THE SPEAR A VIKING SONG Words and melody by the pupils of the Fifth school year, the University Elementary School. 1. I made me a spear and called her Foe's Fear, I made her 2. A boat I made, too, I made her all true, I painted her strong, with a keen, sharp edge; She sings as she flies, "I as am A Mortgage on Paradise EDITORIAL NOTES It is told of Horace Mann that he walked into the office of a friend in Boston one day and asked him if he "wished to secure the highest seat in the kingdom of heaven; if so," he continued, "you may have it for fifteen hundred dollars." This was the sum needed by Mr. Mann to enable him to purchase a building at Lexington in which he wished to start a normal school. The friend produced the money and the opening of the school with three pupils on July 3, 1839, marked an important epoch in education in the United States. History, however, does not record that Mr. Mann was able to redeem the pledge made to his friend. Stages of Since that time, normal-school training has passed through a number of important stages that correspond to certain epochs in our educational growth. At first it was inevitable Normal that the normal schools should be largely academic. Training Especially in sections of the country where there were but few or no academies, and before high schools were generally established, the normal schools were compelled to assume the responsibility for non-professional work of a scholastic character. Having their origin in the pre-laboratory age, and their work, therefore, being exceedingly bookish, it was but natural, as the professional end of the curriculum gradually developed, that it, too, should be of a similar kind. It was abstract and theoretical, devoting much attention to detailed methods of teaching subject-matter. No other agency has operated so powerfully as the normal school to stimulate general interest in popular education, and nothing else has done so much to elevate the intelligence of the public as to the necessity of having teachers specially trained for their profession. The time has come, however, when the normal schools and the schools of education must provide a new type of training. Academic training has been amply provided for and it must be, and hereafter it will be, assumed. The past generation has done practically all New Type of that need be done to place within easy reach of every intelligent teacher whatever it is necessary to know concerning special methods. Within the same period the subjects of psychology and child-study have been thoroughly worked over, and the results have been fully and clearly presented. It is well nigh impossible now to find a teacher who is not an interested student in these subjects and who does not have as a result a proper attitude toward his pupils and his work. This part of the teacher's training, hereafter, will not become of lesser importance, but it will be more and more assumed as a preliminary to the newer training which the public is now demanding. That the times are ripe for a higher type of trained teacher and for a more thoroughly practical kind of professional training is evidenced by the following list of questions which was sent to me recently by a gentleman just elected to the school board in a suburb of Chicago. That community is evidently trying to find out something about educational values, and this officer made his appeal to expert teachers who might be supposed to be best prepared to make satisfactory answer. The questions are as follows: New Type of A Teacher's 1. Would you consider manual training, properly taught and properly related, as important to the best results in other subjects, or as something which might be omitted without detriment to the rest of the work? 2. Suggest briefly, and in a way intelligible to a layman, your idea of the function of manual training in the curriculum. 3. Has the fact that the country child deals with all sorts of concrete things anything to do with his superiority over the city child in filling important positions? Is manual training any substitute for the experience? 4. If writing, spelling, etc., seemed below par, would you think that the remedy might be looked for in the omission of manual training and the devotion of the time gained to drill in those subjects? 5. Would the fact that a large proportion of the pupils is from well-to-do families and that they do not have occasion to work with their hands, or do not expect to have occupations requiring manual skill, have any bearing on the need of manual training in the schools? 6. Would you advise the introduction of domestic science into our schools? 7. Are public kindergartens desirable as a part of the school system? These questions show distinctly what is needed in the teacher. IT IS POWER TO TEACH THE PUBLIC. The ability to teach the children henceforth will be assumed. Hitherto the people have passively submitted to whatever the teachers had to offer; now they have become sufficiently aroused to demand something like a demonstration. That demonstration is the main thing, therefore, which teachers in training must prepare for. That is why we need new curricula in our normal schools, and schools of education. There is not one in existence that gives its pupils half a chance to prepare for such an examination as that set in the foregoing questions. If this is doubted, try the questions on any class of graduating teachers you please; not one in ten nor twenty will be able to convince that community beforehand that it needs either him or his work. These are questions that no mere specialist in manual training can answer. The new type of training will not be found in a further elaboration and intensification of book study and theoretical discus A New sion; nor will it appear in a further development of specialization as that is now commonly understood. It will be based upon actual "field work" carried on in the community at large. That is, the teachers in training must study, in accordance with a plan analogous to that adopted in a science laboratory, the needs of a community as they manifest themselves in its daily life; they must, in fact, in some way become actual participants in that life. Whereas, heretofore, the school has been considered a part of the community, it is now necessary to make the community a part of the school. No other kind of training will ever equip prospective teachers to answer questions which the public is now asking. The school must go into the service of the community more directly, and the community must open itself up more freely to whatever service the school can render. a Social Up to the present time the training schools for teachers are all modeled upon the plan and after the ideals of the older educaThe School as tional institutions of an academic type, and these, in their turn, grew out of the cloister. Most of our Settlement schools still hark back occasionally to the times when knowledge was chained to the desk of a priest, out of reach of the common people. The training schools for teachers, on the contrary, should be modeled rather upon the plan of the so-called social settlement, and the ideals of the teacher must become more nearly allied to those of the settlement worker. It is a huge mistake to suppose that the chief function of a "settlement" is to furnish slum districts with bath tubs, and that the principles underlying settlement work apply only to the socially submerged. There is as much real need in Hyde Park as there is in the Ghetto for the application of "settlement" principles to social and industrial life in the education of the children. Every school should be so organized as to draw the people together for the purposes of work, of study, and of recreation, as the public library now attracts people who wish to read. To this end, the studios, the workrooms, the laboratories, and the libraries of the schools should be open under the supervision of the teachers, as public libraries are under librarians, to suit the convenience of the people. The settlements in Chicago, following the leadership of Jane Addams, Mary McDowell, and a few others, are fair working-models of what our public schools should be in their relations to the people. A training school for teachers that could place its prospective graduates for at least a year in such intimate relations with community life as the settlements afford would give them the best possible preparation for undertaking with the people the joint task of educating the children. This does not mean, of course, that such training can be acquired only in the reeking and congested districts of the cities. Every locality in city, village, and country, should offer some opportunity for the practical training of teachers in the science and art of working with people. Until this art is thoroughly learned; until the social, the industrial, and the so-called educational interests of the community are organized as a single unity the education of the children will always be defective. |