The ideals and equipment of these special institutions are factors of prime importance in determining their real values. These center in the personnel of the directing and teaching force. Too frequently thorough scientific preparation for the specific work of supervising and instructing in teachers' seminaries is wanting. Natural endowment coupled with long, varied, and successful experience has been regarded as sufficient qualification. To be sure, native ability is an absolute essential; experience is of immeasurable value; but intensive scientific research in the fields of child nature and development, psychology, and pedagogical principles, together with scientific methods, are equally indispensable.
Now it is a truism that teachers teach as they have been taught. Hence, to achieve greatest results, prospective teachers should secure their education (general and professional) from ideal teachers as far as possible and obtain experience through practice teaching under the personal supervision of masters in education. Preparing under such conditions, their natural capabilities would be brought more nearly to maximum efficiency and they would become powers for good in the profession. To have seminaries so distributed and equipped that all prospective teachers might have the best training within easy access would be an ideal condition.
Germany affords an unparalleled example in the development of teachers' seminaries. No other nation ever had a system of training schools as efficient as the one there provided. Her right to the title of "School mistress of the world" is in large measure traceable to the excellent training provided for and required of the teachers in the schools.
Norway early recognized the importance of this phase of school work and established six teachers' seminaries. Subsequently four private seminaries have been opened and the state has instituted the Pedagogical Seminary in affiliation with the university in Christiania. This gives them a liberal number of training colleges well distributed. While they are subject to some adverse criticism for failure to keep pace with the development of their school system as a whole, we must admit that the excellent results achieved by the schools of Norway are due largely to the early provision of these seminaries and insistence upon special training for teaching positions.
It is probable that certain normal schools of the United States deserve the honors so far as ideals and results are concerned even though we have accorded first ranking in system to Germany. Our plan, however, is too individual in nature to accomplish greatest good. We lack a centralized authority with power to do things. We have practically no co-ordination between state systems and no uniformity. Even in certain states the several schools do not cooperate or supplement each other as they should. The waste occasioned by the looseness of our system is enormous. Could we unify our resources, systematize our equipment, and provide efficient direction along cooperative lines of activity, the American schools would advance by leaps and bounds such as have not been known up to the present time in any nation.
A word is in place here with reference to the process of obtaining professional preparation. One of the best things to be gained by special training is a professional attitude toward the work of teaching. This cannot be attained by spasmodic effort but must be grown into. It comes rather as a result of long-continued study and application of principles than by intensive training for a short while. Direct instruction and experiment extended over a long period of time affords opportunity for innumerable associations and interrelations which no "hurry-up" process can provide. When professional training and study along the general lines of academic learning parallel each other they become interwoven in such a way that each contributes to the other, and simultaneously the proper attitude with respect to educational processes becomes a very real part of the student's life.
There are a number of important pedagogical principles which should become ingrained in the life of the individual in order that he make a success in the teaching profession. It is a generally conceded and commonly practiced rule in education that to thoroughly master any field of knowledge and really get into its vital parts it is necessary to keep the mind acting upon it, at least intermittently, through several years of time. Principles acted and reacted upon, viewed in this light and that, examined under a certain condition and then another, and tested in various ways may result very differently in one's life than when given a hurried, even though intensive, examination. They are certain in the one instance to sink deep into the life of the individual while in the other case they may or may not affect his behavior.
It seems, therefore, that if the excellent features which now characterize Norway's Pedagogical Seminary might be carried along through the whole or a large part of the college course, or if the work of the seminary might be supplemented by studies such as principles of education, history of education, child study, and psychology, carried along with the college work the results would be more effectual—the preparation for teaching more thorough. However, considering the short time that has elapsed since the founding of this Seminary, its work is of high order and its ideals are praiseworthy. The expressed intent of the director is to develop the field as rapidly as possible until it shall be characterized by the best means of professional training known to the science.