(3) It shows a great field and encourages us to try to improve our own methods.
(4) It shows us the great responsibility of the profession in connection with the nation, for the school teacher to a marked degree determines the destiny of a nation.
(5) It shows the importance of free-thinking. (Illustration omitted.)
(6) It shows us the great importance of individuality along the line of teaching, for, as soon as we begin to adopt the methods of others exactly without examining them carefully, progress stops, and we are like the teachers of the Middle Ages.
(7) It shows that every teacher should have a heartfelt interest in his pupil.
(8) It makes us feel that discipline is unnecessary, if we utilize the right methods.
(9) It tells us and makes us feel above everything else that a good education is worth as much as riches and that, since we are all brothers, we ought to try to teach everybody."
An analysis of these two answers would show a combination of the cultural and practical values and, by implication at least, since they were able to say these things, a disciplinary value.
History of education should be an elective course
Should the history of education be a required or an elective course in the college curriculum? In a school of education offering a bachelor's degree, it might well be required, for both cultural and professional reasons, but in the usual department of education in a college it will be offered as an elective course. Its cultural and disciplinary values are not such as to make its pursuit a requisite for a liberal education, and its practical value for prospective teachers, as it has been commonly taught, is not such as to warrant its prescription. Besides, the prospective teacher is animated by the vocational motive and will elect the history of education anyway, unless there are more practical courses to be had. Students in all the college courses should have the privilege of electing the history of education in view of their future citizenship.