A Training College for Teachers.
There will be some difficulty in winning a college for those who will afterwards pass to teach in schools. There is no specialising for any profession till the student leaves the College of Philosophy, from which he will go to Medicine, Law, or Divinity. This is the time also when the intending schoolmaster should begin his special training. In him there is as much learning necessary as, with all deference to their subjects, is required by any of the other three professions, especially if it be considered how much the teacher hath to do in preparing scholars for all other careers. Why should not these men have this competence in learning, to be chosen for the common service? Are children and schools so small an element in our commonwealth? Is the framing of young minds and the training of their bodies a matter of so little skill? Are schoolmasters in this realm so few that they need not be taken account of? Whoever will not allow of this careful provision for such a seminary of teachers is most unworthy either to have had a good master himself, or to have a good one hereafter for his children. Why should not teachers be well provided for, so that they can continue their whole life in the school, as divines, lawyers, and physicians do in their several professions? If this were the case, judgment, knowledge, and discretion would grow in them as they get older, whereas now the school, being used but for a shift, from which they will afterwards pass to some other profession, though it may send out competent men to other careers, remains itself far too bare of talent, considering the importance of the work. I consider therefore that in our universities there should be a special college for the training of teachers, inasmuch as they are the instruments to make or mar the growing generation of the country, and because the material of their studies is comparable to that of the greatest professions, in respect of language, judgment, skill in teaching, variety of learning, wherein the forming of the mind and the exercising of the body require the most careful consideration, to say nothing of the dignity of character which should be expected from them.