CHAPTER III

PROFESSIONAL TRAINING AND GROWTH

Neglect of the Professional Training of Teachers in America. From the reports of the U. S. Commissioner of Education we learn that more than 300,000 teachers in American public schools have no professional training whatever; 150,000 are not old enough to vote; 30,000 have scarcely an eighth-grade schooling; 200,000 have less than a high-school education; 150,000 have had only two years, or less, of service as teachers.

In answer to the question, "How is it that while children are so intelligent, men are so stupid?" a great writer replied, "It must be because of education."

The chief causes of illiteracy in the United States, of the ignorance of health laws, of the active disloyalty of so many of our citizens, of the inefficiency and corruption of local government, and of the astounding success of commercial banditry and get-rich-quick concerns, are: (1) we are a "nation of sixth-graders," and (2) 50 per cent of our voters have been taught by immature, inexperienced, untrained teachers. Until we have a competent, well-trained teacher in every schoolroom we shall not discover the full power of education to promote efficient living and good government in our democracy.

The Protest of the Wise.-"That teachers are 'born, not made,' has been so fully the world's thought until the present century that a study of subjects without any study of principles or methods of teaching has been deemed quite sufficient." These words are from the

"Report of the Committee of Fifteen." But it must not be assumed that this has been the thought of the world's best and wisest men and women. Against such a waste of effort in education the best thinkers in all ages have protested. Plato's greatest book is a treatise on education. Aristotle considered education as the most important and most difficult of all problems. Cicero wrote: "It would be absurd to suppose that the most trifling employments have their guiding laws and principles, and that the training of children, the most important work of all, must be given over to chance.' And wise old Richard Mulcaster, the teacher of Edmund Spenser, declared that the "only hope of improving our English schools lies in providing training for our teach

ers.

Why Professional Training Has Been Neglected.-In the first place, universal education is practically a new problem. It is true that Comenius wrote, two hundred and fifty years ago: "Not only are the children of the rich and noble to be drawn to the school, but all alike, gentle and simple, rich and poor, boys and girls, in great towns and small, down to the country villages; and for this reason, because they are born human beings." Yet popular education made very little progress till the time of Pestalozzi. This great teacher, who has. with justice been called the "father of the public school," died in 1827. Since his time every civilized nation has become interested in the education of the common people, and in nearly all countries great school systems, controlled by the state, have been founded. Very naturally the material phases of the great problems of popular education claimed attention first. How to organize school systems; how to plan the work of school officers;

how to provide school funds, build school-houses, prepare courses of study-all these problems had to be worked out.

Conditions in the United States.-In our own country until within a few years the school education of children was a matter of secondary importance. Indeed, many of our great men, men like Jackson, Clay, and Lincoln, had practically no schooling at all. There were few public high schools. The school year was short. The course of study was limited to the three R's. Boys studied manual training and agriculture in the shops and on the farm. Girls practised domestic science in the home. Parents taught their children industry, morals, and religion in the family. Fifty years ago society in the United States was vastly less complex than it is now. There was no large wealthy leisure class. Great factories, shops, department stores, and corporations were unknown. People lived in closer contact with nature. The world's work was done by hand rather than by machinery. Poverty was the rule, and the opportunities and temptations to graft and dishonesty were not so apparent as they now are. Lawyers and doctors entered upon the practice of their socalled professions with little more preparation than to "read" law or medicine.

Teaching Rather a Primitive Work. It is easy to see that under these conditions the burden of the public school was not very great. People did not demand very much of it. If their children learned to read, to write, to spell, and to cipher, they were satisfied; and, as the ordinary methods in use were purely mechanical, they naturally concluded that any one having sufficient knowledge could teach school, or, in other words, "hear recitations." And in spite of changed conditions, in

spite of the fact that society constantly demands more and more of the schools, in spite of the heroic labors of Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, and hundreds of other men for the professional education of teachers, the tremendous and significant fact is that the majority of our teachers still get all their professional education at the expense of the children that they teach-expense that cannot be measured in money, for it costs time and energy and human life. This is our great educational waste.

Changed Conditions Demand Professionally Trained Teachers.-Hitherto we have hardly considered the deeper social, industrial, and spiritual problems of education. The material phases of popular education have absorbed our attention. But now school systems have been organized in every State in the Union; school funds have been provided; school machinery has been perfected. We must next give our attention to the less obvious, but far deeper, spiritual phases of the great problem of universal education, and this is so because of the tremendous social, economic, and moral changes in our modern civilization.

Pioneer life has almost disappeared. People flock to our cities. Society is rapidly growing more complex. The division of labor has made specialization a necessity. Girls as well as boys go out from the home to earn a livelihood, and home ties are broken earlier in life than in former times, for the world's work now is done largely in shops and mills, in factories and offices. This in-door work makes great demands upon the physical endurance of the workers. Machinery, too, is constantly becoming more costly and complex, and this demands greater skill and intelligence in those who use it. Those forms of wealth that can be easily concealed

and readily carried are multiplying so that temptations to dishonesty, petty thieving, and burglary abound on every hand.

Functions of the School Greatly Broadened. Our schools reflect these great changes in our modern social structure. Courses of study consist no longer of the three R's, but include preparation in all that the people demand of the individual in society. Herbert Spencer's well-known definition of education as "preparation for complete living" means vastly more than it did a halfcentury ago. The public school has broadened its functions. It has been required to assume more and more the duties and functions of the home, the Church, and the Sunday-school. The public schools must teach physical training, sewing, cooking, hand-work, music, drawing, manners, and morals. The school takes the child out of the home earlier and keeps him longer than formerly. In fact, the school almost completely absorbs the child's energy and time, so it has come to pass that what the child does not get from the public school to prepare him for life he is in great danger of missing entirely.

Why the Training of Teachers Is so Essential.-From the foregoing discussion the great need for trained teachers can be seen very readily. The teachers who simply "hear recitations" are out of date. Imparting knowledge is not the only, nor even the chief, function of the school, for there is no other time and no other place in our social economy in which the child can acquire discipline and form the habits of industry, honesty, and selfcontrol so essential to success in life. The modern school has become a very complex affair, and the work of the teacher is correspondingly more difficult, for he must now train the body for strength and health, the hands to