. As the Board represents a culture higher than the general culture of the community, and as its closer relations with the school and supervising officers give to it a wider and better view than the views of the community, the work of the Board becomes directly educative, and its duty, manifestly, is to inform and direct the commu- nity. ... It [the Board] is a non-professional organization with work to be done requiring very high professional wisdom and skill. The whole complex organiza- tion of the school and its work in detail may come within the scope of its offi- cial observations, but at the suggestion and under the direction of the superin- tendent. He becomes for it the measure of its efficient service. It should exact of him the greatest vigilance and the most painstaking accuracy, and it has a right to expect of him candor and frankness. Upon the other hand it should be guided by his wisdom and influenced by his recommendations, and it must honor him with its confidence and loyalty."1
If these principles hold of a municipal school system, they should be doubly sacred in a higher professional institution. The all-important business of a board is to keep a first-class executive at the head, and then the less government the better, as Super- intendent Monteith said forty years ago. Many normal school regents in Missouri apparently fail to discover this, and exceedingly few realize it at the time of their appointment. To the excellent and devoted men who have seen clearly, who have spent their best energies in securing a thoroughly trained, experienced, and able man, and have then buttressed his efforts both in school and community with an eye solely to the success of the school, are due the good results already achieved. But the labor of dealing successfully with those gentlemen who either from igno.rance or self-interest do not have this point of view is out of all proportion to the results. Not understand- ing the true relation it irks them to be, as they say, "a mere rubber stamp" — a feel- ing that does credit to their conscience if not to their intelligence. They have been appointed; they must justify that appointment by action; and the action taken usually
1 State Report, 1904, page 55.
THE PRESENT SYSTEM 47
tries the nerve of the president and his readiness to sacrifice everything for his pro- fessional integrity. If he stands the test, the fight is usually won; if he yields, however little, to what he knows to be professionally wrong, he is the tool and toy of that board thereafter. For the sake of the school such a test of real presidential timber would not be a bad thing, if boards would only drop the timid and reward the brave; but that is not their way. Even at Maryville, at the time of organization, the first board, and not the president, selected the school's first faculty regardless of profes- sional considerations ; the strategic importance of a teacher in the new district or his personal relationship seems to have played the important role. In another school, much more recently, the leading member of the faculty, next to the president, was ousted in spite of the protest of the president's renewed nomination — and the president re- mained ! Two of the boards have recently elected members of their own body to posi- tions of profit in the schools without the consent of the presidents concerned, and by one of them a field agent with whom the president cannot cooperate has been main* tained upon the payroll for years in face of the president's direct opposition. The latter bokrd will not only make appointments distasteful to the president, but will invite and encourage direct dealings with faculty members, especially with such as are willing to use this method of raising their salaries, and at its annual meeting will determine the whole faculty schedule, ignoring the president and reflecting him last. So far as appeared, the school at Cape Girardeau has been free from mismanagement of this sort.
Even when board members will not openly oppose the prerogative of the educa- tional head in planning the efficiency of his institution, there is a subtler pressure which the bravest executive resists with difficulty, namely, the tendency to shape nominations and proposals partly to suit the known preferences of the board when these are made apparent. A board that cannot abstain from such expression and that neglects to reinforce not only a president's right but his complete responsibility for the personnel of his corps, runs great risk of leading him to sacrifice excellence in a well-meant desire for "harmony."
PARTY POLITICS IN THE BOAKDS
However ridden with school politics certain of the normal schools appear to have been, and to be, there apparently has been, until very recently, a marked freedom from party politics in the operations of the boards. A vain effort from high party author- ities to foist off on a courageous president a "lame" party politician as a teacher dis- closes an always latent tendency ; in this case the board seems to have loyally protected its leader from punishment. Still more instructive and deplorable from every point of view was the recent apparent attempt to pay a political debt with the presidency of the school at Warrensburg. The proposed beneficiary, a personally attractive and capable gentleman and an active party worker possessing strong political connections, was a man with but a fragment of even a college education, and without administrative
48 GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL
training or experience that would qualify him for such a post. A vacancy was created by dropping a man of the opposite party who for nine years had served the school, and under whose charge it had enjoyed extraordinary growth and prosperity. From all that could be learned, furthermore, this was accomplished without the faintest pretence at basing the procedure on educational or professional grounds. With plans well laid the board proceeded to the election of a new president, but the alumni were so aroused, and the upheaval among the teachers of the school became so threatening at the prospect of a leader inferior in training and experience to most of themselves, not to mention the grossness of the political barter involved, that the board's courage weakened. Fortunately the minority nominee was a choice on which it would have been difficult to improve — a man with collegiate and graduate preparation and a conspicu- ously successful experience of some length at the Warrensburg school; on him the board finally united. It is little short of a disaster when for any reason an educational institution falls into the hands of a person not qualified to direct it. This was happily prevented at Warrensburg. It is, however, a moral disaster complete and overwhelm- ing when seven trustees of an institution, or a majority of them, prove false to their official duty on the occasion which is the chief reason for their existence as trustees* Such a calamity the outcome can scarcely be said to have averted,
WEAKNESS OF THE BOAEDS IN MATERIAL AS WELL AS IN EDUCATIONAL PBOBLEMS
The boards do their best work in handling the questions of the second group cited above, namely,, those growing out of the material equipment and financial mainte- nance of the institution. Here the criticism of experienced and successful laymen is of great value, but may be overdone, as is proved in the case where a much needed increase in salaries — the paramount consideration of a good school — was held up for years by an active regent, who could see only the need for an enlarged equipment and campus improvement. Under this head falls also the paralyzing practice alleged and apparently true, of some boards, of judging the worth of a teacher, and his con- sequent differential treatment in salary, on the basis .of the number of students that he can enroll in his classes. Again, Missouri boards have been known to erect buildings and to exclude the head of the school from even an advisory participation in plan- ning the structure he is to use. In all these situations the educational consideration should obviously come first, and the judgment of those men who are trained and paid to know should prevail.
