At the Worcester Normal School there is no Model or practising School, but the students teach in the public schools of the city. For the first six months of her last year at the Normal School, the student acts as an apprentice or pupil-teacher, serving in at least three grades during this time. Each teacher has the direction of only one student, who may be left in sole charge of the class for hours or days. One day in the week the apprentice-student attends the Normal School, where she shows her class diary for the week, and discusses any difficulties that may have arisen. On that day, too, she takes part in the “Platform Exercises” of the Normal School—viz., exercises in which students speak, read or draw, on the platform, in presence of the whole school. The apprentice-students usually give an account to their fellow-students of anything interesting or helpful in their practical work of the past week.
Examinations.
At the end of the Normal School Course, State examinations are held in most of the States. In Pennsylvania each school examines its own students, who, when they have satisfactorily completed the required course of study, and passed the final examination, receive a certificate, and are said “to graduate.” After graduation, they are recommended to the State Examiner, who awards a State-Teaching Certificate valid for two years. At the end of this period, the teacher is required to present to the State Board a certificate of good work from the county Superintendent under whom he or she has taught, and also a certificate from his own school board. He is then entitled to teach in his own State for life. The Normal School students of Connecticut are submitted to State Examination, but in Massachusetts no outside examination is required. Students who work satisfactorily through the course, and pass the final examination, “graduate” at the discretion of the President, or according to results of an examination set by the School Board of the city. The State examination of teachers and most of the final examinations of the Normal Schools are usually in academic subjects only. It is not attempted to test by actual examination the degree of skill in teaching or governing.
Supply of Teachers.
As regards the number of teachers who have been trained in Normal Schools relatively to the number who teach in the Common Schools of the State without previous training, statistics are apt to be misleading, because, in many cases, Normal Students do not take the entire course or “graduate.” Out of 372 students enrolled at New Britain in 1889-1890, only 77 completed the entire course; in 1890-1891, only 61 out of 401 graduated; and in 1891-1892, out of 444 students, only 91 were graduates. For 1888-1889 Framingham shows 30 graduates out of 205 present in the school; Salem shows 129 out of 292; and Bridgewater, 69 out of 232. In all these schools the courses are two, three or four years, and if all the students completed the course, the number of graduates each year would be ½, ⅓, or ¼ respectively of the number of students enrolled. The Report of School Commissioners for 1888-1889 shows that among 75,529 teachers in the Common Schools of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, there were only 1,461 students who completed the Normal School Course in these States. In all the States, arrangements are made for teachers who do not go through the Normal Schools. Certificates of license to teach in the State for a shorter or longer time are granted according to results of the State Certificate Examination. A third-grade certificate, entitling its owner to teach for a short time, may be exchanged for a second-grade certificate, when further proficiency is shown by re-examination. So a second-grade certificate may be exchanged for a life-certificate in many of the States. It should be borne in mind that these examinations are only in school subjects.
The fact that in a State such as Massachusetts the qualifications of teachers in the High and Latin Schools of Boston is stated merely as “Education at some respectable college of good standing,” shows that the necessity for the professional training of teachers for higher or secondary schools is not at present fully recognised. Until the last few years, no Institution especially devoted to the training of secondary teachers existed in the eastern States, and those who wished to prepare themselves for the teaching of the higher branches of subjects had no other means of training than that offered in the Normal Schools. At Worcester and Bridgewater, College and University graduates may take the pedagogical course as special students, and so prepare for teaching in the higher schools. At the Indiana and Illinois Normal Schools, and in other places, there are courses of study chiefly or entirely professional, for college or university graduates, if such present themselves. At Albany, too, where the standard of admission is high, many of the students prepare for work in the secondary schools. On the whole, however, the number of special students preparing for higher work in the Normal Schools is very small. In 1891-1892, the Southern Illinois Normal University had only six special students, the Terre-Haute Normal School, Indiana, only four; and we find in the eastern States generally that the Normal Schools take very little part in the training of secondary teachers. For the most part Normal School students are found only in the lower grades of public schools; and college graduates, even though untrained, are preferred as teachers in High Schools, good private schools and academies.
The reason for this is probably to be found in the nature of the Normal School itself. It, perhaps more than any other educational institution in America, has adhered to its old traditions. It was designed to train teachers for the lower grades of Elementary Schools, and in the early days was prepared to accept the only material at hand—would-be teachers, many of whom possessed few intellectual qualifications, and almost all were inadequately prepared for training. But with rising standards of work, and increased facilities for good preliminary preparation, the Normal School has not yet closed its doors to students whose general attainments do not qualify them to profit by courses in the Science and Art of Teaching. In one or two cases only is the standard of college graduation insisted upon, and in many cases the admission standard is lower than that required to complete the course in a city High School. Hence it results that most of the teaching in High Schools and academies is given into the hands of professionally untrained teachers—college graduates, whose scholarship can be relied upon, but who have no previous technical training, rather than to trained teachers, whose knowledge of the actual subject matter of studies may or may not be thorough. The choice, open to heads of Secondary Schools when appointing assistants, is, moreover, not between good scholarship and good training. Without adequate preparation the training must be inadequate, and in many cases cramping and injurious. On the other hand, it is only after the preliminary preparation has been sound and complete that the work of training can be carried out in the best possible way.
CITY NORMAL AND TRAINING SCHOOLS.
The existence of State Normal Schools and City Training Schools side by side suggests at once a fact which has an important bearing on educational questions in the United States—viz., the absolute distinction, as regards jurisdiction, between schools outside the limits of a town or city, under the supervision of a State Board and State Superintendent, and schools within the city radius, and under the supervision of a Town or City Superintendent. In educational matters, the city areas are completely exempt from State control. Their schools and training schools are managed by local authorities, and supplied for the most part by local funds. Hence it follows that City Normal and Training Schools show even greater diversity of methods and arrangement than is found in State Normal Schools, for their lines of work and efficiency are entirely dependent upon the respective City Boards of Education. One effect of local school administration is distinctly undesirable. The appointment of the principal of the school by the Educational Board, and the election of that Board by local vote, produces, in many cities, a tendency to display, in order to cull popular favour. The “graduation exercises,” yearly public ceremonies, held in connection with almost all American schools and colleges, consist, in the case of training schools, of various kinds of students’ and children’s exercises, to which the public are invited. Much valuable time is taken by the students in preparing essays to be read and lessons to be given in public; and in some cases the student or teacher conducts an examination of her class in the presence of parents and friends. Several such public exercises I heard, but in all cases it was evident that true results of training, or honest results of teaching, were not demonstrated. The endeavour to impress the audience, besides involving great waste of time, seems likely to create an unconscious dishonesty on the part of teachers, students, and children.