HOW CAN THE UNIVERSITIES, COLLEGES, AND NORMAL SCHOOLS BEST FURNISH EXTENSION COURSES?

AMBROSE L. SUHRIE, Dean of Cleveland School of Education

I. Introduction. The preceding speaker in his informal introduction gave an admirable statement of the need for courses which will better equip the teachers in the public schools of Pennsylvania for their professional work, and in his formal paper he has presented very definitely the special needs of the 17,000 teachers now employed in the State who entered the service with sub-standard training. It is not, therefore, inappropriate that I should devote my discussion chiefly to the problem of the in-service training of the larger number who entered the service with at least the minimum qualification of two years of post-high-school education including certain definite professional requirements.

Fortunately, in these later days the universities, colleges and normal schools have come to recognize more fully their opportunity to assume some leadership in the development of a more adequate program for the further professional education of teachers in service. It is very gratifying to note that there is an increasing disposition on the part of all higher institutions of learning in the State to join hands with the State Department of Public Instruction in the development of a program of in-service courses for teachers calculated to bring the benefits of good teaching directly to local school systems in all parts of the commonwealth.

II. Types of Extension Service. These institutions are developing two more or less distinct types of extension service. For several decades past many institutions in all sections of this country have been promoting a program for correspondence courses.

But the more comprehensive program which the universities, colleges and normal schools have developed for the further professional education of teachers in service has been one of extra- and intra-mural continuation courses given during the regular school year and in summer sessions planned exclusively or principally for teachers. One State teachers college in the west has for years been bringing extension courses home to the teachers in every county of the commonwealth. In New England a number of universities, colleges and normal schools have joined hands in promoting a very comprehensive program and have offered the services of the ablest members of their teaching staffs, the whole enterprise being administered in such a way as to give the teachers the greatest possible freedom in the choice of their courses and in the selection of the particular institutions under whose auspices they are taken. These courses are announced in given sequences and are offered at such centers of population as will make them in due time available

to any given teacher living in any part of the service area. These courses when properly completed may be counted toward the fulfillment of requirements for the degree to be granted by certain institutions participating. They cover the whole range of general and special subjects of interest to teachers in almost any department of public school teaching, supervision or administration.

The most significant developments of the whole movement, however, have taken place in connection with the work of universities, teachers colleges and normal schools located in the larger population centers.

There are approximately 45,000 teachers in the public schools of Pennsylvania. It is easy to think of them, and, for purposes of discussion, to consider them as belonging to two more or less distinct groups: (1) those who have sub-standard training and are teaching on some form of provisional certification, and (2) those who have standard training, that is, sufficient professional education to secure some form of more permanent or life certification.

III. Scope of Courses to be Offered. I should like to make a statement of the types of courses we should offer to those teachers who enter the elementary school service with, let us say, a minimum preliminary education of at least two years beyond a good high school and to those who enter other branches of the teaching service with corresponding qualifications. In any well balanced program that may be set up, the heaviest emphasis will naturally be placed on courses for elementary teachers, first, because these teachers constitute by far the largest group and secondly, because of the major significance of the work of the elementary grades in any system of public education.

Returning now to a discussion of the points of special emphasis in the courses to be offered, it is scarcely necessary to point out that a very wide range of special courses that are directly related to the subject matter of the elementary school program must be offered. Professor Bagley has chosen to call such courses "professionalized subject-matter courses." These courses should be rich in content but should be given always with the professional implications in mind and with the conscious effort on the part of the instructor to keep in the forefront the major problems of aim, organization, and the relative worth of details. All such courses rightly given will be broadly cultural in the best sense of that much over-used word.

To illustrate concretely just what I mean as applied to the most fundamental subject in the elementary school program of studies, namely English, may I quote a paragraph from a recent report by Professor Bagley on this subject: "From the standpoint of the study both of the language itself and of its literature, the equipment of the

elementary school teacher, it is generally agreed, should be greatly enlarged. In the first place, a more thorough-going understanding of the history of the language will throw light upon many problems involved in teaching even its rudiments to children. In the second place, such increased facility in the use of the language as may be gained from appropriate courses in English composition can hardly fail to be reflected in classroom practice. In the third place, an almost inexhaustible wealth of possibilities is presented by the study of literature. The actual content of the elementary curriculum in literature may be studied with great profit upon the university plane. The very fact that many of the poems of childhood are among the oldest and most persistent products of the world's culture suggests at once the wealth of material available for a teacher's course in this subject. It goes without saying that a teacher can use this literature with children more effectively if she knows its antecedents and origins and consequently realizes that she is dealing not with trivial materials valuable simply because they are adapted to immature minds but rather with a significant and precious human heritage. Certainly, in its cultural quality a course of this type may easily be made to compare favorably with any collegiate course in mythology or folk-lore."