in the important responsibilities of the third class mentioned — those of studying and redefining the aim of the school — the board of regents is naturally helpless. Not only is the average local regent incapable, thru lack of data, of judging what the exact aim and scope of the school should be; he is predisposed thru his local and sectional sympathies to favor any and all developments of the institution that will serve a purely local or sectional end. If it is proposed to have a college instead of a normal school, he is in favor of it, of course; shall an agricultural and commercial
THE PRESENT SYSTEM 49
trade school be added, he sees great advantages; shall courses for new types of teach- ers be advertised, he agrees at once, if the new departure will enroll more students. The problems involved are highly technical, and he is perforce at the mercy of his chief educational adviser. Here any energetic and plausible president can work his will, especially if he can show — a matter of deplorable facility — that "it won't cost much, if any, more."
LACK OF UNITY IN POLICIES AFFECTING THE WHOLE STATE
The system bears its full fruit When it becomes, as in Missouri, a question not of a single institution, but of a series of institutions established for one well-understood purpose — to provide a good teacher for every school position in the state. Here are five schools with independent local boards as described above, and a sixth, the uni- versity, having a general board representing the entire state. All are preparing teach- ers, and all are supported by state taxation. The state has a maximum need which all the schools together, with the most complete cooperation, could scarcely meet, yet no means exists of coordinating the efforts made by each in a practical solution of the common problem. In the five normal schools it was probably intended that the state superintendent should be the unifying factor common to all boards. This officer, how- ever, is himself elective and without much aubhority. He is a convenient counselor to the presidents and occasionally to the boards, but as related to the latter, his posi- tion, in the opinion of at least two recent incumbents of the office, is isolated and relatively without influence. If he were himself a trained and responsible appointive officer, and if then normal school boards could elect their presidents only on his nom- ination, and change their curricula only with his approval, he could do the state a great service thru his grasp of its problem as a whole.
EACH SCHOOL A LAW UNTO ITSELF
In the absence of any coordinating authority, each school moves solely in its own interest. Its winnings from the legislature are in fairly direct proportion to the politi- cal influence exerted by the president or board members. Activity of this sort is in- cessant and skilfully directed, but that educational considerations play but a minor role in the apportionments is evident from the striking inequalities that exist. While the school at Cape Girardeau is luxuriously housed in a fine plant including four school buildings and two dormitories, Springfield, with an annual enrolment of several hun- dred more students, has been obliged to endure years of excessive crowding in the sin- gle structure with which it started. It is a situation true to type, for in 1896 the same institution at Cape Girardeau, with an annual enrolment then of three hundred and ten, secured an appropriation for building four separate halls for the exclusive use of as many literary societies, when the school at Warrensburg, enrolling annually over nine hundred students, was unable to secure money enough to pay its teachers. A sys- tem that admits of such extremes is bad; the state is merely doling out funds in the
50 GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL
dark where the personal or sectional pressure is greatest, and must continue to do so until it concludes to entrust its biennial offering for the training of teachers to a sin- gle, central board competent to make a rational distribution on the basis of proved educational requirements.
