[8] In China, for example, as soon as the new general system of education had been decided upon, normal schools of three types—higher normal schools, lower normal schools, and teacher-training schools—were created, and missionary teachers, foreign teachers, and students returning from abroad were used to staff these new schools. By 1910 as many as thirty higher normal schools, two hundred and three lower normal schools, and a hundred and eighty-two training classes had been established in China under government auspices. (Ping Wen Kuo, The Chinese System of Public Education, p. 156.)
[9] The beginnings in the United States date from about 1890, and in England even later. In France, on the other hand, the training of teachers for the secondary schools goes back to the days of Napoleon.
[10] A common division was between the teacher who taught reading, religion, and spelling, and the teacher who taught writing and arithmetic (R. 307). Writing being considered a difficult art, this was taught by a separate teacher, who often included the ability to teach arithmetic also among his accomplishments.
[11] A good example of this may be found in the monitorial schools. The New York Free School Society (p. 660), for example, reported in its Fourteenth Annual Report (1819) that the children in its schools had pursued studies as follows:
297 children have been taught to form letters in sand.
615 have been advanced from letters in sand, to monosyllabic reading
on boards.
686 from reading on boards, to Murray's First Book.
335 from Murray's First Book, to writing on slates.
218 from writing on slates, to writing on paper.
341 to reading in the Bible.
277 to addition and subtraction.
153 to multiplication and division..
60 to the compound of the four first rules.
20 to reduction.
24 to the rule of three.
[12] Herbart had visited Pestalozzi at Burgdorf, in 1799, just after graduating from Jena and while acting as a tutor for three Swiss boys, and had written a very sympathetic description of his school and his theory of instruction. Herbart was one of the first of the Germans to understand and appreciate "the genial and noble Pestalozzi."
[13] The son of a well-educated public official, Herbart was himself educated at the Gymnasium of Oldenburg and the University of Jena. After spending three years as a tutor, he became, at the age of twenty-six, an under teacher at the University of Göttingen. At the age of thirty-three he was called to succeed Kant as professor of philosophy at Königsberg, and from the age of fifty-seven to his death at sixty-five he was again a professor at Göttingen.
[14] Charles De Garmo's Essentials of Method, published in 1889, marked the beginning of the introduction of these ideas into this country. In 1892 Charles A. McMurry published his General Method, and in 1897, with his brother, Frank, published the Method in the Recitation. These three books probably have done more to popularize Herbartian ideas and introduce them into the normal schools and colleges of the United States than all other influences combined. Another important influence was the "National Herbart Society," founded in 1892 by students returning from Jena, in imitation of the similar German society.
[15] The studies which have come to characterize the modern elementary school may now be classified under the following headings:
Drill subjects Content subjects Expression subjects
Reading Literature Kindergarten Work
Writing Geography Music
Spelling History Manual Arts
Language Civic Studies Domestic Arts
Arithmetic Manners and Conduct Plays and Games
Nature Study School Gardening
Agriculture Vocational Subjects