Post-graduate year.
To those graduates who have elected pedagogy in their senior year may be offered the opportunity of further study in this department, with such other post-graduate work as taste and opportunity permit. From those selecting advanced work in pedagogy the board in charge of the affiliated secondary school should elect as many teachers for its school as are needed, employing them for two-thirds time at one-half the usual pay for teachers without experience. Under the professor of pedagogy of the college, the principal, and the heads of departments of the school these student-teachers should do their work, receiving advice, criticism, and illustration as occasion requires. The time for which they are employed would provide for two hours of class work and about one hour of clerical work or study while in charge of a schoolroom. These student-teachers should be given abundant opportunity for the charge of pupils while reciting or studying, at recess and dismissals, and should have all the responsibilities of members of the faculty of this school. Their work should be inspected as frequently as may be by the heads of the departments in which they teach, by the principal of the school, and by the professor of pedagogy. These appointments would be virtually fellowships with an opportunity for most profitable experience.
In the afternoon of each day these students should attend to college work and especially to instruction from the professor in pedagogy, who could meet them occasionally with the heads of the departments under whose direction they are working.
On Saturdays a seminary of two hours’ duration might be held, conducted by the professor of pedagogy and attended by the student-teachers and the more ambitious teachers of experience in the vicinity. These seminaries would, doubtless, be of great profit to both classes of participants, and the greater to each because of the other. (Such a training school for secondary teachers in connection with Brown University and the Providence high school is contemplated for the coming year.)
It will not be needful to specify further the advantages to the student-teachers. The arrangement likewise affords advantage to the affiliated school, especially in the breadth of view this work would afford to the heads of departments, the intense desire it would beget in them for professional skill, the number of perplexing problems which it would force them to attempt the solution of.
The visits of the professor of pedagogy, and the constant comparison he would make between actual and ideal conditions, would lead him to seek the improvement, not only of the students in practice, but of the school as a whole.
When several earnest and capable people unite in a mutual effort to improve themselves and their work, all the essential conditions of progress are present.
Horace S. Tarbell, Chairman,
Superintendent of Schools, Providence, R. I.
Edward Brooks,
Superintendent of Schools, Philadelphia, Pa.
Thomas M. Balliet,
Superintendent of Schools, Springfield, Mass.
Newton C. Dougherty,
Superintendent of Schools, Peoria, Ill.
Oscar H. Cooper,
Superintendent of Schools, Galveston, Tex.
Dissent from Dr. Harris’ Report.
BY JAMES M. GREENWOOD, OF KANSAS CITY.
I dissent from the majority report of the Committee in regard to the following points:—