EDUCATIONAL DIVERSITY OF THE "INSTITUTIONS
In their educational aspects the five schools are as diversified as tho they were in separate states. They are all dealing with the same kind of student for the same final purpose in the same state community, yet their terminology, their standards of value, and their methods of educational bookkeeping are quite unlike; and the content of their curricula, their graduation requirements, and their organization of fundamental features are widely divergent, the practice in each school expressing either the inherited tradition or the will of the present head, modified in some schools to an extent by the action of the faculty. Nevertheless, they cannot escape one another. When a student offers himself to all in turn, indicating that he may be had by the highest bidder for the uncertain credentials he has to offer, the losers naturally suspect the winner. Three schools told of losing students to other schools where graduation was effected with unexpected speed. One institution offered flatly in its catalogue to meet "whatever favors either of the other schools will grant and no more."" In the matter of entrance requirements this independent attitude has had noticeably bad effect. In 190& two of the schools desired to standardize terms of admission by accept- ing on certificate only students from approved high schools and taking others on exam- ination. The third preferred to take in all alike and "prove them up," that is, admit them to class and throw responsibility on a teacher anxious to increase his enrolment. Thus the first two were virtually compelled to adopt that method or suffer the con- sequences, and the high schools were denied this much needed support by the institu- tions that should have done most to strengthen them.
Loss TO THE SCHOOLS OF CRITICAL REVISION
This interplay of uncertain relations is not the major defect. The real weakness in the situation is the loss to each institution of the tonic effect that would follow were it obliged to keep its practice overhauled under the critical eyes of competent outsiders either from other schools or from the state department. Such criticism would require it to bring its methods up to a well-thought-out standard agreed upon for all. There are such standards in all the matters above mentioned, some of which are found exem- plified at each school, but they are checked and often neutralized either by the bad institutional habits of earlier years, or by the radical, undigested innovations intro- duced on the spur of the moment thru the system of one-man control. It is unthinkable that a modern corporation, doing in each of five Missouri towns a business requiring from five hundred to one thousand employees in each plant, would tolerate the mean- ingless and arbitrary variety in methods directed at identical ends that presents itself
THE PRESENT SYSTEM 51
in these five normal schools. Some years ago, to terminate the existing chaos, the state inaugurated in each school a standard system of financial accounting and stopped there. Meanwhile, the vastly more important interest, that for which the schools exist and for which they should be held most strictly to account, namely, their educational procedure, goes without scrutiny, check, or control of any sort save by the one man whose apparent success and public recognition have no relation, direct or indirect, to the proved excellence of his work. In the name of "liberty" the real emphasis is placed on "difference;" whereas in all other processes, the effective procedure is first to agree on the best way the thing is to be done, and then put the emphasis squarely on the quality of the work. Under the present system of local boards such cooperation is impracticable.
THE NOEMAL SCHOOLS versus THE STATE UNIVERSITY
The absence of material and educational coordination of the normal schools among themselves is thus a serious and expensive defect. These same disadvantages are ac- centuated, however, in the active friction and lack of adjustment between the five normal schools on the one hand and the state university on the other. The normal schools, altho virtually identical in scope, are relatively non-competitive by reason of their districting. The state's one great centre of higher education, on the other hand, almost from its inception, has exercised the function of preparing teachers — for years many elementary, of late mostly high school teachers and administrative officers. Between these two institutional groups competition is inevitable unless forestalled either by an adequate controlling organization or by voluntary coordination on the part of the responsible educational leaders. The former does not exist; the latter failed up to 1916. Even under the entente then arranged it exists only in minor tho impor- tant respects; in all matters affecting the field or scope of operations the traditional autonomy prevails. In the cases of at least two normal schools this autonomy means frank competition with the university — competition first in filling positions in high schools, and second in securing the attendance of students for a four-year college course. Offering as they have elaborate elective programs of a general character, the schools at both Kirksville and Cape Girardeau must naturally exert themselves to fill the high school vacancies in their respective districts to the exclusion of students from the university, and can hardly see without regret the attendance at the university of students who might be taking college work with them. The school at Warrensburg, altho it has prepared a larger number of high school teachers than either of the other two, has not so clearly assumed this attitude; while Springfield and Maryville have until recently devoted themselves to the supply of elementary teachers. With due growth in size or a slight shift in personal relations, however, there is no reason to expect that these schools also will not aggressively press their claims to the high school positions within their districts.
