New Courses in Colleges and Universities for Secondary-School Teachers
The example of Germany is instructive as showing something of the amount of professional training which may be deemed necessary properly to qualify a teacher of secondary schools. It is not at all likely that the particular method adopted will be followed in the United States. Indeed, there is a rapidly developing movement in American colleges and universities to provide training for such teachers. The state universities especially have developed in recent years series of courses, both in subject-matter and in professional lines, designed to train secondary-school teachers. These, like the normal-school courses described above, are very little standardized, but are promising as a nucleus for the final organizations which will solve the problem.
The following paragraph indicates the existing conditions:
The significant fact is that 21 of 24 universities report teachers’ courses. This means that in some way the academic departments are professionally coöperating with schools or departments of education in furnishing to intending teachers the special methods and peculiar technique, as well as more fundamental educational principles and distinctive values of the actual subjects the students will teach when they take positions in the schools. The proper coördination of the university forces contributing to teaching efficiency is the curriculum problem for the immediate future in university administration. At present the solutions are about as numerous as the institutions concerned.[95]