Like opportunities are offered for the development of "professionalized subject-matter courses" in mathematics, geography, the physical and social sciences, music, and the arts. The work taken in these subjects in the normal schools by those who are now teaching in the elementary grades, was in most cases more or less perfunctory or at any rate fell far short of its possibilities when given on the collegiate level with a more adequate time allotment and by men and women of broad scholarship and pervading culture.

A second type of advanced professional courses dealing with the technique of teaching the elementary school subjects should be developed. These courses would place primary emphasis upon the mastery of the psychology of the respective elementary school subjects, particularly reading, spelling, arithmetic, handwriting, etc.

A third type of advanced professional work should have as its aim not primarily the enlargement of the teacher's equipment in specialized scholarship or in technical skill in teaching but rather a broadening of her professional horizon and the gaining of a clearer comprehension of the significance of education in modern life. These courses will be basal to the whole science of education. They will include such subjects as biology, psychology, sociology, political science, economics, ethics, and philosophy.

The courses listed above have been proposed on the assumption that the work of the teachers in elementary schools, if done on a professional

level, calls for the same depth of culture and breadth of technical equipment which would characterize the work of professional teaching in any other branch of the public school service. It will be observed that most of the courses suggested would have to be given by subject-matter specialists. These men and women are for the most part handicapped by lack of acquaintance with the elementary school problem. Professor Bagley insists that this will not be an insuperable obstacle to their success in the work, if they approach the task in the right way since the students in the class will be able to supply in large measure what the instructor may lack in first hand experience. He suggests also that in the beginning there should be a large measure of tolerance on the part of both the student and the instructor for the shortcomings of one another and he believes that the otherwise well qualified instructor, notwithstanding his limitations in actual experience, will be able to make his courses profitable provided he has a sincere respect for the work that the elementary school represents and a real interest in its problems. Surely no university instructor who has the right attitude toward the work could hope for a class of students whose interest would be so genuine and whose appreciation of his efforts would be more whole-hearted than that of a selected group of elementary school teachers.

There are two more or less distinct classes of junior high school teachers: (1) those who have come into the work with the equipment of a college course; and (2) those who have little more than two years of post-high-school education and have made the transfer to the departmental program of the junior high school from the corresponding grades of an elementary school.

It may be assumed for the most part that the members of the former group have had little experience in teaching and that they may or may not have had professional courses interpreting the aim, organization and program of the junior high school as an institution. In most cases they need courses which will give them a clear conception of the distinctive functions of the junior high school as an "intermediate” school and much practical training in the technique of teaching as applied to their special departmental subjects.

The latter group, those who have come into the work with substandard training by way of transfer from the elementary school, may be assumed to be chiefly in need of professionalized subject-matter courses dealing with their departmental subjects and with other subjects closely allied thereto.

Both of the classes of junior high school teachers above referred to will need a group of courses that are fundamental to the development of a proper conception of the type of education appropriate to the early adolescent period.

The problem of adapting courses to the needs of senior high school teachers is somewhat unique. These teachers may be assumed to be college graduates. For the most part they have taken their work in academic institutions rather than in teachers' colleges and have had included in their under-graduate studies very few courses and very little work which would tend to professionalize their viewpoint and usually no special training which would tend to influence in the right direction the technique of their classroom teaching. They are, therefore, peculiarly in need, although they are not always aware of it, of three more or less distinct types of professional courses: (1) courses in which there is developed inductively the aims of modern secondary education, (2) research courses which will scrutinize thoroughly the subject-matter included in the curriculum of the so-called "standardized secondary school" with freedom to propose such eliminations and replacements as would bring these secondary school curricula into harmony with the aims set up, and (3) demonstration courses and conferences aiming at the improvement of the technique of classroom instruction in the several secondary school subjects.

In the larger cities of the State there is a growing demand for special courses of training for those teachers who have been or are about. to be assigned to any of the so-called "special schools" for the deaf, the blind, the crippled, the speech defective, the anæmic, the abnormally bright and the especially gifted, that is, for every type of unusual child for whom special provision needs to be made in a great public school system. Each of these courses must be unique in its special aims, its subject-matter and the method of approach and such courses can ordinarily be well given only by intelligent co-operation between the university, college or normal school on one hand and the public school system to be served on the other. The successful administration of such courses usually calls for the combined professional resources of both institutions and the special technical equipment of the leaders and directors of certain lay agencies in the community.

For principals and supervisors we need a special group of courses. It ought to be perfectly clear in the minds of school administrators, teachers, and educational workers generally that marked success in teaching in the grades or in high schools does not necessarily indicate fitness for a so-called "promotion" to supervisory or administrative preferment. It may indicate capacity of a certain kind, but given the right temperament, the right qualities of mind and heart and all else which constitute the personal equipment of the successful supervisor or administrator, it is nevertheless quite essential that the individual possessed of these gifts should receive technical professional training for this special type of work. The scope and content of courses suitable for those who would