52 GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL
SOURCES OF RIVALRY
This competition is the logical outcome of the historical development traced else- where.1 The university, preparing the teachers for the largest and strongest high schools and standardizing the conditions surrounding them, has projected its influ- ence steadily deeper; the normal school, training the teachers in the smaller high schools, has as steadily strengthened its courses for this purpose as small high schools have multiplied, and its influence has mounted with their growth. At last the two forces have met, and the problem of their mutual adjustment is as yet unsolved.2
One of the university's most effective aids in developing its tributary high schools has been its high school inspector. For the admission of its graduates to the univer- sity without examination, the approved high school has been obliged to satisfy a con- stantly increasing list of requirements in all points aifecting its efficiency, including the training of its teachers. This has been an incalculable benefit to every high school community — a benefit difficult of attainment byany other method : yet the operations of this inspector easily become the object of suspicion by the normal schools that are desirous of placing their graduates in positions that he inspects. Where there is strong difference of opinion as to what constitutes -satisfactory training, such as has long existed between the university and some of the normal schools, serious conflict may and does arise out of a perfectly sincere attitude on both sides. To represent their special interests the normal schools have had recourse to a "field agent," either to serve expressly as a drummer for students and positions, or to unite that function with certain more dignified extension duties. One of these officers professes to know intuitively which youth belongs in the university and which in the normal school, and to act accordingly, but promoters cannot always be counted upon to decide infallibly in such matters. Aside from these official representatives, the instructors and officers in all institutions acting as lecturers, commencement speakers, and so forth, conduct an indirect and, in itself, doubtless wholesome propaganda; but to have these educational servants of the state working at cross purposes in pressing the claims of one institution rather than another — both state supported — is bewil- dering and unfair to the student as well as wasteful to the state and hurtful to its real educational interests.
With one notable exception the official literature of the six institutions appears to have been restrained and considerate in tone. The publications of the school at Kirksville, altho intended for the use of students, have been consistently devoted to partisan efforts. The alleged virtues and achievements of this particular school have been glowingly set forth, with attacks and reflections both direct and indirect upon another state institution. Competition for high school students and positions is con- ceived to be the normal condition : "If the universities should gain control of the high schools, then the so-called small colleges, the normal schools, and the various inde-
1 See pages 85-87. a See pages 89-98.
THE PRESENT SYSTEM 53
pendent technical schools would cease to have the means of competition, and the uni- versities would be all-powerful."1
It might reasonably be expected that sincere efforts for educational readjustment would be taken to the proper agency, the legislature, without seeking to prejudice stu- dents by polemics against a sister school. Such competitive exploitation should be impossible, and would be were all institutions subject to review and coordination by a single authority.
EFFECTS OF INSTITUTIONAL COMPETITION
Outside of the institutions themselves, educational and other interests in the state at large are influenced to no slight extent by sympathy with one party or the other. Certain towns are practically closed to one school or another because of a superin- tendent drawn from an opposing institution; influential school board members, biased by trivial personal attachments — a child who has attended, a good speech, or a favor done by a representative — direct the patronage regardless of the merits of the appli- cants. The state superintendent of public schools, an officer who should make effective disposal of all the educational energies in the state, necessarily becomes more or less partisan. If, as in several recent cases, he be a man without college or university train- ing, he feels himself largely out of sympathy with these higher institutions ; if, on the -other hand, he be a university man without normal school experience, he and his office are likely to be distrusted by the institutions with which he has most to do. Theo- retically he is a Republican or a Democrat ; actually he is pro-university or pro-normal school, or so considered; to control the superintendency is therefore worth the effort of both sides.
Under present conditions it is to the interest of each and every institution to push its claims before the legislature; this results in the maintenance of a sort of legisla- tive lobby. It is not a long step from the legitimate presentation of the needs of an institution to the "log rolling" that bases success on efforts of quite another nature, and it is declared by competent observers that the tendency to take this step is al- ready strong in Missouri. To what extent this is true it is difficult to say, but with two sets of institutions sharply and increasingly competitive in an important field, there is the prospect that, as in some other states, the people and their representa- tives will gradually segregate into "pro-university" and "pro-normal school" groups, and that other legislation will be affected or determined by this division.
THE LOCAL BOAEB SYSTEM RESPONSIBLE
It is hardly necessary to point out that the conditions and tendencies noted above are unwholesome, and that they are plainly traceable to the present system of inde- pendent local boards. To sum up the defects of these boards it may be said: (1) that in practice, if not in theory, they may, and frequently do, change too rapidly; (2) that
1 Bulletin (Supplementary), KvrJcsville, September, 1907, page 1.
54 GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL
owing to Ignorance of their true duties their members almost inevitably interfere, to the injury of the institutions, in matters that the state has assigned to its paid ex- perts ; (3) that where their members do not thus interfere, their duties are so nominal as not to interest men of the highest ability and public standing; (4) that for political considerations they are capable of disregarding their educational obligations; (5) that lacking a competent and convincing educational adviser who has the good of the whole state in view, they may easily ignore the local head of an institution and make serious mistakes, or yet more easily be induced by an enthusiastic president to follow a course that is either futile or detrimental to the state as a whole; (6) that the system breaks down completely when it is desired to coordinate the work of several institu- tions according to one consistent policy. This is shown in irrational appropriations, in pointless and wasteful divergences in practice, in the intx*oduction, by irresponsible officers, of arbitrary innovations directly affecting other schools, and in the destruc- tive rivalry that wastes both funds and energy, bewilders the student, breeds friction among public schools and their officers, and injects wholly unnecessary partisanship into legislative discussion. In short, under such conditions, education becomes not a matter of statesmanship but of politics.
