I THE EDUCATION OF TEACHERS THE history of normal schools shows that their original purpose was merely to extend the scholarship of those students who intended to become teachers, the theory being that fitness for teaching consisted in the possession of more than the average amount of learning. This had been the conception held by the ancient universities, which were teachers' seminaries, whose students, obliged to teach as a condition of graduation, bound themselves to teach for a specified time after graduation. It is easy to see how this thought would naturally be transferred to the people's schools at the time when the Reformation had made it necessary that every child should be educated. This new movement required the sudden creation of an army of teachers who were to be improvised, so to speak, by selecting the brighter pupils in the schools and giving them a more thorough and a more extended knowledge of subjects. The next movement in normal instruction might have been anticipated. It would necessarily happen |