On the other hand, the best that can be said in defence of the local boards is in- conclusive. It is urged that by this system more men are kept actively interested in the schools than the few who might constitute the central authority in some other plan. This is not necessarily true, for local committees, made up of women as well as men, could be designated for the advisory inspection and genuine promotion of the school in the community without investing them with power to maintain an irritat- ing and useless interference or allowing them by their very existence to block the realization of a sound policy for the whole state. Beyond!" this there is1 little to urge. Poor as the system is in general, and bad as it is in some particular spots, the main fault lies in its weakness. When established it was regarded by the best contempo- rary opinion as much less effective than the centralized system that it displaced, and the experience of forty years and of other states has amply borne out the earlier judgment.
B. PROPOSALS FOR A BETTER ORGANIZATION OF PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR TEACHERS
How can Missouri most profitably administer the preparation of her teachers ?
This is an important and difficult question : important because there is much at stake; difficult because changed conditions everywhere demand a fresh answer for which no American state has as yet worked out a wholly satisfactory precedent. From a material, social, and intellectual standpoint, Missouri has been transformed in fifty years; her needs to-day are radically different from those that dominated her reorgan- ization after the Civil War. Her possibilities are measured, furthermore, not merely by the best that any other commonwealth possesses, but by the degree of skill with
PROPOSALS FOR BETTER ORGANIZATION 55
which the lessons learned elsewhere can be turned to account. A state should by all means move cautiously and surely in new educational adjustments; but every pro- gressive community must expect sometimes to lead the way in making trial of promis- ing means of advancement.
PREPARATION OF TEACHERS A HOMOGENEOUS UNDERTAKING
A completely serviceable administration of the preparation of teachers in Missouri probably cannot be attained without reorganization. We have seen how the existing institutions were set up independently. Proceeding from small, tho for the time ade- quate beginnings, they have grown with the people's growth, and now hamper one another by their unrelated efforts. The present need is to coordinate and blend them into a single, powerful, and smoothly working instrument for the great service that they are expected to perform. Leaving the two great cities out of account, it may be said that, at present, the state is preparing its teachers thru seven unrelated, tax-sup- ported agencies. The university, under a board of curators, has prepared or shared the preparation of many instructors for the strongest and largest high schools. The five normal schools, under their several local boards, have prepared or shared the pre- paration of about half of the high school teachers, especially for the small schools, and two-thirds of the elementary teachers in graded schools; they have also exerted more or less influence over nearly half of the vast mass of rural school teachers. The high school training classes, under the control of the state superintendent, are sup- posed to prepare exclusively for the rural schools, but have not been carefully regu- lated for that purpose. There can be no reasonable question that better results than are now accomplished under these several managements could be secured under one control. To educate teachers for the public schools is essentially one homogeneous task, and in communities as great and as closely knit as a modern state like Missouri, this function could profitably be unified in expert hands.
A REORGANIZED UNIVERSITY
The main question is, of course, the relation between such a unified system and the present institutions. In Missouri the answer to this question is greatly facilitated by the nature of the situation. The five normal schools are similar institutions of like aims and traditions, and are well distributed over the state. They are at pres- ent offering a great variety of elective curricula, but all include the four-year cur- riculum parallel with the regular four-year curriculum at the university; none has at- tempted to give graduate courses. In spite of the considerable amount of secondary work now required of them, it is obvious that in the broadest sense these professional training schools, hitherto by accident described as "normal schools," are already, in spirit and purpose, essentially a part of that equipment for higher and professional education that constitutes a university, whether so organized or not. There are ex- cellent reasons why it would be wise to recognize and confirm this fact by incorpo-
56 GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL
rating the present normal schools together with the university school of education as a state Division of Education fully organized and equipped to provide for all phases of the professional training of teachers for the public schools of the state. The normal schools would thus become State Colleges of Education within the university and subject to the same consideration as any other branches of that institution. - Longer to maintain the distinction between the university and the normal school as representing a distinguishable difference in grade or quality of instruction is, in the cases of the best normal schools in this country, purely factitious; and its eradi- cation would be the best possible reason for requiring of inferior schools a genuine enforcement of the standards to which most of them now profess their adherence. In the numerous American normal schools now doing thoroughly standard work, the instructors have as broad and as intensive training as those giving instruction to stu- dents of equal advancement in good colleges and universities, and are quite frequently superior in this respect. In the content of instruction the normal school provides a specialized professional organization of material that in its field is as significant technically as any work in medicine or law. The teaching in first class normal schools is probably in advance of that to be found in the ordinary arts colleges or even in the better medical and law schools. Both institutions use the same tools — books, both for text and reference, laboratories, and collections — frequently making them for each other ; both seek the same scientific standards of achievement ; both con- duct original enquiries and "surveys," tho in the university this latter purpose neces- sarily stands forth more clearly. Furthermore, the interchange of personnel is con- stant: students in large numbers proceed from the normal schools to the universities, not for different, but primarily for more advanced work than the former are able to offer; on the other hand, students from the universities, or those who have had both types of training, return to the normal school as instructors, bringing the ways and ideals of the university with them. For twenty years the two institutions have been more and more acutely conscious of each other as they have moved in con veiling lines to the same goal : the normal school proving to the university the vitality and effi- cacy of a central professional purpose in preparing teachers, the university serving the normal school as a steady and beneficent critic while profiting by its progress. The nor- mal schools represent the only type of higher professional education not yet formally included in the university group. Fusion of the two in one organization is reasonable, and would manifestly promote the fundamental integrity of the state's educational life.
A PROFESSIONAL BOARD OF EXECUTIVES
The plan suggested would at once make it possible to consolidate all of the state's teacher- training agencies under one educational direction, as well as under a single formal government. With this in view the affairs of these five colleges, together with the university school of education, should be placed under the direction of a new board consisting of the heads of these six units, with whom should sit also the presi-
PROPOSALS FOR BETTER ORGANIZATION 57
dent or chancellor of the university and the state superintendent of public schools. This board would constitute not merely the responsible authority for the manage- ment of certain institutions. It would be a board of expert men in complete charge of the preparation and supply of all teachers for the state, and the regulation of such lateral interests as the high school training classes in their professional aspects should be under its control. Its decisions would be reported to the board of curators of the- university for approval, and might of course be vetoed by it. Such action, however, would certainly be rare; the habit of a competent group would be to study a mea- sure with such thoroughness as to admit of but one conclusion before seeking final approval thereon.
A board for the purposes here indicated should be ensured the power, the i-espon- sibility, and the necessary procedure for reaching reliable results. It should nominate the personnel of instruction and administration, including the presidents and dean, in the component colleges and school of education. It should propose policies and regulations for administrative action. With the assistance of the state department of education it should study unremittingly the dimensions and character of its prob- lem in the number and kind of teachers needed in the state. In cooperation with the several faculties, and with their approval, it should work out and revise curricula to meet these needs. It should consider and propose the creation or adaptation of material facilities with the single purpose of solving in the best possible fashion for the state the problem of teacher supply. The expert character of its members, and their relief from local and political demands, their opportunities for securing abundant accu- rate information, the elimination of competition, and the requirement of frequent (at least monthly) sessions for careful discussion and planning would go far toward an assurance that the ultimate solution of their problem would be correct.
EFFECTS OF PROPOSED REORGANIZATION
The form of organization here described has certain suggestive implications: (I) The heads of the several institutions, cooperating as executives of their respec- tive colleges under the new plan, instead of being semi-political promoters with at- tention divided between the local board and the legislature, would become strictly educational officers concerned solely with their individual institutions as carrying out a definite state policy framed by them and for which they were responsible. Their ten- ure would be permanent and secure instead of biennial and precarious as now; their power in the state would be greater and their judgment surer because of constant mutual criticism and support; the position would be attractive to trained students of education and to men of first-rate ability.
(&) The teachers in the present normal schools would at once acquire 'fall collegiate or university status; salaries, hours of work, and pension privileges, as well as quali- fications of training and experience, would be regulated for aH alike; there would be but one fraternity of state-employed servants in higher education. The students like-
58 GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL
wise would be relieved of invidious distinctions, both actual and alleged, between themselves and regular college or university students. In the interests of solidarity in higher education the university could well afford to welcome the alumni of the nor- mal schools to such standing as their varying attainments might justify,
(3) Administrative differences would immediately disappear in favor of one thor- oughly studied procedure worked out and applied in joint consultation. Admissions could be handled from one central office, possibly that of the state superintendent, thus securing a just and uniform treatment of credentials. A common terminology, a uniform grading and credit system, would convince both teacher and pupil that he was not a victim of local idiosyncrasy, but had received standard treatment, open to objection possibly on its merits but applied to all alike.
(4) The curricula would be unified and harmonized, and their administration placed on a rational basis. Since all schools and teachers would be of equal standing* it would make no more difference whether a certain curriculum for kindergartners or for high school teachers were given at one college or another, than it would if they were given in different buildings on the same campus. Such matters would be determined on the merits of local need and availability in view of all considerations and without insti- tutional prejudice or jealousy. A large financial saving would certainly accrue at this point. Great advantage for the curriculum would result, too, from the increased flexi- bility of the staff of instruction. With intimate association of all colleges in the uni- versity, instructors could readily be assigned from one to another for special courses or lectures, thus utilizing fully each teacher's best powers. Teachers in other departments of the university would be available for the same purpose. Again, with associated ad- ministration, the school of education, which would doubtless develop primarily as a research or graduate school, would be in an admirable, in fact the only logical posi- tion to assist and be aided by the various enquiries undertaken at the five collegiate centres. Instructors in the colleges would then be in close and continual contact with this work of the graduate school, where they could perfect their training or cooperate on special problems.
(5) Outside of the institutions, the chief effect of the proposed plan would be to relieve the state of the element that most disturbs and confuses its representatives in providing for higher education. At present each separate school demands all that it dares, in the hope of finally obtaining enough to allow it to operate and expand. Budgets are made out not on educational grounds, but with an eye to institutional success, and the arbiter as to what these various interests — some genuine, some fanci- ful, some real but inflated — shall receive, is a legislative committee of laymen wholly uninformed except by the glowing advice of the interested local board members and presidents.1 By the proposed plan the budget for the training of teachers would be fully worked out jointly in the board of presidents; the chancellor and the board of
1 A representative of the enquiry was present at one visit of the state junketing committee. Surrounded by mem- bers of the local board of regents and by school officers, these gentlemen went thru buildings and grounds, made speeches at the student assembly, and were very uneconomically entertained by the home economics department
PROPOSALS FOR BETTER ORGANIZATION 59
curators would be responsible for its suitable incorporation in the budget of the uni- versity, and the proposals for financing the state's higher education would come as a logical whole before the state's government. With its support merged thus in the general budget, the normal school would find immediate relief from the pressure for numbers that now exercises such a baneful influence over its educational policies. Ap- propriations could be unspecified as to their detailed application, which would be subject to the discretion of the board of executives. It would be possible, for example,! by economies in other quarters, for a central control to relieve the pressure of num- bers at Springfield even on a reduced total appropriation. Such an administration would convince the state that within the general scope of its desires, its funds were being wisely distributed by those who were engaged "because they knew best how to do it,
(6) To the state at large the benefit of having a single unified scheme of higher education would be manifold. The student fresh from high school and anxious about his future would receive consistent and unbiased advice at any institution and in all of the state's official educational literature, as to where he could best go for what he needed. Instead of being lured by personal and printed eulogies to help swell the roll of this or that school, he would be told candidly what each school was equipped to give him, and would be urged to get the best either within or without the state. Each. school would be a stronger institution. When confronted with the alternatives, the people of Missouri prefer teachers prepared by institutions that ensure nationally recognized standards of excellence to schools that may be swayed this way and that by local pressure, and that remain provincial because they lack the detached point of view that enables them to lead their communities. Furthermore, the popular effect of an orderly, harmonious scheme of education is superior to that resulting from in- stitutional strife. Missouri has already seen partisans 6f the university and partisans of the normal schools lined up in opposition on questions that were not issues between the schools. This tendency is likely to increase as the normal schools grow into more and more effective rivals of the university, until wholly irrelevant decisions will be reached according as the "university vote" or the "normal school vote" can be more effectively marshaled. This outcome ought to be avoided.
(7) It is worth noting, finally, that an organization in Missouri of the nature above described, if carried thru fully and in good faith, would mark a new epoch in Amer- ican institutional life in this field. It would serve to seal the fast-closing breach between two groups of institutions that have stood aloof in feud-like attitude for many years. Not all states, to be sure, are in a position to bring about such a change. States in which the normal schools are, and must long remain^ chiefly secondary in- stitutions would scarcely come within the scope of this plan. States having no state university would be confined to organizing their training agencies in a single pro- cm which the schools lean heavily in such events. An agreeable understanding with the legislature was no doubt promoted, but as a means for determining the character of the school and its operations with a view to support, the occasion is, of course, quite absurd.
60 GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL
fessional group. But where there exist side by side a state university and one or more professional institutions of collegiate grade, all devoted to the same purpose, there would seem to be little question of the wisdom of incorporating all units that are functionally similar into one organic whole in so far as their direction and control are concerned*
The one "insuperable" objection to the proposal that has been made by normal school men is that "the university would swallow up the normal schools ;" on the other hand, the friends of the university regard the plan as impracticable because "the nor- mal schools would swallow up the university." To an outside observer it would appear to be much to the advantage of the state were this mutual repast to take place as soon as possible; whatever may result from the process should then devote its undistracted attention to giving Missouri an adequate supply of first class teachers. One normal school head agreed that the plan was excellent, but thought it could not be carried out without a completely new set of normal school presidents. If the plan is excellent and if this opinion is true, comment is unnecessary.
THE CITY TRAINING SCHOOLS SHOULD BE INCLUDED
It has been a question up to this point of establishing a vigorous unity of movement and purpose for the six state institutions — the five normal schools and the univer- sity. The reorganization should not stop there. Missouri is peculiar in that a pre- dominantly rural population is sealed up behind two great municipal gateways of national importance. Between these cities and the state the interests and obligations are mutual; they are parts one of another, and every important policy of either should aim to recognize and intensify rather than weaken this solidarity.
In the work of education the one feature that may properly assume paramount im- portance in thus binding city and country together, the one responsibility which the state should reserve consistently and universally to herself, is the teacher. Local ex- penditure for supplies and equipment may vary within limits, but the animating spirit of the state's educational system, be it rural, or municipal, or metropolitan, should be one and the same. Practically considered, it is a somewhat remote ideal that the district school teacher in an obscure village should possess the same training as the teacher in the well-developed schools at St. Louis. Nevertheless, that is the ideal of American democratic education, and the avenue to its ultimate attainment is plain enough : Generous state expenditures for better teaching, and state control of all state moneys so expended. While the state has been slowly building up its conviction in favor of a policy of normal school support, St. Louis was compelled to embark alone upon her- own program of intensive training. Now, however, the state is fully com- mitted; she desires the best possible training for her teachers everywhere. And in the reorganization of her facilities for this purpose, a reorganization that cannot be long postponed, the support and control of ample training facilities for her cities should be willingly assumed. There can be little question that in this respect the legislation
PROPOSALS FOR BETTER ORGANIZATION 61
of 1915 was a mistake. Here for the first time the state turned over to St. Louis and to Kansas City considerable appropriations for local training of teachers, and aban- doned all right of control and supervision as to how the money should be spent. The inrooting of such a policy means the perpetuation of these two great centres as vir- tual islands in the educational life of the state. In the commonwealth of ideas these two cities propose henceforth increasingly to walk apart and therefore aloof from the state at large. This would be a misfortune, and the way to avoid it is for the state to guarantee on its own account teachers that shall be completely satisfactory to the cities. The claim of the cities is just — the state owes them funds for this purpose; but with these funds to allow the cities to wall themselves off intellectually is utterly indefensible, and to train up for themselves alone a closed and locally privileged class of teachers has just this effect.
If the State of Missouri were to own and control as part of her training system a first class four-year college for teachers in St. Louis, drawing students chiefly from St. Louis, but accessible on equal terms from the state at large, and sending gradu- ates both to city and town, the immediate reaction throughout the other state schools would alone be worth the cost. On the other hand, there is no reason why such a school, operating in close sympathy with the local school authorities, should not be fully as effective as the present institution controlled wholly by the city. As a constituent unit in a Division of Education of the state university, suggested above, such a school would virtually set the pace, and would constantly and powerfully influence educa- tion all over the state. It is true, of course, that on the part of the city a certain intimate sense of proprietorship in its local training agency would be missed. This would be more than offset, however, by the soundness of a situation that conceives the people of the state to be essentially one, and that, while providing effectively for local demands, holds each part responsible for promoting the general movement for- ward. For these reasons a state-supported college in St. Louis, and possibly another in Kansas City, should be included in the proposed university system, having their directors members of the board of administration and coordinate with the heads of the other state colleges of education.
VoLUNTAEY CoOPEEATION
Pending a complete readjustment of relations, an existing movement toward volun- tary cooperation demands more than passing attention. The story of earlier attempts on the part of the state normal schools to act in unison has already been told.1 The lack of any real inducement for these combinations, aside from personal sanction, seems to have brought them successively to naught. Since the inauguration of the present study, however, a plan of cooperation has been worked out that includes a new factor, the university, and embraces two features that contribute elements of possible permanence. First, the plan contemplates exchange of credit between all state insti-
1 See page 44.
62 GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL
tutlons which satisfy certain fully defined standards. This relation with the university is new, and will undoubtedly add force and incentive to the arrangement. The other significant feature of the plan is a committee of visitation and inspection selected an- nually, one member appointed from the state department to be chairman ; a second, selected by the faculty of the university, and a third, by the faculty of a normal school — the last representing the schools in rotation. It should be noted that these last two members represent not the presidents but the faculties of the respective institutions. The duty of the committee is to report on each institution's adherence to the pro-